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Ray Winstone finds prison life a tough proposition in Scum |
Director: Alan Clarke
Cast: Ray Winstone (Carlin), Mick Ford (Archer), Julian
Firth (Davis), John Blundell (Banks), Phil Daniels (Richards), Alan Igborn
(Meakin), Alrick Riley (Angel), Patrick Murray (Dougan), Peter Howell
(Governor), John Judd (Mr Sands), Philip Jackson (Mr Greaves), John Grillo (Mr
Goodyear), Bill Dean (Mr Duke)
In 1977 Alan Clarke’s searing condemnation of the borstal
system in the UK, Scum, was shot as a
BBC Play for Today. Outraged at its
content, pressure in the press led to the film being banned. But that didn’t
change what an electric bit of work it was – and when talk turned to creating a
film version, having a filmed version of the script already in existence that
could be used as a pitch tool was invaluable. So was born the film version of Scum, with much of the same cast, a
higher budget (although still tiny by comparison to other films) and a chance
for Clarke to bring his uncompromisingly harsh vision to the big screen.
Three young boys arrive at a borstal: Davis (Julian Firth)
is a sensitive youngster who ran away from his previous borstal, Angel (Alrick
Riley) a black kid who suffers the systemic racism at every level of the system
and Carlin (Ray Winstone) a hard man with a dangerous reputation, who punched a
warden at his last borstal. On arrival, the three are identified as requiring
being “broken” by staff: Davis is bullied, Angel abused and Carlin is placed at
the mercy of the wing’s “Daddy” Banks (John Blundell), suffering beatings with
the authorities turning a blind eye. The entire system is rotten to the core
and, while Carlin eventually rises up to take over the position of “Daddy”, it
changes little in a young offender’s prison rife with racism, sadism, violence,
abuse and rape.
Scum is almost
unbelievably grim and pessimistic for this system of incarceration, finding
nothing to redeem or excuse the system across its entire running time. The
borstal is a wintery hell on Earth, with justice and sympathy nowhere to be
seen. While the system claims to be helping its inmates (aged from early teens
to early twenties) to find new skills and purpose in life, its real function
seems to be trying to beat discipline and subservience into its inmates by all
means necessary. While the Governor (a silkly patrician Peter Howell) may talk
faith, duty and country he oversees a system where the wardens ruthlessly beat
the inmates, encourage them to ‘discipline’ each other, turn a blind eye to
violence and abuse, encourage an atmosphere of racial loathing and generally
show no concern or interest in any boy’s problem that can’t be solved without
punching them in the mouth.
It’s a world Carlin is dropped into, and he knows it well.
Played by Ray Winstone with a chippy anger that never seems that far from
bursting to the surface, Carlin might want at first to keep his head down but
quickly accepts the only way to survive in this dog-eat-dog world is to be the
top dog. There will certainly be no justice from the wardens, who beat him on
arrival as a trouble-maker, and set the Wing’s alphas on him to break his
spirit. Casually beaten in the middle of the night, it’s the bruised Carlin who
is sent to solitary confinement for fighting while his attackers go free. He is
joined by Davis, framed for theft and Angel, for whom being black seems to be
crime enough (walloped by a warden, and spilling food across his room, he is
sent down for keeping his cell untidy).
What’s striking in this film though is that, as much as we
are meant to think Carlin might be the hero, Clarke is smarter than that. He
carefully watches Carlin – a tight-control on Winstone’s face that promises
retributive violence is on the way – for almost forty minutes adjust in this
system, before he takes matters into his hand. The film’s most famous sequence
– shot in one dizzying tracking shot that captures the immediacy of Carlin’s putsch – sees Carlin beat Bank’s weasily
sidekick Richards (Phil Daniels) with two snooker balls in a sock, before
heading up to his dormitory toilet to beat Banks black-and-blue (and bloody),
the cut finally coming to show us Carlin (from Banks POV) screaming at him “I’m
the Daddy now”. It’s a masterclass of a sequence, electric in its execution and
gives a moment of pleasing oomph (for all its extreme violence) as it shows
Carlin finally getting a bit of justice.
Only Carlin’s institution as the Daddy brings largely only a
change of figurehead rather than real change. Sure Carlin isn’t quite the bully
Banks is, but he’s an unashamed racist, a violent thug, who ruthlessly takes
over the money smuggling operation Banks was running (but taking a higher cut)
and takes control of another wing by beating its “Daddy” (another black inmate)
with an iron bar. Carlin is also quickly adopted by the wardens, just as Banks
was, agreeing to maintain peace and control in the borstal in exchange for
certain privileges like his own room. Carlin may at first seem to us the angel
of retribution – but he’s really a ruthless survivor who is perfectly happy
with the status quo so long as he on the top of it.
But then no one has any interest in improving things. The
governor is only interested in the appearance of gentility. The wardens
couldn’t care less about the rehabilitation of the inmates so long as they have
a quiet life. The inmates drift through their life there, never questioning the
violence around them. The matron is well-being, but hopelessly rules-bound,
whose concern for the boy’s welfare never develops into seeing them as human
beings. It’s a systemic failure.
There are other perspectives of course. Possibly the most
fascinating character is Mick Ford (replacing David Threlfall in the original
production) as Archer, a precociously intelligent inmate in his early twenties,
possibly the only one who has read the rulebooks and enjoys running
intellectual rings around the wardens. Causing trouble in his “own little way”,
he claims to be a vegetarian (requiring a complex set of arrangements to be put
in place to feed him separately) and also unable to wear leather boots (requiring
his own special plastic boots to be located) and provokes the bible-bashing
Governor with thoughts of converting to Islam and Sikhism.
But he’s also a smart cookie, who recognises (in a
fascinating conversation with veteran warder Dukes) that the entire system is a
trap, both for the inmates and the wardens, imprisoning them in a system where
criminal acts are endemic, the wardens are trapped and brutalised by the system
as much as the prisoners and the whole system manifestly fails to do anything other
than inoculate Darwinian violence into its inmates (Archer is of course
promptly put on report for this cutting analysis). The scene – a key part of
the film’s argument – is also a tribute to the skilful writing of Roy Minton,
whose script bubbles with both quotable and sadly realistic dialogue.
Clarke’s entire film is the exploration of this violence and
the mixture of hypocrisy and denial down to outward condonation and support it
receives from the Governor down to the wardens. Any proper review of the
conditions in the Borstal is impossible, as it would rock the boat and fly in
the face of the positive message the Governor wishes to promote about his
institution. Effort is put into putting the boys at loggerheads with each other
(usually on racial grounds) as a divide and rule. The weak are happily left at
the bottom of the rung, not least the tragic Davis, a sensitive boy
(marvellously played by Julian Firth with a heartbreaking vulnerability)
totally failed by everyone around him.
Clarke’s final act spins out of a disturbingly intense rape
scene of a young inmate (an act witnessed with a sneer by sinister warden
Sands, a repulsive John Judd) – the scene a mix of careful filming to show
nothing too graphic, and heart-rendering intensity in its vulnerability and
violence. The victim is totally ignored, leading to tragic consequences –
another difficult to watch scene which hammers home both the cruel indifference
of the warders and the helplessness of the victim. The eventual riot this is
all leading too is, however, painfully futile: scapegoats are selected at
random and beaten senseless, the status quo is reinforced by a bland platitude
speech from the Governor.
Directed with fire and passion by Alan Clarke, a virtuoso of
realism and master of social conscious, Scum
is a masterpiece of anger, of boiling resentment against systems that do not
work and do not care that they do not work. Packed with astonishing
performances and some sublime camera work and film-making skill, it’s a
must-see.
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