New! Childhood and Family

[abbythepixie]

Helloooo everyone !

Oh gawd, my message topic sounds right naff, but anyways my name is abby and i'm doing my A level film studies coursework on Shane Meadows films and how childhood and the concept of family is explored in them.

I was just wondering like, if anyone has any thoughts on this and would like to give me some feedback if thats alright?

The films i'm looking at in particular are:

A room for romeo brass
This is england
Somers town

Cheers

abby

[GR]

That sounds like a pretty cool project.

A Room For Romeo Brass would be perfect for it -- you have the dynamics of two families (the Woolleys and the Brasses) to look into, plus how they're affected when an outside presence like the loner Morrell enters their lives.

I think This Is England is a good one for exploring the idea of the gang or peer group as surrogate family.

Somers Town I don't know about, if only because I haven't had a chance to see it. :-\ But maybe some of the luckier board members might give you some suggestions there...

Good luck!

[jill]

Hello Abby, welcome to the site. Maybe it would help-in getting useful comments-if you posted a bit more about how you're thinking about this yourself?

Like GR says, there's potentially a lot to work with in the 3 films. I wonder if a section on boyhood/adolescence and fatherhood specifically might be a good idea. Combo certainly fulfills the surrogate dad role for Shaun (for a while at least) and the relationship between knock-knock and his dad and Romeo and his dad is also worth unpicking? I'm a little ashamed to admit I can't quite remember now why Tomo ran away in Somers Town (having only seen it once) Was it his dad? Not sure, but certainly there's something to write about re Marek and his relationship with his dad. Shane does relationships between men very well, I think.......I'd go as far as to say it's a strength of his film making, though it doesn't always receve much comment in reviews and the like. Anyway, good luck with your project!