Country:
United Kingdom
Recognizable Faces:
Ray Winstone
Phil Daniels
Julian Firth
Mick Ford
Directed By:
Alan Clarke
Scum is a very important movie. Fortunately, it also happens to be amazing. For those who don't know who Alan Clarke is, please know that he's one of the most fearless people who ever picked up a camera. Scum is his showstopper, but he made many great movies about very difficult (and very British) social issues. Made In Britain (about skinheads), The Firm (about hooligans) and Elephant (about the IRA) are all worth your time. But Scum is something special. It's tackling the issues of British borstals (a prison for young offenders under twenty-one years old). Clarke first made it as a filmed play for the BBC in 1977, then saw it banned, then remade a harder, more uncompromising version for cinema that came out in 1979. You will often hear that Scum solved the issue of British borstals singlehandedly, which is simplifying the issue, but it denounced the problem with awe-inspiring bravado. Did I mention it starred Ray Winstone? THE amazing and burly Ray Winstone.
Carlin (Winstone) is a violent, violent young man with an explosive temper and a creative mind. That makes him even more violent. Fortunately for him, Carlin has a soul and a very good sense of right and wrong. Very few people in the borstal he just got transferred to seems to have that. Inmates, wardens, government officials, they are all bound by an inefficient system that vows to keep young thugs away instead of helping them develop into better human beings. They are stripped of their identity and given a number, they have to do hard, mindless and numbing work and they are left to fend for themselves by the brutal wardens. You thought Lord Of Flies was hard? Think again, because Scum operates on a completely different level. The story follows Carlin, Davis and Angel who came to borstal on the same shipment and also Archer, who's only problem is to be an artistically minded kid in a very strict environment (he also happened to have stolen money from his employer and sent to borstal, but that's beside the point. Every kid's problem before borstal is not the problem here).
I'm warning you right now. If you have enough balls to watch the theatrical, uncensored version, you're in for a very hard movie that deals with issues of dehumanization with kids. It's hard to feel bad for Carlin, who's rugged, self-reliant and physically developped enough to stand up to any adults, but there are kids of various ages in borstal. The youngest (thirteen, fourteen years old) and often prey to the older inmates and helpless in front of government officials. They are bound by the warden to silence because if they talk, they will get a whole month of hell before the "governor" comes back for a day to take care of the issues. Carlin's rise to the top of borstal is exhilarating, righteous and yet it's grim as all hell. The fate of the weaker kids is just worse. And I'm warning you. Clarke showed EVERY DETAIL. Scum was made to disturb the well-thinking and put them in front of an horrible reality. It was also made with the highest hopes to help kids out of borstals and reform the institutions. To me, it's a movie that achieved the highest purpose of fiction.
Scum is not going to leave you intact. It's going to scar you in a very good way, so that you can remember the boys that have been put away from society. What they went through. There is no beauty in the images, but the one truth bears, no matter how difficult it is. Scum first shines through the clever writing of Roy Minton (sometimes heavy handed, especially through Archer. But his scarce use makes it all right) and through the difficult decisions Alan Clarke made. Both the theatrical version and the BBC version differs quite a bit. The theatrical version is the toughest one by far, but the writing differs quite a bit, one from the other and both deal with issues a different way. Homosexuality has been dropped from the movie version, which would have made things even more interesting, since the movie is so brutal. Watch Scum. Watch it as soon as you can. It's tough as hell, yet it's an experience in humanity. It's the best prison movie I've ever watched and one of the best thing crime fiction ever offered. It's one of my favorite films.
SCORE: 100%