Originally posted Oct 14 2008, republished in honour of Peter Postlethwaite, who has died aged 64. See short tribute by clicking here
We could argue about this all day. Since it has cropped up again here, let's at least give it a few minutes more.
Was Brassed Off a funny, moving, politically and socially decent study of a pit closure, enlivened by impassioned music and the even more impassioned polemic of Peter Postlethwaite's Albert Hall speech.
Or was it "a manipulative, sentimental piece of dreck" for which Postlethwaite "should have been arrested for disservice to the film industry"?
It is all too easy to say that while the former view is taken by anyone capable of being impressed by a film that finds a clever and appealing way of addressing the casual destruction of a mining community, the latter is the mucky preserve of self-inflated Islington and Californian critics, and right-of-Genghis Khan brutes everywhere.
In fact, my regard for the film, despite the sentimental blemishes, triumphs over a lifelong refusal to romanticise the working class (got beaten up along the Black Path a little too often for that). And my friend and regular contributor Bill Taylor, whose scathing words I quote, does not quite fit the opposing stereotype.
In the end, I put it down to the essence of art criticism: consider a film, music, theatre or other critic as little more than a fan with a platform, evaluate his or her writing for its own sake, and you won't go far wrong.
Here are some other views of the film, and a couple of references to it at Salut! and its offshoots, that I dug up in a quick trawl of the internet:
The story of the labor [sic] struggle is blended with the band's shot at a national band competition. It's an evocative, funny film, but it could have used more light and less heat in the finish. Director Mark Herman underscores the obvious pathos of the story. Postlethwaite, however, acquits himself with ease throughout. When the movie addresses you as if you were at a public meeting at the end, his quiet integrity almost carries off the closing speech.------- Richard von Busack metroactive.com
"Brassed Off' is a sweet film with a lot of anger at its core. The writer and director, Mark Herman, obviously believes the Tory energy decisions were inspired by the fact that coal miners voted Labour while nuclear power barons were Conservative. His plot tugs at every possible heartstring as it leads up to a dramatic moment in the Royal Albert Hall, which I will not reveal; it includes a speech against Thatcherism that some British critics found inappropriate, although it's certainly in character for old Danny.
One of the movie's great pleasures is the music itself. Brass bands are maintained by many different British institutions--schools, police forces, military units, coal miners, assembly-line workers--and their crisp music always seems gloriously self-confident. Some of the film's best shots show Pete Postlethwaite's face as he leads the band: his anger when members get drunk and miss notes, and his pride when everything is exactly right. Acting is not accomplished only with words and emotion. Sometimes it is projected from within, into a stance or an expression. There is not a moment in ``Brassed Off'' when I did not believe Postlethwaite was a brass band leader--and a bloody good one.
....... Roger Ebert Sun Times
In several decades of movie-watching, I have not enjoyed anything more than Brassed Off, which described a Yorkshire pit closure through its impact on the colliery brass band.
Peter Postlethwaite, who played the band leader, was quite magnificent; that emotional Albert Hall speech scene was recorded in one take, reducing many of the crew to tears.
My acquaintance and fellow Sunderland supporter, Melanie Hill, was among others deserving high praise, in her case for a striking portayal of Mrs Coco the Scab. Stephen Tompkinson was even better as her husband.
........ Salut!
She is proud of her role in Hot Money, a TV film about three women who robbed the Bank of England. She appeared with David Suchet in NCS Manhunt. Then there was Aveline Boswell in Bread, one series of Auf Weidersehen Pet, several of The Playing Field - first as a player in a women's football team, later physio - and, of course, Brassed Off. As Mrs Coco the Scab. No one who saw the film will need an explanation: for others, Coco - played by Stephen Tompkinson - was the miner reduced to making ends meet as a clown at children's parties. Virtually the whole cast, Melanie recalls, was in tears when Peter Postlethwaite recorded, in one take, that thundering speech in the Royal Albert Hall after rising from his sick bed to lead the doomed colliery's brass band to victory in a national competition.
.....interview with Melanie Hill in a Salut! Sunderland article: Flirting on the Fulwell
But by the time we've heard Danny give his rousing Why People Matter speech to a large, hushed audience -- he's hauled himself from his hospital bed to do this -- we feel bludgeoned. Herman provides so many big moments that the characters end up being dwarfed: They seem to matter much less than the miniaturized epic poems he's written around them. It's too bad, because, of course, Herman's right -- it is the little people who matter. That's why you owe it to them to portray them at their actual size.
........Stephanie Zacharek salon.com
A lot of cinema goers left comments at the IMDB site, and I pluck the following from the first page or two:
Very moving and beautiful
Utterly wonderful in every way
A truly wonderful film
A superb film
Wonderfully warm and human film
..most of the negative comments come from right wing liberal haters who have entirely missed the meaning behind the film
I think the problem I have is this film really plays up to the clichéd northern stereotypes it's almost offensive ..
Human and heartwarming
The film is not perfect. It is a bit preachy, especially the end. And McGregor's accent, although he plays the part beautifully, does slip at time, especially in his longer speeches. But the humanity of the film and it's charm out way all of its faults
And many more, professional pieces this time, can be found at the Rotten Tomatoes site.
All of which proves precisely nothing more than that some liked it, some didn't. But if you've got this far, your reward is this neat anecdote:back in the early 1990s, not quite the era of Thatcher depicted by the film but still during Tory rule, miners and their supporters staged an impressive, boisterous and peaceful march in London against pit closures. I covered the event as a reporter. On the way, I came across the admirable satirist Willie Rushton, already unwell (he died not so many years afterwards) and tottering unsteadily along a central London street. "Are you marching for the miners?" I asked. "No, I'm hobbling in support," he replied. Good man.
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