SWEET SIXTEEN is yet another collaboration between screenwriter Paul Laverty and director Ken Loach and is very much how you'd expect it to be :a polemical prurient for the working class which will only be enjoyed by middle class posers who are experiencing guilt about not being brought up in a lumpen proleterian council estate . Certainly it contains all the hallmarks of a Brit social realist film and there is a vague degree of verisimilitude but knowing what I know about both Loach and Laverty this is far more patronizing than their other work
This comes about through my knowledge of its setting . I know Greenock very , very well , I used to work as a laborer in the mid 1980s where all my workmates were from the town and was a student at the James Watt College in Greenock circa the late 1980s . It's certainly a rough rundown place populated by people with little ambition but my knowledge isn't some abstract epistemological , it was brought about by experience . You can just imagine Loach and Laverty discussing the scene where Liam gets a good kicking : " Right we must show the courage of the proletariat and we'll do this via a scene where Liam is mugged for his drugs . It's an allegory of market forces disintegrating the individual but no matter what punishment the individual endures he will still demand that his property , in this case drugs , is returned to him "
What a pile of pretentious crap . You don't need to have received a good kicking or know about physical trauma in order to understand that it's very unlikely , if not impossible , someone would crawl after a trio of muggers squealing " gie's ma stash back ya bastards " . The scene is improbable and unconvincing as is much of the film which includes people waving their arms about saying lots of bad words in a very loud voice , which sounds exactly like every film Loach has ever made . I know it has won awards but all Loach has to do is film Laverty's grocery list and he's guaranteed to be lauded at every European film festival
And on the topic of Loach's authorship I did have the privilege of listening to an East European film critic who ranted as to how terrible this film was even by Loach standards .
" You're from Romania . I bet you've seen some real poverty " I asked
" Yes I did " he replied " and it was nothing like sweet sixteen "
I wonder how many people who love Loach films have the misfortune to have experienced poverty ?
This comes about through my knowledge of its setting . I know Greenock very , very well , I used to work as a laborer in the mid 1980s where all my workmates were from the town and was a student at the James Watt College in Greenock circa the late 1980s . It's certainly a rough rundown place populated by people with little ambition but my knowledge isn't some abstract epistemological , it was brought about by experience . You can just imagine Loach and Laverty discussing the scene where Liam gets a good kicking : " Right we must show the courage of the proletariat and we'll do this via a scene where Liam is mugged for his drugs . It's an allegory of market forces disintegrating the individual but no matter what punishment the individual endures he will still demand that his property , in this case drugs , is returned to him "
What a pile of pretentious crap . You don't need to have received a good kicking or know about physical trauma in order to understand that it's very unlikely , if not impossible , someone would crawl after a trio of muggers squealing " gie's ma stash back ya bastards " . The scene is improbable and unconvincing as is much of the film which includes people waving their arms about saying lots of bad words in a very loud voice , which sounds exactly like every film Loach has ever made . I know it has won awards but all Loach has to do is film Laverty's grocery list and he's guaranteed to be lauded at every European film festival
And on the topic of Loach's authorship I did have the privilege of listening to an East European film critic who ranted as to how terrible this film was even by Loach standards .
" You're from Romania . I bet you've seen some real poverty " I asked
" Yes I did " he replied " and it was nothing like sweet sixteen "
I wonder how many people who love Loach films have the misfortune to have experienced poverty ?