Movement 113

eviews: film
srryeet sixteen?
Ken Loach's latest gritty offering requires a strong stomach - but it's wotth the effort.
Sr'xteen
by Ken Loach
Ken loach's latest film is not
for the faint-hearted. The story of
lS-year-old Liam preparing
against all the odds for the
release of his ex-heroin addict
mum Jean from prison does not
pull any punches. Sometimes
quite literally. Liam's mum's
boyfriend Stan and his grandfather
try to get him to smuggle
drugs into the prison for Jean to
sell, and when he refuses, they
beat him up. Liam wants to help
his mum get clean and away from
Stan, and sets his sights on
buying a caravan for them both to
live in. But to get it in time for
Jean's release, he needs to make
money fast. With his mate
Pinball, he muscles in on Stan's
business and starts dealing
drugs, only to find himself up
against the local baron. Liam
starts working for him and at first
it seems the new life he so
desperately wants is within easy
reach, until it becomes clear he
is being drawn ever deeper into a
vicious crime world and increasingly
out of his depth.
The film is set in Greenock, near
Glasgow in the shadow of the closeddown
shipyards, where lives are stifled
by unemployment, crime, family
breakdown and lack of opportunity.
There's an inevitability about Liam's
decision to Sell drugs - Loach and his
screenwriter Paul lavefi met many
kids like him when researching the
film. The director says:
'lt's a door into another kind of
lifestyle ... if you're living in a
place like that, you don't have a
snowball's chance in hell of
affording that lifestyle unless you
get involved in dealing. For a 16-
year-old with nothing, it is quite
attractive.'
There is an irony in the initial
success of Liam's drugs
business. His scheme to get
locaf pizza delivery boys to
double up as heroin couriers is
comically enterprising and a
pointed inversion of the
Thatcherite, capitalist forces
that have crushed his
community. He is a
businessman, determined to
exploit local demand for a
product, albeit an illegal one, to make
money. But he is also just a boy -
when he steals Stan's drugs stash, he
also pinches his grandfather's false
teeth in mischievous revenge. This
prank and others provide welcome
comic relief from the overall
downbeat mood of the film, but also
draw attention to his youth and the
fact that the responsibility he bears
for his family is too great for his age.
Liam is played by Martin Compston,
a t7-year-old professional footballer in
the Scottish League who has never
been in a film before. This is typical of
Loach and it pays off- Compston plays
the part with an immediacy and verve
which makes us care deeply about
what happens to him even as we are
shocked in the latter part of the film by
the choices he makes. This is also
because they do not always seem like
conscious choices - Liam is blinkered,
determined to get what he wants at any
cost and blind to the effect he is having
on others. Unable or unwilling to see
beyond his own situation, he propels
himself on a collision course with
disaster. Even so, the end does seem
rather melodramatic and sentimental,
thougfr not enough to detract fiom the
overall impact of the story.
The sense of progression is very
strong - perhaps because each scene
of the film was shot in order.
Compston comments:
'We shot it in sequence and it was
just a great way of working. I've
just done a W thing and they shot
the ending first and it just took
the fun out of it.'
Loach says he uses simple filming
techniques deliberately and enjoys
paring down to the essence of the
story and the characters: 'The simpler
you are, the more powerful you are.'
Take for example the simple juxtaposition
of two shots - one of the
smashed-up contents of Liam's
bedroom strewn across the front lawn
of his house by Stan and his grandfather,
followed by a cutaway shot of
the mountains around Greenock, the
lake and a rainbow over the town's
rooftops. The location is centralto the
film and both the director and screenwriter
profess great affection for
Glasgow. Loach says:
'lt's such a good place to work.
Everything that's happening in
Britain, you can see in one form
or another. The people have spent
generations struggling and that
has developed a very tough, funny
and sharp culture.'
He makes a feature of the local
dialect from the outset by putting a
written statement on screen to say
that the dialogue will be subtitled for
the first 15 minutes of the film but
that after that 'you and Liam are on
your own'. This is effective on two
levels. Subtitles help a non-Glaswegian
audience get accustomed to the
characters' accent but they also
highlight the fact that for many
viewers, Liam's world is foreign
territory. His story is a real-life story
of real-life alienation and hopelessness
and it takes a gritty, political
director like Loach to tell it. Go and
be told, but take a strong stomach
Kate Powell
with you. I
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