Entertainment for Insomniacs
Created | Updated Sep 9, 2004
Egon- watching late night television so you don’t have to
Why Aye Man, it's a review o' the fillum Purely Belter, man. Haway.
On Channel 4, at the weekend, I stumbled across a late-night film set in Newcastle, Purely Belter, a fine film which I had never seen before, but was absolutely magnificent.
The central premise of the plot is that two teenage boys, Gerry (Chris Beattie) and Sewell (Greg McLean) are two teenage boys whose only aim in life is to get a season ticket to Newcastle United Football Club. However, although that's the central premise, it's not the main point of the film.
The main storylines pivot around the central axis of Gerry and Sewell - the lives they live - Gerry's abusive alcoholic father, the fact that Sewell was abandoned by his parents and brought up by his grandfather, their descent into crime, the truanting from school. Auf Wiedersehen Pet stars Kevin Whately and Tim Healy are very good - Whately as the school teacher who resents the effort put in to persuade Gerry to attend school and the rewards promised him by his social worker if he does attend, and Healy as Gerry's father, who raped his own daughter, beats his wife, and causes the family to move from safe house to safe house every time he finds them again.
There's teenage pregnancy, violence, illiteracy. And yet the film is somehow uplifting and often very funny. The dramatic moments - the drug addiction and disintegrating mind of Bridget, Gerry's sister, his father stealing money from him and the bruises on his mother's face.
But then the comic sequences - the botched bank job, the tickets to the wrong football game (Sunderland rather than Newcastle), their attempts to steal the penalty spot from St James' Park. The magnificent ending.
Finally the film plays to your expectations before blowing them open. The funeral is for someone other than you think it will be, for example.
A magnificent film, both depressing and uplifting. Although I hate to think what anyone outside Tyne and Wear will make of the accents and dialogue...
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