I watched the aforementioned film last night. As anyone who knows me, knows, any film that doesn't have a montaged dance-training scene doesn't usually come onto my radar, but I had read good reviews and thought I should educate myself.
I found it really disturbing, not so much because of the violence, although it was brutal and often unexpected, but because of its vision of an England that exist(ed) on the periphery of 'normal' society. The skinheads are disenfranchised, anarchic, chaotic, but also seductively stylish and loyal (up to a point). I was a child during the Thatcher era, and so have never really understood the extreme emotions, the hatred and rage, that her actions stirred up. My knowledge of the Eighties is more of a second-hand, nostalgic one, similar to the (ironic) use of 'Tainted Love' blaring out of a radio at one point- New Romantics, kids dressing up like Boy George, a mum with enormous glasses and perm like my mum had when I was a child.
It was also touching and spikily humorous and affectionate, and left me thinking about the nature of masculinity and sexuality and identity and integrity, and of art's capacity to be politically more effective than any number of dry treatises or speeches.
