Shane Meadows - Britain's Best Director?
Unique British Filmmaker: A Look at Twenty Four Seven's Director
Aug 12, 2009
Ever since his award-winning debut feature Twenty Four Seven, Shane Meadows has been talked about as one of Britain’s finest filmmakers. His natural flair behind the camera is on a parallel with the great British indie directors over the years, even the likes of Ken Loach and Mike Leigh could learn a trick or two from Meadows’ guerrilla technique.
He’s had a multitude of Hollywood scripts thrown at him in the years since Twenty Four Seven. As he described in an interview with US website The Insider in May 2008, they’ve not always been the most attractive offers –
“I’ve been sent lots of concepts by people - ‘it’s like Bad Lieutenant-meets-Weird Science’ (I’m really not joking). And I got one which was ‘it’s about a guy chasing a guy.’ I laughed and said, ‘So it’s a guy chasing a guy? And that’s the whole idea?’ ‘Yeah – imagine, like a Wachowski movie!’… So I didn’t bite that cherry. ”
Early Life Plays Heavy Part in Shane Meadows’ Films
However ludicrous, you’d forgive him for biting on the financial incentive of a switch to Hollywood. Coming from humble beginnings in Uttoxeter, Meadows was unemployed and heading toward a life of crime before film intervened. In fact, his 2007 BAFTA winning This Is England was partly based on his adolescent propensity into crime until a violent incident shocked the young Meadows into a drastic re-think.
“This is England went back to the core of something that had a big impact on me, that would put many therapists out of a job. It was like a cathartic full stop.” he explained in an interview with Metrolife Film back in 2008.
Following this intervention, Meadows immersed himself into the craft of filmmaking and after borrowing a camcorder, he set about creating an abundance of short films around the streets of his midlands home, using his friends as actors.
No one-trick pony, Meadows wrote, directed and starred in Small Time (1996) which resulted in the director being offered the chance to write and direct Twenty Four Seven, which kick started the self-taught auteur’s career in the UK film industry.
Shane Meadows Possesses Unique Creative Style
But, as yet, his head hasn’t been turned by the lure of America’s bigger budgets, choosing to operate autonomously, away from the soul-sapping Hollywood gravy train. In fact, his catalogue of low-budget films act as a cross section of some of the best British comedy, drama and thrillers of recent times. There aren’t many directors that have the ability to make you laugh out loud, feel shocked, and at the same time be intensely thought provoking all in the space of one movie, but Meadows achieves this with consummate ease.
His films have a habit of being gritty, less than flattering portraits of unfashionable English working-class life. They’re far from the Richard Curtis rom-coms set in an often misleading, rose-tinted southern England, with the view to sell on both sides of the Atlantic. Meadows is able to draw out a naturalistic and often unflinching performance from his cast, sometimes improvised and deeply funny, it's rather like a fusion between the morose world of Ken Loach’s Kez and Alan Parker’s The Commitments.
Un-perturbed by funding struggles, Meadows can suck drama from the most ordinary of settings and subject matters. A shoe-string budget doesn’t necessarily spawn shoe-string drama.
He has the uncanny ability of making you feel attached to his characters, which often aren’t entirely likeable. Take the unruly mob in Twenty Four Seven, whom you grow to like despite all their obvious faults, and Thomas Turgoose’s character in Somers Town (2008) – the cheeky scallywag who you can’t help but find hilarious. They’re both first class examples of Meadows’ ability to create multi-layered characters to drive his stories forward.
He’s also masterful at being able to turn a narrative on its head and contrast quickly between comedy and tragedy. Several of Meadow’s films begin as comedies and spiral into the darkest of dramas. This Is England is a prime example, with central character Shaun Fields (whose name alludes to the semi-autobiographical nature of the story) joining a cocksure but likeable new gang of friends, only for the narrative to flip to a serious note when National Front-wannabe, Combo, turns up on the scene.
Even a loveable loser like Morell (Paddy Considine) develops a sinister side that's not easy to foresee, taking what seems like an innocent story of friendship to a completely different place in A Room for Romeo Brass (1999).
Probably his best piece of suspenseful drama came with the brilliant Dead Man’s Shoes (2004), a Western-like story of revenge - set in the very un-western town of Matlock - with a devilishly clever twist in the tale.
You never quite know what to expect when watching a Meadows film. You’re almost anticipating the rug being pulled from underneath your feet - a great virtue for a director to possess.
Meadows' Legacy
The midlander’s films should be a case study for any film school student. Frequently operating with micro-budgets, Meadows is able to capture a realism to his work that almost seems to be a window into the working-class surroundings of his youth, both natural and un-theatrical. He’s able to extract phenomenal performances often from unknown and untrained actors, whilst helping along the careers of long time friend and occasional collaborator Paddy Considine and This Is England co-stars Thomas Turgoose and Stephen Graham (who now has a burgeoning Hollywood career).
Coinciding with the upcoming release of mocku-drama Le Donk & Scor-Zay-Zee, Meadow’s, with long time collaborators Warp Films have introduced a new 5-day features programme, whereby they encourage young filmmakers to produce a low budget feature film - the only condition being that it has to be made within 5 days. Similar to Lars Von Trier’s Dogma 95 initiative in 1995, which encouraged avant-garde filmmaking, 5-Day Features could kick-start the careers of a new wave of British filmmakers.
For the meantime, let’s just hope that Mr. Meadows stays put and continues to set the standard for independent filmmaking in the UK for a long time to come.
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