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The Miners’ Strike Ended 25 Years Ago Today
Stephen Daldry’s and Lee Hall’s ‘Billy Elliot’ is undoubtedly the best film to cover the miners strike and ‘angry dance” to the Jam’s ‘Town Called Malice’ is for me the highlight of the movie. The Comic Strip’s, wonderful satire of the miners strike ‘The Strike‘ with Al Pacino (sort of) playing Arthur Scargill is also a gem. And the BBC has a fantastic photo montage, accompanied by a musical soundtrack from the time, looking back to the sights and sounds of the strike.
That ‘Billy Elliot’ is described as the best that the film industry has given us on the Miners’ Strike, is surely signal that it needs to get its arse into gear. Such a huge event in our recent history and all our young people have to call on, when trying to glean the story, is such fluff.
To watch this stuff is to peer into a tumble dryer with the same faces flashing into view and out, bathed in the same ‘Heartbeat’ lighting; using the same stable of actors, made to look so pumped up 80s by the same dressers; eating their ‘tea’ in sullen sculleries; speaking words written by the same school of hirelings. Oh, and always the same Hillman Hunter parked outside the chippie.
Perfect and unmoving. Filmed in Whitneyscope. Nothing of the real grit and tension of the time and the concerns of those involved.
One case surely which really does need to be ‘made strange’; to be looked at in that new and ‘threatening’ way.
Edward Except it was written by a working class Geordie lad Lee Hall, and it was recently voted Britain’s favourite British film.
Re art and the miners’ strike, I’d just like to offer two slightly more counter-cultural responses. Firstly the music of Test Department who undertook a tour to raise money and awareness during the year of the Strike and brought us wonderful presentations by miners’ groups (and a play written by Kent Miners too that premiered up at the Edinburgh Fringe in ‘85). The second is author David Peace’s GB84 that brought Peace to my notice as the best living English author and one who is trying to drag the novel kicking and screaming into the 21st Century and away from the previous millenium where it has remained largely unchanged for 200 years.
marc I went to a great New Order miners benefit gig at the Royal Festival Hall, I will always remember it for the “real” miners on the Southbank with buckets collecting change who seemed a bit menacing & exciting to us middle class students and the poor old dears at the RFH who more used to polite concert goers and were a bit overwhelmed by the sweaty leather jacket clad hordes of New Order fans.. Great night!
Correction: Geordie hireling. The votes obviously crush my every point. Where is there to go?
Come on Edward chill out.. I do partly agree with your comments, but it was the perfect scene to illustrate my post & people inc me luv the movie. I know Lee Hall a bit and he’s nothing like you describe, in fact I bet you’d like him. Did you watch the Comic Strip clip? Do, It might make you laugh!
Brassed Off in many ways was about the Miners strike, and imo is a truer representation of the strike than `Elliott. For my money, Elliott is cliched (enjoyable for that) of small time boy done good despite the obstacles in his way. Its Kes lite, fluffy and enjoyable but with no substance.
Whereas Postlewaite positively burns with righteous anger throughout Brassed Off, ending up with his final earth scorching soliloquy at the theatre.
Danny Speech:- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKx3MUqzCcQ
Paul You might be right about ‘Brassed Off’ I’d forgotten what a good film it is and isn’t Pete Postlewaite a very fine actor!
Postlewaite is a very fine actor indeed. hes what I call a jobbing actor, in that he seems to turn up in just about everything. Whenever he is given a lead role, hes quite tremendous, an unsung hero.
simon
OK each to their own and all.
Your friend Lee might very well be a likeable chap, and although not to my taste, “Billy Elliot” is not on its own the cause of my discontent. The point I perhaps too pointedly tried to put over, is that it is one more product of what is almost a conveyor belt of very predictable, puritanical and saccharine works, from which it would be I think, healthy to depart at least now and again.
Agree with Edward. Brassed Off also fulls into the predictable and saccharine, with Danny’s speech being its saving grace.
The trouble with the Miners Strike, is that anyone would struggle to take the middle ground and deliver a true and dramatic film into the events (if taking the middle ground can be true) Even today the opposing sides are polarised. You were either pro miners or pro Thatcher and ne`er the twain meet. Its a tough subject to cover on film, with the risk that you sentimentalise one side, and portray the other as the wicked witch of the west. I find myself in dichotomy when even thinking about it, so god knows how a film could make a balanced but realistic portrayal of the subject in 120 mins.
The Bobby Sands movie approached a similar subject , in that the hunger strike brought about extreme polarised views (again with Mrs T at the centre) I think it worked to a degree, but it was firmly on the side of Sands. Maybe its just not possible to bring the Miners strike to film , without the director taking a side, the danger is the side taken with be inveitably be from the left side.
Ed & Paul I doubt very much if we will ever see another miners strike movie, it’s too long ago and there isn’t any money to be made from it, perhaps a BBC series is the best we can hope for but eighties nostalgia seems to be coming to end as well
I could be wrong of course Billy Elliot the musical goes from strength to strength, still going well in LDN, hot ticket still on Broadway, just about to open in Chicago with a US tour to follow and opening in Korea in August.