Road (1987)

directed by Alan Clarke
UK
67 minutes
5 stars out of 5
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I already knew that Alan Clarke was probably my favorite director working with television, but even so, this movie blew me away. There's no real props to speak of and very little set embellishment, but it does more with its sparse nature than the majority of movies I've seen recently.

There's nothing much that really happens in this movie: Some people argue, some other people make a very slow suicide pact, a guy rambles to you about The Good Old Days, some more people attend the world's most ominous-looking dance party- but it's what's being said that you have to pay attention to. I'm not kidding when I say that this is some of the best acting I've ever seen combined with some of the best writing I've ever seen. The actors deliver these monologues that are incredibly well-constructed and engaging, yet manage to avoid falling into the trap of "nobody actually talks like this" syndrome. It's the context and the situation that make that dialogue feel appropriate rather than silly. If they were speaking to another person it would feel a little overblown. But just people, walking along, ripping into themselves and the people around them and more than anything the state of the country they live in-  it's like nothing I've seen before. I'd like to mention also that a lot of work that went into this: One monologue was done sixteen times. A quarter of a mile walk and a scathing, emotionally raw speech that took sixteen takes to get perfect. And good lord does it achieve that perfection.

I think I've said something like this already, but I'm impressed that this was shown on mainstream TV. Here Stateside I'm used to anything with this much genuine anger and depictions of class struggle and dereliction being relegated to the loosely-defined sphere of the "underground" because criticism of government and displeasure with the capitalist system is not a worldview that garners favor among bigger-name studios and certainly not big-name television studios. "Road" is pain, real naked visuals of the consequence of a government that sucks out the livelihood from its people, this is a society with no prospects. Evidently this is life under a Tory government, and I'm not familiar with British politics, but I am familiar with the looks of things in Road, and I can agree that this is a state of being no pocket of any country should ever be forced to endure.

I do wish that this spoke to issues of class-based racism or oppression based on religion or status of being LGBT+, because it is overwhelmingly white. I appreciate wholly the focus on class struggle, economic depression, and its myriad of effects on one's life and being outside of just the usual "got no job got no money wanna drink m'self to death" that anybody can think up. But there is a whole other layer of oppression that this doesn't even touch upon, and I can tell that if it did, it could have done so powerfully and potently.