This Is England Close-Up (“Fun With Friends Montage” Sequence)

Narrative:

Meadows uses montage to compress time and convey messages in short time spans. Here, an entire day out with friends is shown in a short montage, which communicates to the audience that Shaun has found a place in this friend group, and is happy with them.

The film is almost episodic, with the periodic use of montages acting as book markers dividing different segments of the story. For example, the first montage displays Shaun bored and sending his Summer alone, and after that he first meets the skinheads. In this montage, we see what his life is like now that he has friends to spend it with, but after this montage the equilibrium is disrupted, and Combo’s infectious character is introduced. After that, a montage is used to convey his negative influences on Shaun.

Key Elements:

During these montages, the film plays out almost opposite to how Trainspotting does. It uses a gliding steady cam, with carefully composed and framed shots , the use of slow motion. Whereas Boyle uses more chaotic, playful and interesting camerawork, This Is England is mostly more gritty and real in its camerawork, aside from in the montages, where the film becomes more conventionally pretty. For example, the montage os highly edited, even to the point that its doesn’t reflect reality, e.g., we see the gang jump into a pool three times.

The non-diegetic compiled score is soul music, the music that the skinhead group is formed on. The montage also takes place against the backdrop of a deprived urban landscape with graffiti, showing the setting they live in. Clips of Shaun having fun with friends,played in slow motion to emphasise his happiness, show his acceptance into this new, surrogate family. The clips also show off the inclusive nature of the group, which contains men, women, black and white people, younger and older people. They are all bonded by their shared sense of fashion, taste in music, and eccentricity as a group. They are no the cool kids, so to speak, rather a group living on the outskirts, an edgy group. They are from a particular subculture, and they gang together. They are also given a childlike innocent by being shown jumping into puddles together, laughing giddily.

The film is prevented from being true British social realism through the manipulative editing that encourages the audience to react to the film in certain ways. For example, in this sequence, the upbeat, lively compiled music juxtaposed with the shots of Shaun and his friends having fun influences the audience to feel happy for him, which is not true to the subjective nature of kitchen sink dramas.

Ideology: