England is Mine Review

“England is Mine”. No, not a Nigel Farage quote but the Mozz 0.1 biopic (as in: Mozz 1 -the Smiths year; Mozz 2 –the solo years; Mozz 3 –the Jim Davidson / Brigitte Bardot / Julie Burchill / John Lydon years). Exclusively devoted to the Sage of the Underpass and Troubadour of Princess Street's formative years, the movie strokes its chin, stares at its typewriter for 33% of screen-time, and decides it's time the tale were told.

Let's just start with the voices. Methought the imitation (of Mozz's mannerisms, pitch, pronunciation etc.) was spot on, plus it always is a pleasure to hear Manc and Irish accents (Morrissey Senior and Seniorette). Funnily enough, the main actor (remind me to go and check his name on imdb) turned out to be Scottish, which means he probably underwent some serious vocal training – fair play to your man! (Talking of which, it has come to my recent attention that Russian commander / American anti-bootlegger / British superspy / undetermined art thief Sean Connery is in fact Scottish. Who knew??)

A sensitive, troubled and highly introspective child, Young Steven lurches through the vulgar provin-shial seventies in search of... he doesn't quite know exactly. An avid letter-writer with typewriter in situ, Young Stephen bemoans the uselessness of existence in a miserabilist tone that may just appeal to fans of artists like The Smith, Lou Reed, Kafka, Nirvana, Joy Division or Jackie Collins. Maybe not Joan Collins on reflection. Periodically contemplating waterfalls (which were probably not of the inner-city canal), Young Stephen is given to making grandiose verbose morose announcements voice-over stylee before repairing to the shelter of his bedroom where he loses himself in the devil's music (as well as rock 'n roll).

“England Belongs to Me” is a good movie, no question about that. An hagiography it is not, what with the makers making sure not to go for the kind of the-world-against-me yous-will-all-be-sorry-when-I'm-gone I-didn't-ask-to-be-born-did-I you-ruined-everything nobody-understands-me why-is-it-always-my-turn-to-put-the-bins-out I-swear- I-have-no-idea-how-this-magazine-got-here manicheism usually found in teenage rebels diaries (-Reader's voice: Er...).

“It is a truth generally acknowledged that nobody likes a smart arse.”

In fact, the film-makers display an interesting ambivalence about their subject. All things considered, they don't particularly flatter their case subject. Truth be told, they dress a pretty nonplussed portrait of Our Lord of Teenage Boddingtons Addled Angst, showing him as a morbid, self-pitying, selfish, confused and ultimately not particularly pleasant romantic prone to definitive adolescent statements that make a mockery of the concept of empathy. (Habitual readers of Loig Allix are probably bracing themselves at this point for the punch-line.)

Indeed, they show him at his most self-obsessed, pretty much incapable of empathy let alone benevolence towards anyone outside his immediate sphere of reference (ie his ma, sister, and “Linder” -and even so...). Our boy may be suffering – but he sure doesn't make it any easier for anyone else and for what it's worth, the movie could have easily been titled “My Struggle”.

Right-so.

Moving on.

But don't get your hopes up, the story is not all fun and games you know. The movie is worth considering for different reasons. Amongst its notable achievements (I have already mentioned the accents), the movie makes a fairly decent job of harking back to them times where queueing outside rock venue (the Apollo, in this case) or stepping inside discos or house parties was a “thing” (-Take that, mobilephone generation, snarls angry old man reviewer).

The soundtrack is also excellent. It doesn't feature any Smiths song.

Moving on, part two.

Butseriously. The film shows some subtlety, precisely of the kind The Son and the Heir used to pepper his kitchen-sink chronicles with, when he was able to seemingly produce at will thrilling two-minute-thirty maelstroms of existential misgivings stormers (such were the days and every new release -every three months, on average- was nothing short of an event). The director/screenwriter clearly cares for his main character, and yet doesn't absolve him (of the crime of moany petulance). He remains faithful to his source material, and yet brings up themes that easily outgrow the Lancasterian confines of Manchester, UK:

“England is Mine” basically talks about anyone (boy, girl or otherwise) who has ever felt out of place, misunderstood, confused, alienated, lonely; it reaches out to anyone who has ever pined for some maddeningly as-yet-undefined other sphere of existence; it recognises all those who are harbouring inchoate-yet-vital artistic aspirations that frustratingly never fit with the current context. I mean, go to “La Dolce Vita”; go back to “You Know Yourself 2.0”; go back to Nina Simone, Francis Bacon, Miles Davis, Rimbaud, Henry Darger, Sinead, Ian Curtis, Billie Holiday, Cantona, Van Gogh, Blake, Jimmy Baldwin, Larkin, Daniel Johnston, Amy Winehouse, Kurt, Balotelli, Antonin Artaud, etc, etc. (It may be worth noting that, right up to that disaster when what happened happened, Dear Old Oscar had had a pretty successful life –see “Author, Author” by David Lodge (or was it “The Master” by Colm Toibin?).

Another strong point of the movie resides in its (mandatory?) private joke slash references to future Smiths songs, like when our hero gets beaten up during the last night of the fair (geddit?????), gets pestered for a snog under the iron brige (idem), meets his mate Linder at the cemetry (sic, idem redux) where they engage in literary quotes upmanship (idem redux bis) and so on. I must admit to a quick chuckle or two here. ...Which in fairness makes perfect sense. When you think about it, the future writer would have drawn inspiration from real life events (such as the Moors murders) and his personal experience (but then again, let's not stir up the “death of the author” structuralist beast here...).

Andanotherthing.

Cast your mind back to early Smiths records, and you may just note a certain lack of interest in menial employment from the Mozzfather, a subject the movie devotes a lot of time to. Amusingly, Our Boy worked at the unemployment office ...like Ian Curtis. (In his autobiography, Mozz even claimed that Ian Curtis, who was somewhat of a neighbour, knew him and used to sollicit his advice on putative rock stardom.) Alas, Young Stephen does not take to the office life and is shown drifting from one job to the next -which got me started on two trains of thought.

First, I thought that the movie was pretty decent with regards to his office manager. (Hear me out here.) All things considered, the film does not make his superior into a caricatural jobsworth. I mean, put yourself in your man's shoes. Say you have to manage this uninterested workshy introvert well up himself given to truancy and sullen silence. ...How would you go about handling the situation? Huh?

Second, this begs the question: How exactly did our Stephen Patrick manage to get the money for his cassettes, concert tickets, bus travels andwhatnot? (As for his books, the film makes it clear that he availed himself of library facilities. Good man yourself.) That detail bugged me a bit – especially with regards to his typewriter (I won't spoil a relevant scene near the end): surely that must have cost a few bobs, no...?

Anyway.

At the same time, I also had the strangest feeling watching this movie...

It was almost as if it took great pains not to address a certain subject (yikes), it kind of continually hinted at some mysterious underlying theme that would forever remain never to be mentioned, I couldn't quite point out what... As if these scenes where teenage boys visit each other's bedrooms where they play their mothers' favourites, this story where the protagonist keeps rejecting the advances of a perfectly fine young lady (ie with TITS), these visions of Oscar Wilde books, the choice of a song for the Moz / Billy Duffy fleeting combo, Johnny Marr's ear piercing, as if all of these touches were somehow be significant... Huh. Pop psychologists will probably have a field day exercising their clever minds about it. Like I said, for lack of any clarification, I can't be more specific.

(Reader's voice: What d'you mean...? Your man doesn't like footy??)

I did like the bit about his hair-style though (yet another nail in the coffin of Mozz's autobiography, which did not even make any mention of it). I also loved -even though it was pretty easy to suss- the ending (insert learned “dramatic irony” and “a posteriori” espressions here), which made a refreshing change from (watch out, incoming personal grudge of mine) the disastrously-judged last scene of “Control” (see other writings of mine on this subject, probably “Suddenly – Pivotal Moments in Movies”, available at Am*z*n). I thought it worked perfectly well, a seamless conclusion to the preceding scenes. Being the charitable kind, I won't spoil it for you, but let's just say that the actor impersonating John Peel needs to work on his eye widening.

To conclude, you will have noticed that, in the course of this review, I did not indulge in that gimmick of slipping in easily recognisable quotes from songs. What trite poppycock, friend! What tedious bollix! We shall leave these cheap jibes to Internet forum posters (eg. N.E. article in The Independent or The Gaduriaan for the last twenty years) - that is not funny anymore.

And -Lo!- Johnny of Maher went and knocked on His door and He was home

And the Lord saw that it was good, yea, and said let them go on their merry way

For He had found His vessel for His bloody awful poetry

The rest is His story, as told by your man with thanks to Billy Duffy.

Amen.