ENGLAND IS MINE directed by Mark Gill (UK, 2017)
In the British Indie music scene the meeting of Marr and Morrissey is comparable in importance to that of Lennon and McCartney. Nevertheless, this biopic of Steven Patrick Morrissey is not about this alliance or indeed any aspect of the music the two made together with The Smiths.
Instead, the movie seeks to piece together the details of Morrissey’s life before he became famous. It explores the surroundings and events that inspired his amazing songs and made the band so unique. The title comes from the lyrics to the song ‘Still Ill’ : “England is mine, it owes me a living, ask me why and I’ll spit in your eye”.
We see the young Morrissey as a shaggy-haired lost soul sucked into deadend jobs and living in the grey suburbs of Manchester, a city significantly drabber and less dynamic then than it is now. The early 1970s was a grim period and that’s just the way it looks.
The key relationships for Morrissey were with strong women – a platonic girlfriend named Angie, budding artist Linder Sterling and his mother. When he complains that he can’t fit in anywhere his mother wisely advises him to “Create your own world”.
Meeting in the cemetary – Linder Sterling (Jessica Brown Findlay) and Morrissey (Jack Lowden)
Linder, 4 years his senior, befriended him and was one of the few to recognize his potential. Their meetings in which they exchanged quotes from the writers they worshiped would later be immortalised in the Smiths song ‘Cemetary Gates’.
There’s no love interest of course, how could there be? He flees from one romantic encounter and blocks any attempt to expose him emotionally. This, after all, is a loner convinced that he is surrounded by morons and who wrote in his journal that “Life in its humdrum sense is worth avoiding”. He also penned savage reviews of gigs which he mailed to the NME, slagging off most of the bands he saw, even The Sex Pistols.
‘England Is Mine’ is an assured debut full length feature by director Mark Gill who used to live in Stretford about half a mile from where Morrissey grew up. Gill never got to see The Smiths live but he is clearly a big fan and deeply respectful towards the subject.
Gill’s previously made the BAFTA & Oscar nominated short film called ‘The Voorman Problem’ , about a prisoner in an asylum who believes he’s God. Morrissey is still a God to many but is certainly not idealized or sanctified in this film.
He comes over as far from likeable and someone who was hard to be around; a smart, snidey and egotistical outsider searching for a way to achieve his aspirations as a writer and pop star. One thing I thought was lacking in this portrayal is the self deprecating humor that made the songs so honest and individual.
Jack Lowden, now a star of sorts through his role in Dunkirk, was not chosen for his physical resemblance to Morrissey but he gets the Mancunian accent spot on and portrays the awkwardness and fierce defensiveness of the man perfectly.
Water is the image at the beginning and end to denote the fact that this is the story of a drowning man; a painfully shy bedroom rebel struggling to escape and become someone. The happy ending is deferred because we all know what happened next.
If Johnny Marr had not taken the initiative, Morrissey might still be shut away in his bedroom writing frightening verse and tortured prose bemoaning the fact that the world won’t listen. Thankfully, Marr was the man who knocked and the rest, as they say, is history.
