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Steelworkers from Sheffield have no options but to turn their hand to stripping, in British phenomenon The Full Monty |
Director: Peter Cattaneo
Cast: Robert Carlyle (Gaz), Mark Addy (Dave), Tom Wilkinson
(Gerald), Lesley Sharp (Jean), Emily Woof (Mandy), William Snape (Nathan),
Steve Huisan (Lomper), Paul Barber (Horse), Hugo Speer (Guy)
In the summer of 1997, Britain was a depressed place. The
country was in the middle of an intense mourning for the death of Princess
Diana. Perhaps that’s why a film all about overcoming despair and to turn it
into heart-warming triumph suddenly gripped the whole nation and emerged from
nowhere to become the most successful British film of all time. No one expected
a film about Sheffield strippers to do that.
The economy has dropped out of the Sheffield steel market,
and hundreds of people are out of work and desperate. Gaz (Robert Carlyle), a
genial waster, needs £700 to pay his child maintenance and not lose access to
his son Nathan (William Snape). Dave (Mark Addy) has serious self-image
problems, his disgust at his own weight is leading him to push away Jean
(Lesley Sharp), the wife he can’t believe loves him. Gerald (Tom Wilkinson),
their ex-foreman, is so ashamed of losing his job he hasn’t told his wife that
he’s been unemployed for six months and is facing financial ruin. Together with
three other men with no other options, they decide one way to get money quick
is to follow the example of the sell-out male-strippers at the local working
club – with the unique selling point that they will go “the full monty”.
It’s been nearly a decade since I saw The Full Monty. Over-exposure made it an easy film to feel a bit
sniffy and dismissive about, like it was a happy accident that the film came
from nowhere to achieve staggering success. But that’s hugely unfair. Watching
it back now, it’s amazing how much it’s a comedic film grounded in a sense of
desperation and pain, and then how brilliantly it uses this to create empathy
for its characters, and how wonderfully this helps you to share their joy and
triumph when they are finally taking control of their own destinies.
The Full Monty
emerged from a troubled production history. It was hugely difficult to find
funding for the film. It took years to get the filming sorted, and casting was
difficult – in a parallel universe Nicholas Lyndhurst and Russ Abbott played
the lead roles. Robert Carlyle has described the making of the film as being
totally chaotic (he further claimed he was convinced the film was “pish” and
heading for disaster). The first cut was met with such negativity from the
distributors that it nearly ended up direct-to-video, until the producers
begged for one more shot at editing the film. But then it emerged as one of the
most widely loved UK films of the 1990s, eventually being nominated for four
Oscars (Picture, Director, Screenplay and a win for Best Score). That’s what I
call a turnaround!
It’s also strangely fitting for the film itself. The opening
footage showing a prosperous and bustling Sheffield in the 1960s is a perfect
set-up for the Sheffield of the 1990s with unemployment rampant, and our
characters confined to endless days of drifting around the city and failing to
gain any benefits from a workshop at the unemployment office. Every frame of
Cattaneo’s well shot film stresses the relative bleakness of the environment,
the run-down world the characters inhabit, and that sense that all promise is
missing from the future of this city.
In the middle of this, the film doesn’t shy away from
looking at – with plenty of jokes – plenty of themes which are hardly your
default expectations for a comedy movie. We’ve got depression, self-loathing,
body-image, fathers’ rights and suicide: if that’s not a comic gold on paper I
don’t know what is! However, what is so
perfect about the film is how well it judges the tone when dealing with these
themes. Simon Beaufoy’s script is warm, humane and above all immensely
empathetic. Never – not once – are any of these characters the butt of the
humour. While we may see the dark comedy that can occur, we never laugh at the characters.
The script gets a perfect balance between all this
desperation and pain and well-worked, down-to-earth, honest and affecting
humour. It’s also genuinely funny, with several stand-out gags. As an
interesting side note, perhaps the film’s most famous comic moment – the boys
standing in the dole queue, involuntarily practicing their routine when Hot Stuff starts playing in the radio –
nearly didn’t make the film, as the producers felt it was unrealistic. Just as
well they left it in, as it perfectly captures the mood of the movie.
On top of which, the film taps into the human bonds that can
grow in adversity. One of the film’s principal delights is seeing this odd
bunch slowly begin to come together like a family. We see them confide in each
other, listen to each other’s problems, accept each other for what they are.
It’s a film about the triumph of the human spirit and the rewards that can come
from opening your heart to other people when all seems lost.
It further helps that Simon Beaufoy’s script draws such
terrific performances from the actors. Carlyle (for all his doubts about the
film) plays Gaz with a perfect, low-key, commitment and empathy. Carlyle in
many ways makes the film work as well as it does because he plays the truth of
each scene and is willing to be the film’s loadstone. He plays every moment
truthfully and is as effective showing Gaz’s chancer wasterness as he is at
allowing the real pain and fear Gaz feels at the prospect of losing his son.
The film also changed the careers of Addy and Wilkinson,
turning the two into character actor superstars. Addy is fabulous as the
self-loathing Dave: having had problems myself with being concerned about my
own image, seeing the psychological damage Dave inflicts on himself through his
own inadequacies is very moving, and perfectly played by Addy – who also brings
a great deal of comic mastery to the film. Wilkinson is perhaps the pick of the
bunch as the seemingly proud and haughty Gerald, who hides intense fragility
and pain under the surface. He has a truly affecting breakdown scene after a
job interview gone wrong – and the reaction acting to this from Carlyle and
Addy is also by the way marvellous. It’s a terrific (BAFTA winning)
performance.
And then you hit the final stripping scene – and all that
empathy the film has been building pays off, because the triumphal dance and
strip down is hugely heart-warming. After seeing the men go through such
difficulty and despair it’s really affecting and joyful to see them finally
take control of their own destinies. How could you not be wrapped up in it? How
could a whole nation not take the whole thing to their hearts? Put out of your
mind all those thoughts that this can’t be that good, or that we were all
mistaken in 1997: this is genuinely very good, thought-provoking and hilarious
stuff.
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