“Land of Hope and Bloody Glory, eh?”: Brassed Off, 30 years on
As Britpop, Trainspotting and Cool Britannia came to define 1990s Britain, Mark Herman’s Brassed Off told a very different national story. Thirty years on, Alex Ramon revisits a film whose blend of humour, music and political anger continues to resonate.
Mid-1990s British culture may be forever associated with ‘Cool Britannia’, but a glance beyond noisy Britpop battles, lairy celeb chefs and YBAs shaking up the art world soon reminds us that more traditional entertainments were still very much part of the cultural landscape too. For instance, Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility, an enduring icon of the era’s Jane Austen adaptation boom, debuted in British cinemas on the very same day as Danny Boyle’s seminal take on Trainspotting (23 February 1996). And cusp-of-stardom actors, such as Kate Winslet and Ewan McGregor, were soon moving between edgy indies and big budget productions.
McGregor described his star-making Renton in Trainspotting as “the kind of part you only get once in a while. I threw myself into it 100%.” McGregor’s self-effacing supporting role as Andy in Brassed Off, also released in 1996, might not have required comparable commitment. But the film was by no means viewed as negligible by the actor. “I was impressed with what Mark Herman did in [Brassed Off],” said McGregor, who’d go on to work with the writer-director again on 1998’s Little Voice. “It was an important film for Britain, because it showed the mining communities being torn apart.”
For sure, with its rural setting, Ealing echoes and sitcom-esque elements combined with oppositional politics, Brassed Off remains an intriguing product of the ‘Cool Britannia’ moment. The film was initially inspired by Bridlington-born Herman’s first-hand observation of the decline of the South Yorkshire town of Grimethorpe following deindustrialisation. Herman soon saw the dramatic potential in the story of the Grimethorpe Colliery Band, who learned of the planned closure of the town’s mine shortly before they were due to perform in the National Brass Band Championships.
Relocating the events to the fictional – almost parodically named – Grimley, Brassed Off focuses on the familial and wider community tensions brought about by the pit’s proposed closure and its impact on the band, led by the staunchly dedicated but ailing Danny (Pete Postlethwaite).
Aided by Michael Ellis’s brisk editing, the immediate emotional pull of the music (especially the well-known performed classical pieces but also Trevor Jones’s sad and stirring original score), and Andy Collins’s bright cinematography, which lights both the Yorkshire locations and the faces of the actors with disarming, unsentimental affection, the film’s familiar form and elements of social and romantic comedy usher viewers in comfortably enough. But, a year before New Labour’s landslide 1997 election victory, Herman’s script doesn’t shy away from a blunt and bitter denunciation of the impact of Conservative policies – as voiced by Danny’s on-the-edge son Phil (a never-better Stephen Tompkinson, heartbreaking in a clown costume), and by Danny himself during the film’s emotional climax set at the Royal Albert Hall.
Brassed Off’s reputation as a 90s classic – it featured at number 85 in the BFI’s Top 100 British Films poll – is usually viewed as having grown gradually, as the film picked up appreciative audiences through word-of-mouth. Though primarily positive, contemporary reviews were somewhat mixed. “An angry, tragic film which softens you up with a few colloquial laughs and then rams them back down your throat,” declared Time Out’s Tom Charity, approvingly. Caroline Westbrook, writing in Empire, was less convinced that the combination of humour, politics and sentiment gelled, finding that “an uneasy tone prevails” and reiterating a familiar complaint of mainstream British films: “This would play more comfortably on the box.”
Regardless of differing critical opinions, Brassed Off made an impact in the culture with remarkable speed. How many films find themselves incorporated, within a year of release, into a hit anthem? This happened when leftist firebrands Chumbawamba used a sampled excerpt of Danny’s RAH speech as the intro to the album version of ‘Tubthumping’, that rare contemporary song celebrating, in the band’s words, “the resilience and tenacity of working-class folk who keep fighting when the chips are down”.
Just two years after the film’s release, a stage version, adapted by Paul Allen, was up and running at Sheffield Crucible, from where it swiftly transferred to the National Theatre. By 2000, the film was celebrated enough to be the subject of a parody on Victoria Wood’s All the Trimmings Christmas Special. The placing of the ‘Brassed Up’ sketch alongside Wood’s equally pitch-perfect send-ups of Brief Encounter (1945) and Dickens and Austen adaptations was another indication of just how swiftly Herman’s film had earned a place in the British cultural pantheon. And beyond, too – as Brassed Off’s international popularity surprised even its makers. A hugely appealing aspect was the soundtrack, which led to a revival of interest in brass band music that might have seemed the antithesis of ‘Cool Britannia’ cred. But, more profoundly, the film clearly spoke to other countries dealing with the effects of deindustrialisation on livelihoods and communities.
In its way, it might be argued that Brassed Off has proven as influential as the more modish Trainspotting. Pretty much singlehandedly, Herman’s film inaugurated a subgenre of ‘feel-good’ working-class cinema. Grounded in specific regional contexts or real-life events, The Full Monty (1997), Billy Elliot (2000), Made in Dagenham (2010) and Pride (2014) – all also subsequently adapted for the stage – depict individuals and communities struggling against adversity or opposition, and finding a path through music, performance or simply the solidarity of a shared fight.
Brassed Off was the pioneer, though. In many ways, it remains the most emotionally complex of these films, too, its “angry, tragic” dimension expressed most subtly in the closing close-up of Postlethwaite’s Danny, a haunting shot which undercuts the triumphalism of the tune he aptly introduces as “Land of Hope and Bloody Glory”.
Recently revealed as one of PM Andy Burnham’s favourite films, Brassed Off has retained a firm hold on audience affections through the decades. This 30th anniversary year has seen a well-received revival of the stage version at Leeds Playhouse, a Blu-ray release, and a screening as part of the Royal Albert Hall’s ‘Films in Concert’ series, with the much-loved score performed live. The humour and poignancy of the film remain undiminished as, after all, the band plays on.