Worth: $16.50
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Jack Lowden, Jessica Brown-Findlay, Laurie Kynaston
Intro:
“…honest and unflinching; it pushes boundaries ever so gently…”
Sitting fittingly uncomfortably alongside other portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-rebellious-young-man biopics like Nowhere Boy, Backbeat, Life, and Control, the dour but wryly funny England Is Mine gently hurls the viewer into the furtive teenage mind and grimly dissatisfied life of the individual who would eventually become Morrissey, one of the most divisive and gifted pop singers of the eighties. As the foppish frontman of epochal pop outfit, The Smiths, this unlikely working class boy mouthed lyrics worthy of Oscar Wilde and challenged the masculine stereotypes of the day. Arrogant and self-possessed, the Morrissey of the eighties was a wordy, smart-mouthed game-changer who now rightly stands as a true British icon.
With neither Morrissey’s writings nor The Smiths’ songs in his possession, debut feature co-writer/director, Mark Gill, bravely presses forward with England Is Mine, gliding past two major obstacles that would have hobbled most. The film takes place before The Smiths were even a proverbial glint in Morrissey’s eye. Instead, the Steven Morrissey that we meet is a shaggy haired teenager (expertly played by Dunkirk’s Jack Lowden with the perfect mix of diffidence and surly defiance) pressured by his grumpy dad into getting a soul-deadening office job.
An arty soul with a bitter streak (he pens snooty, bilious reviews of local bands which he sends off as letters to various music magazines), Morrissey’s bohemian side is encouraged by his new friend, Linder (Downton Abbey’s Jessica Brown Findlay steals the show with a winningly sprightly and funny turn). Reluctantly teaming up with young guitarist (and future member of eighties rockers, The Cult), Billy Duffy (Adam Lawrence), Morrissey gets a fleeting taste of artistic success before a swooping setback lays him low. Luckily, there happens to be another guitarist by the name of Johnny Marr (Laurie Kynaston) hovering around in the background…
While Morrissey’s pre-Smiths life might not have been as eventful as the prior-to-stardom worlds of John Lennon or Joy Division’s Ian Curtis, it’s certainly a recognisable one, and Mark Gill does a skillful, imaginative job in creating a picture of what it’s like to be young and creatively ambitious while everybody around you is telling you to stop dreaming.
Though the sulky, snobbish Morrissey is not exactly the most loveable of characters, Gill allows the viewer to feel his pain, giving the film an emotional authenticity that overrides its unfortunate legal inability to get specific via Morrissey’s actual songs and writings. The drab, horribly uninspiring background of seventies and eighties Manchester, meanwhile, is richly evoked.
While Gill’s decision to make Smiths co-founder, Johnny Marr, a solely peripheral character will gall fans of the band, it does solidify England Is Mine as an inventively against-the-grain biopic. The film is not about the trappings of fame, nor even the trials and tribulations of starting a band, but rather the very birth of an artistic identity in one singular figure. It’s a fascinating premise, and England Is Mine makes for quietly compelling – if not exactly urgently paced – viewing.
