‘Sometimes, I somehow get the strangest notion they’re trying to break my spirit…’
One of the few positives about being on self imposed house arrest is that it provides an opportunity to catch up on films that you really should have seen but never got round to. Scum is one of those films for me. I knew that Alan Clarke’s minor classic took place in a borstal for young offenders, and I knew of course that it helped to launch the career of Ray Winstone. What I didn’t know, is that Scum is a hard hitting and powerful film that was to stay with me long after the credits had rolled.
When Carlin (Ray Winstone) is transferred to an uncompromising young offenders institute, he comes face to face with neglect, abuse and hatred. An eclectic, young cast featuring Phil Daniels (PARKLIFE!) and Patrick Murray (Mickey Pearce from Only Fools and Horses) bring to life the terrible reality of borstal in the ’70s.
Scum works as a time capsule to portray what life was really like in both adult prisons and young offenders institutes in days gone by. This can be verified by a quick Google search and shows that for all the complaining about stringent health and safety laws, the alternative is barbarism and misery. The young cast, particularly an electric Ray Winstone, do a fantastic job of maintaining the air of gritty realism and while there are brief moments of levity, Scum is mainly concerned with cold, hard facts. This means there is no shying away from the horrific racial and sexual abuse that was a daily reality for boys in the borstal.
Alan Clarke’s classic will be too much for some people. The unforgettable conclusion is genuinely hard to sit through, particularly as it is clear that everything you see on screen almost certainly happened somewhere across the country, and worst of all, was actively condoned and approved by the relevant authorities. Scum is by no means an easy watch, but it is an important milestone in British cinema and it helped to pave the way for social reform in the punitive system. Thank God.