The Angel's Share (Ken Loach, 2012)

[Finch]

Trailer for The Angel's Share

Well, I'm sold. Thinking of it as a Scottish version of Sideways. Will be watching this and Prometheus on the same day.

[mfunk9786]

I love that title.

an·gel's share
n. Informal
The quantity of an alcoholic liquor lost to evaporation during the distilling process.

[ianungstad]

Early twitter response to the new Ken Loach film The Angels' Share seems to be positive.

[Finch]

4 star review for Angel's Share from PB

Really pleased to see the warm responses to the Loach, previews here in Scotland next Wednesday, 2 days ahead of the official June 1 opening.

[MichaelB]

The film's swearing is toned down to qualify for a 15 certificate.

The director said the BBFC should pay attention to "the manipulative and deceitful language of politics" rather than "our ancient oaths and swear words".

"The British middle class is obsessed by what they call bad language," he told reporters. "But of course bad language is manipulative language.

"They're very happy with that. But the odd oath, like a word that goes back to Chaucer's time, they ask you to cut."

The film's producer Rebecca O'Brien said the film's script represented "natural" language spoken by young people.

"We have made films with heavy scenes of torture and waterboarding and fingernails being torn out - they have been 15 certificates," she said.

"If they're looking for diversity in Britain they should look no further than this film and Glasgow and see that there are different ways of speaking and see that that should be acceptable to all and sundry and should not be censored."

[Finch]

It's the Sweet Sixteen fiasco all over again, and I've got to say I agree with Ken once more. Graphic violence like the quoted pulling of a fingernail etc is acceptable for a 15 but someone saying cunt a few times (I'm assuming this is what the BBFC got upset about) immediately gets a film an 18. Strong language is not gratuitous in the context of the Glasgow setting (not meant to stereotype my neighbours here) so the BBFC's hangup over the language really is frustrating. The MPAA gets a lot of flak for its immature attitude to sex and sexuality but the BBFC is the same, except swap the sex for language.

[MichaelB]

Apparently the deal is that the film can have a 15 certificate if people say "cunt" no more than seven times, but only two of those utterances can be in an aggressive context.

But I agree with Loach - there's a fundamental cultural issue at work here. The furore over James Kelman winning the Booker Prize nearly twenty years ago should have firmly established that notions of "bad language" differ from region to region, and some words that are highly taboo in Hampstead tearooms aren't a problem at all in large parts of Glasgow. Indeed, as Kelman pointed out, they're essentially punctuation marks.

[Finch]

The Guardian confirms that 7 cunts (lol) is the maximum allowed for a 15 certificate. That just seems so arbitrary. If people take such offense to the word, then why would it be less offensive if it's uttered only seven times instead of say twenty-five times as in Sweet Sixteen? I completely appreciate that it's a taboo word but then why not make it a blanket 18 certification for any film that mentions that word in the first place even if it's just once?

I wonder if Loach & co will resubmit the film for DVD/BD release. I imagine they probably won't consider it worthwhile considering the costs for reclassification.

(Coincidentally, David Cooke said that the original Alien would, if resubmitted today, get a 15 like Prometheus)

[MichaelB]

I wonder if Loach & co will resubmit the film for DVD/BD release. I imagine they probably won't consider it worthwhile considering the costs for reclassification.

They'd have to resubmit regardless, as it's a different medium.

[MichaelB]

I normally disagree with practically everything the Daily Telegraph's resident libertarian controversialist Brendan O'Neill writes, but I think this piece hits every nail firmly on the head.

As usual with censorship, what is really being smacked down here is not words themselves, but rather the ideas expressed in those words, and the identity of the person who is speaking them. So non-aggressive, “potent” swearing is considered a hoot by the modern middle classes, even, bizarrely, as something empowering and edgy. But aggressive swearing, colourful terms of abuse, blokey utterances of the c-word and f-word still make us feel uncomfortable and have us reaching for the blue pen. Richard Curtis opening his dire Four Weddings and a Funeral with loads of floppy-haired posh people saying the word “f***”? That’s fine. Ken Loach showing Glaswegian lads using an historic swearword that is common among that city’s working class? That’s not on.

[Finch]

Thanks for sharing that, Michael.

[Jeff]

IFC picked it up via their "Sundance Selects" imprint. Possible eventual Criterion release.

[lefeufollet]

The Angels' Share will be screening in Philadelphia on March 21, as part of the Philadelphia Film Society's "Passport to World Cinema" series.

[jbeall]

Beneath the Kilt, a Modern Scotland

[colinr0380]

This was recently shown on Film4, so I thought I would take the opportunity to watch it. The Angel's Share is a fine but not particularly special or really insightful, piece of fluff into which some pretty harrowing scenes get shoehorned. This isn't quite as incongruously bad as the postman fending off thugs while being schooled in football by an imaginary Eric Cantona in Looking For Eric, but the jarring contrast between goofy whimsy and vicious beatings is still present here.

Though it is always nice that Loach doesn't make excuses for his young offender characters (there is a scene early on in which our lead is brought face-to-face with the person he viciously beat for no particular reason, which is interesting in implicitly illustrating the dead end that such 'truth and reconcilliation' meetings reach, when there is nothing that can really be gained by either party from the meeting except to provide the opportunity to belittile the abuser back. As with many social issues, Chris Morris nailed it in this brief sketch from Brasseye in which victims of crime are allowed to do the same back to the offenders. Especially in the hilarious final shot of the squatting woman looking defiantly at the offender it gets at a serious problem of giving the victim getting the licence by society to do some bullying back themselves, but also showing the victim of crime still being violated, just by currently in vogue social justice fads! Do such meetings really help to achieve 'closure' for anyone except the authorities themselves, able to use a victim and offender meeting to 'close the book' on a situation?), yet regularly shows that there is a social milleu that they are trapped within that even if they do wish to change, there is no real allowance made for them to do that. Most of society is more concerned with punishment or giving out threats than actually trying to accommodate others fairly.

I do prefer the earlier, though far more confrontational, Ken Loach films which more explicitly deal with that theme (say Ladybird Ladybird in which a woman gets trapped in a cycle of having children only to have them taken away by the Social Services. She acts selfishly, even stupidly, yet both she and her children are treated insensitively by impersonal authority figures), rather than something like The Angel's Share which is veiling this theme behind, if I'm being uncharitable, a more audience friendly veneer of a valuable whisky heist subplot.

It is perhaps similar to the way that The Full Monty or Billy Elliot veil their pressing social concerns behind a emptily 'entertaining' premise, and in some ways undermine more difficult issues by the use of eye-catching yet irrelevant in a wider context subplots. Whether that influence to soften up with a lighter subplot is coming from money-men or an admirable aim to reach a wide audience, there still feels a problematic grating pressure there in both this and Looking For Eric. Though even here Loach is still a great filmmaker, and uses the fluffy stuff to sugar the pill of the darker social issues rather than entirely avoiding them, so The Angel's Share isn't as actively rergressively offensive as films like Full Monty or Billy Elliot, which fudge or misrepresent their social drama aspects somewhat, and I did particularly like that the McGuffin whisky subplot almost derails as one of the secondary youths in the gang succumbs to one of Loach's key themes of a character 'self-destructively railing against society', suggesting that when characters get upset or aggressive they only give an opportunity for life to put the boot in further. Though that scene does turn up in response to a goofily broad scene of police officers lining the guys up to see what is under their kilts!

I do think the sympathetic young offender warden Harry is a great character though, introducing the whisky subplot and providing one of the few bright lights in the otherwise bleak lives of the characters. And I think the scene in which invites the main character Robbie to the whisky tour only to find that all the other youths overhear and assume that they have been invited too, is a great one, developing beautifully, showing a lot of interesting character interactions and being gently, generously humourous too! If the rest of the film had been in that register I would have liked it more, but instead we get the heist plot, ganglife beatings (though here I did like the moment of Robbie wrecking what he thinks is a gang member's motorbike, only for the guy to drive past and shout "Wrong bike!" at him!) and the Proclaimers blasting out like a national anthem.

In that sense I guess it is amusing that Paul Brannigan, who plays Robbie here (he's extremely good and I can't fault the committed performances here, just the schematic plotting), later turned up in the musical Sunshine on Leith (i.e. the film that tries to do for the Proclaimers what Mamma Mia! did for Abba!). Though post-Angel's Share he also turns up as the guy in the nightclub hitting on Scarlett Johansson who gets the nightmarish under-gloop scene in Under The Skin too.

[Shrew]

I really liked Angel's Share when I saw it, but never got around to posting a recommendation. Unlike colin, I think Loach pulls off the tone well, using the darker scenes of inner-city violence and depression to establish the stakes for the young misfits and the environment they've been brought up in, even when they're bumbling their way through a heist. The opening scene sets this up from the start, as a character drunkenly argues with a PA system telling him to back away from the train station gap, and then jumps into the train's way and pull himself out in the nick of time. It's broadly comic (and I think hilarious) but also fully aware of just how close the character comes to being run over. For all the light-hearted antics, the film knows Robbie and his friends are just a step away from ending up in a cycle of violence, poverty, and prison.

Admittedly, there are some awkward moments that get too broad (and eye-rolling--the road trip to the Highlands blasting the Proclaimers). But the performances and Loach's constant sympathy for the characters keeps the film up--it never feels like its condescending toward or laughing at these people (except maybe the Albert character), which keeps it from Full Monty territory. And certain key scenes (the actual heist) that could have been full of inept blundering Loach turns into genuine suspense pieces with a minimum of comedy.

Ultimately, what I like the most about it might admittedly be the inaccurate view of an American outsider, but to me the film has a lot to say about how class relates to the construction of a national identity, and how people relate to tradition as it becomes a commodity. Pointedly, despite identifying proudly as Scots, the kids only have a rough idea of what defines Scottish culture outside the Glaswegian slums and have never even tried Scotch. The whole hinges on the point that Scottish culture, in the form of Scotch, has gone from traditional drink of the masses to a class symbol and drink of choice of the global elite. This in turn has raised Scotch and its production to a major industry, but the kids haven't seen any of those benefits and are in fact alienated from Scotch's traditional roots. To me, the heist isn't just about stealing whisky or some slum kids getting rich quick, but the lower classes taking their piece of the international upper class's wealth.

And as overplayed as the Proclaimers are in Scottish film (see its awful use at the end of Landis's Burke and Hare), I have to say that when the song comes back for the ending, it might have actually earned it.

[colinr0380]

It is great to hear a more positive response Shrew! I don't exactly hate the film, I just feel the some of the plot dynamics are forced and can end up feeling a little disingenuous. Having said that, I did like the opening drunk on the train tracks scene as well and it involves the same guy whose recklessness almost wrecks the whisky heist at the end! With that scene on the tracks sketching in the reasons why he's ended up doing community service. (With the motley crew for the heist almost blowing it at the last minute, is there a suggestion in the film of some kind of fundamental self-destructive drive within people that gets them into such situations in the first place, or is that too much of a presumption to place on the psychology of the characters here?)

But it still somehow feels rather Loach-lite to me, with the expected grittiness of street brutality feeling less necessary and vital (as in say Raining Stones, where the family being terrorised by thuggish debt collectors feels like an urgent theme, where the 'contrivance' that creates the awful situation, getting a loan for a daughter's first Communion dress, is underplayed rather than made the main focus of the film) and more just a standard trait that has to be thrown in to 'signifiy a Ken Loach film'. Not that Loach needs to be downbeat all of the time, but the bad situations here of regularly being beaten to a pulp feel just as contrived as the plucky genitalia-battering trek across the Highlands to "I Will Walk 500 Miles".

I like your comments about tradition and commodity too. I did really like that first trip around the whisky factory for the culture clashes on display, especially the contrast between 'picture box', tourist trap Heritage Scotland ("Is there no shortbread in your house?" is the response when the same train track/whisky smashing character doesn't recognise Edinburgh Castle!), all confident and rehearsed tours, presentations and tartan kilts, set against a rundown, transient, impermanent, ever threatened urban life that is the reality for the characters. Yet even that eventually has to be heightened to involve doing a heist during the auction of a valuable and rare cask of whisky, the action of which kind of ends up obscuring what should be a key theme of that section which is that even if someone shows aptitude for a subject, say having an amazing nose that can identify a particular whisky, that it is still not enough to actually give them a legitimate way out of desperate circumstances. Nobody's going to belatedly discover Robbie's natural talent, or if they do note it actually exploit it and actually give him a job, and whether that lack of opportunity is based on conscious class prejudice or simply not being a part of a particular circle, it all suggests that Robbie is still going to have to muscle, or blackmail, his way into the system through nefarious means. This aspect is definitely there in the film (which is why it is still a much better film than Full Monty or Billy Elliot, in which social problems are used as a picturesque, yet eventually irrelevant, backdrop rather than a vital current issue to be addressed), and there is perhaps a dark irony there that our hero's aptitude turns out to be in a rather esoteric and limited area, but that kind of moral lesson and/or anger at such a fundamentally corrupt social system that abandons individuals to be preyed on and abused unless they use their wits to prey and abuse others themselves in turn is rather obscured by its unconvincing gritty/cutesy extremes, when the theme really should be being angrily underlined again and again until the pen rips through the paper with the force of the rhetoric. Although that is only my opinion! Obscuring the 'moral message' could actually be seen as a plus, in the sense of Loach getting better at 'smuggling' messages to his audiences through creating amusing and gripping, yet obviously fictional dramatic situations, but I personally felt much of the action was unnecessary here.