News Hit

Andrea Arnold’s firebrand British film Fish Tank will be released in Australia cinemas next month. The film- which deals with the relationship between a troubled teenage girl (Katie Jarvis) and her relationship with her mother’s new boyfriend (Michael Fassbender)- is a frank, serious account of lower-middle class concerns and has prompted News Hit is taking a look at some of the great films and television shows that depict sympathetic representations of working life and poverty, helping to illuminate our world with their anger, understanding and compassion.

Billy Elliot

There were a number of feel-good British films about battlers-come-good in the later part of the 20th Century (Brassed, The Full Monty), but Stephen Daldry’s Billy Elliot finds emotional depth and intelligence even in familiar material. Daldry and screenwriter Lee Hall brilliantly interweave the political context of the 1984 coal miner’s strike within Billy’s own affecting struggles (this is especially apparent when Billy and a girl unconsciously walk past riot police as they discuss dancing). Billy Elliot also benefits from star-making performances by its young cast and strong support from veterans Gary Lewis and Julie Walters, helping make Daldry’s film into a smart, charming entertainment.

Cracker

After the ‘90s quintet of NYPD Blue, Prime Suspect, Law and Order and Homicide, hardly anyone was begging for another police procedural, but Jimmy McGovern’s Cracker emerged as the best. Like The Wire, Cracker addressed contemporary concerns within the context of the crime genre. Dramatist McGovern often scathingly tackled the repercussions of Thatcherism politics: brilliant, but flawed criminal psychologist Fitz (Robbie Coltrane) disparages the traditional, retributive policing of his colleagues (one copper admits that he would rather solve a crime than prevent it) whilst real-life events such as the 1989 Hillsborough disaster are handled with brilliant, sensitive writing.

My Left Foot

Born with cerebral palsy, which meant he could only move his left foot, you would be forgiven for supposing that that there would be nothing but suffering and pain in artist Christy Brown’s life (he also grew in a destitute Dublin home and later suffered from alcoholism and drug abuse). But the chief success to Jim Sheridan’s towering My Left Foot is that the director captures Brown’s voice; angry and candid, unsentimental and arrogant, he was a inspired mind who resented his inevitable dependence on others. Like Brown, the film itself refuses to accept simple pity for Brown’s difficulties. Instead, My Left Foot elicits admiration and esteem for the intellect and brilliance of his art, finding uplift and strength even in Brown’s darkest hours.

Nil By Mouth

In his stunning directorial debut, Nil By Mouth, Gary Oldman mercilessly dissects the lives and troubles of an impoverished South-East London family. The actor-turned-director’s treatment of spousal abuse is harrowingly honest and brutal, especially as one wife’s face is left so bloodied and bruised she looks like a car crash victim. Nil By Mouth is not an easy watch, but Oldman’s writing finds a sense of poetry in the mundane. There is no heroism in this cruel, painful landscape; everyone is victimised, even the abusive, violent ex-con Ray (the compelling Ray Winstone), who still sees himself as the child abused by his father’s neglect.

Once Upon a Time in America

Frankly, this list is far too British, so here is a Jewish gangster film, set in New York and directed by an Italian, Sergio Leone. The master’s rich, sprawling epic spans five decade of American social turmoil as four disadvantaged boys grow into ruthless mobsters, and consequentially betray the bonds of loyalty that characterised their early years. Once Upon a Time in America is a parable of wealth and abject poverty, as friends disregard their earlier ideals to prosper in an unjust world whilst others inherit the collective guilt for a lost, corrupted America.

Andrew Moraitis