And if that sounds in the least like Kidulthood, think on: 23-year-old writer and director Greg Hall's first feature The Plague is (eight) miles apart from the kind of guns 'n' grime flicks that have sprung up in the wake of Bullet Boy.
For those that followed, Bullet Boy set a sermonising precedent; the more Kidulthood and its kind strove for authenticity, the less they kept it real. With so many social issues and reductive, pistol-packing stereotypes, these films resembled a stack of cuttings from the 'Daily Mail'. As Hall ("a big Chomsky fan") says, "All these images are passed down to us and often the reason behind them is to make money. I feel it's important to contest (the mainstream), to produce culture from the bottom up." Favouring near-verite over a fixed narrative arc, and eschewing moralising, The Plague, made in three weeks for £3,500 ("the catering budget of most films" as Hall wryly acknowledges), takes an almost ambient approach to its subject matter: experience is all - plot is secondary.
The title (nothing to do with Albert Camus' novel), refers to a "vicious circle of hatred", and The Plague opens unexpectedly with fast-cut images of Tony Blair, the war in Iraq and heart-attack inducing hamburgers. Hall is keen to "contextualise (the film) with the society which we're living in now... we can see that hatred is everywhere. It goes further than just being about gun crime."
Set amid London's spray-painted estates, the film focuses on four friends, Tom, Alex, Matt and Ravi, drinking, dealing and taking drugs, perpetrating bank frauds and trying to avoid the police. "I smoked cannabis at a party once" a supercilious squirt of a cop tells them during a stop and search. "Made me sick and gave me a headache. Rots your brain, you know." "My brain?" comes the retort. "Didn't think you cared much about my brain." During an altercation with some neo-Nazis they forget their bag of ill-gotten cash, leading to a violent climax at a midnight rave.
Simple enough - but it's what happens in between that counts. The Plague, punctuated by pirate radio commentaries from Skinnyman and DJ Flip, succeeds so spectacularly because it simply points a MiniDV in the direction of depressed, twenty-first century urban teenage life and records what's in front of it. At least, the particular reality Hall grew up with since he was 15, "hanging out in our friend's squat" or seeing his mate "put into hospital by racist National Front thugs who broke his head open with a pole".
For all its naturalism (and fantastically unaffected performances), The Plague isn't entirely free from genre convention. As with most youth culture films from Quadrophenia onward, there's an obligatory "rave", a "trip", a punch-up, and a bit where one of the parents has a tizzy and disowns their own offspring. This latter scene, especially, weakens the movie; it's also about a quarter of an hour too long.
Nevertheless, this is the sort of stuff that gets the (usually white) liberal media genuflecting in droves, and The Plague comes with a raft of hyperbolic endorsements, most of which are justified. No less a luminary than Mike Leigh, who chose it to receive the inaugural Katrin Cartlidge award, has dubbed it, "Serious, funny, real, surreal and totally anarchic... very much alive and very much a movie", which means everything and nothing, but at least ticks as many boxes as possible.
Even 'Variety', Hollywood's local paper, has compared the young director to Shane Meadows. Yet in truth, Meadows deals in more linear story telling, and a closer comparison might be made with Franco Rosso's Babylon, and (especially) Melvin Van Peebles' Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song - part art film, part polemic, which takes a similarly free reign.
There's a visual playfulness to The Plague which far transcends the majority of urban British movies (as in the house party scene, shot entirely from the perspective of a camcorder-wielding partygoer). It's also very funny: see the scene in which Tom's girlfriend's wide-eyed brother lifts weights on dope, working on the assumption that it's double the pressure - "so, when I'm straight, I'll be double the strength!" Or the scene in which the white Rasta, the squat-dwelling Matchstick (with his cry of "I ain't doing no more bird for no one!" whenever anyone knocks on the door) attempts to break an immense block of hash against the wall in vain.
Most importantly, the film never segregates its mixed-race characters; it's not that they're striving for New Labour's dream of successful multi-culturalism, it's just never an issue in the first place. Why should it be? As Hall maintains, the real focus isn't about stereotypes, about young working-class black men with guns, it's about combating hatred, in all its manifestations. The Plague crackles with energy and good intentions throughout.
For those that followed, Bullet Boy set a sermonising precedent; the more Kidulthood and its kind strove for authenticity, the less they kept it real. With so many social issues and reductive, pistol-packing stereotypes, these films resembled a stack of cuttings from the 'Daily Mail'. As Hall ("a big Chomsky fan") says, "All these images are passed down to us and often the reason behind them is to make money. I feel it's important to contest (the mainstream), to produce culture from the bottom up." Favouring near-verite over a fixed narrative arc, and eschewing moralising, The Plague, made in three weeks for £3,500 ("the catering budget of most films" as Hall wryly acknowledges), takes an almost ambient approach to its subject matter: experience is all - plot is secondary.
The title (nothing to do with Albert Camus' novel), refers to a "vicious circle of hatred", and The Plague opens unexpectedly with fast-cut images of Tony Blair, the war in Iraq and heart-attack inducing hamburgers. Hall is keen to "contextualise (the film) with the society which we're living in now... we can see that hatred is everywhere. It goes further than just being about gun crime."
Set amid London's spray-painted estates, the film focuses on four friends, Tom, Alex, Matt and Ravi, drinking, dealing and taking drugs, perpetrating bank frauds and trying to avoid the police. "I smoked cannabis at a party once" a supercilious squirt of a cop tells them during a stop and search. "Made me sick and gave me a headache. Rots your brain, you know." "My brain?" comes the retort. "Didn't think you cared much about my brain." During an altercation with some neo-Nazis they forget their bag of ill-gotten cash, leading to a violent climax at a midnight rave.
Simple enough - but it's what happens in between that counts. The Plague, punctuated by pirate radio commentaries from Skinnyman and DJ Flip, succeeds so spectacularly because it simply points a MiniDV in the direction of depressed, twenty-first century urban teenage life and records what's in front of it. At least, the particular reality Hall grew up with since he was 15, "hanging out in our friend's squat" or seeing his mate "put into hospital by racist National Front thugs who broke his head open with a pole".
For all its naturalism (and fantastically unaffected performances), The Plague isn't entirely free from genre convention. As with most youth culture films from Quadrophenia onward, there's an obligatory "rave", a "trip", a punch-up, and a bit where one of the parents has a tizzy and disowns their own offspring. This latter scene, especially, weakens the movie; it's also about a quarter of an hour too long.
Nevertheless, this is the sort of stuff that gets the (usually white) liberal media genuflecting in droves, and The Plague comes with a raft of hyperbolic endorsements, most of which are justified. No less a luminary than Mike Leigh, who chose it to receive the inaugural Katrin Cartlidge award, has dubbed it, "Serious, funny, real, surreal and totally anarchic... very much alive and very much a movie", which means everything and nothing, but at least ticks as many boxes as possible.
Even 'Variety', Hollywood's local paper, has compared the young director to Shane Meadows. Yet in truth, Meadows deals in more linear story telling, and a closer comparison might be made with Franco Rosso's Babylon, and (especially) Melvin Van Peebles' Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song - part art film, part polemic, which takes a similarly free reign.
There's a visual playfulness to The Plague which far transcends the majority of urban British movies (as in the house party scene, shot entirely from the perspective of a camcorder-wielding partygoer). It's also very funny: see the scene in which Tom's girlfriend's wide-eyed brother lifts weights on dope, working on the assumption that it's double the pressure - "so, when I'm straight, I'll be double the strength!" Or the scene in which the white Rasta, the squat-dwelling Matchstick (with his cry of "I ain't doing no more bird for no one!" whenever anyone knocks on the door) attempts to break an immense block of hash against the wall in vain.
Most importantly, the film never segregates its mixed-race characters; it's not that they're striving for New Labour's dream of successful multi-culturalism, it's just never an issue in the first place. Why should it be? As Hall maintains, the real focus isn't about stereotypes, about young working-class black men with guns, it's about combating hatred, in all its manifestations. The Plague crackles with energy and good intentions throughout.
