South Yorkshire, England, and its 1917, the year The Grimethorpe Colliery Brass Band first formed, now, some 75 years later this is their story, albeit loosely, of how they and their coal mining community struggled against pit closures, redundancies and the grim prospect of the Bands possible split during the early 1990's.
In the fictional mining town of Grimley, this is the towns folk and their love for their community, heritage and of course their music. Set some years after the 1984 - 1985 miners' strike that brought the National Union of Mineworkers to its knees and Thatcher's Conservative Government to implement new laws to prevent miners from travelling in convoy to assist other coal pits. This was butchery of human liberties' and the hearts and minds of this once great mining tradition throughout England and Wales. Rumours of MI5 infiltration via spies, phone tapping's and its anti subversive and heavy handed State Police style tactics and the new laws formed by then Tory party that prevented striking miners any State Benefits that lead many families into vast amounts of debt. This only succeeded in the English coal mining communities to further dig their heels in and fight for their jobs, their rights and their families. One only has to see the opening sequence to the true story of the 2000 movie Billy Elliot, that set against the 1984 strike itself, to get a taste of the extreme harsh dictatorship and demoralising positions the miners were placed under.
The year is now 1992, and we now see the aftermath of the last eight years and how this particular mining community has adapted to its changing climate of crumbling poverty and hollow existence. Now the threat of closure has finally caught up with them and they too must make a stance to regain any dignity they have left. With pickets and their rallying calls of "Miners united will never be defeated", the harsh facts are more relevant in 1992 as it was back in the mid '80's.
Brassed Off centres on the future of the Grimethorpe (Grimley) Colliery Brass Band and its bandmaster Danny (Pete Postlethwaite) ambition to reach the finals of the National Brass Band competition. While walking on eggshells his is a story of pride and bitter resentment that he just might be the last of his kind. The fabric of the band is interwoven within the collieries future, one cannot exist without the other, Danny's refusal to give in, to accept this fate is more than commendable to his ever-increasing worries of ill heath, family concerns and dashed and missed hopes. This is a movie of civic pride, the battered, bruised, withered and imploded egos, the cold unforgiving nagging of the pressures of older men beaten down by the new age of Privatisation and globalisation and the younger men who too are falling victim to this new giant of corporate sell-outs'. There after, to add insult to injury Grimethorpe, via a 1994 E.U. enquiry into poverty, had become of the poorest and destitute towns in both England and the European Union.
Brassed Off shows just a very tiny tip of the poverty stricken district on this South Yorkshire village here, the debt collectors, Pawn Shops, picket lines, the feuding and divided relationships between men and their wives and their children and the struggle to make ends meet for the basics is at times harrowing to witness. This may be a fictional place but the times and actions are as true as the mines that have now become housing estates, parks or wastelands and sad reminders of a once thriving British industry, very much liken to the Steel industry of Sheffield, as seen in the 1997 movie The Full Monty.
We see a young Ewan McGregor as Union member Andy, and his love interest with the pretty clerical worker Gloria (Tara Fitzgerald) making a nice metaphor for the dealings between management and the betrayed workforce, but in the end it was all about the music; these guys weren't just brassed off they were punched and kicked to the ground.
During a radio interview with the actor Stephen Tompkinson (Phil) in early 2007, it was said that the movie showed the band winning the Trophy at the Royal Albert Hall some two weeks after the closure of the pit, but the reality was that they won it the day after the pit had closed its gates for the final time. This two-week time scale was added because the writers thought that the movies audience would seem this to be a little far-fetched and unbelievable.
Mark Herman (b. East Yorkshire, 1954) has written and directed this fable of trouble and strive, if a little on the sentimental side, but rightly so, a hard-hitting realistic flashback of the times of a land of prosperity turned upside down and laid to waste and the terror of despair of a people that died a little with it.
Where there's camaraderie there's always hope and always glory, even in this land of gold and brass.
In the fictional mining town of Grimley, this is the towns folk and their love for their community, heritage and of course their music. Set some years after the 1984 - 1985 miners' strike that brought the National Union of Mineworkers to its knees and Thatcher's Conservative Government to implement new laws to prevent miners from travelling in convoy to assist other coal pits. This was butchery of human liberties' and the hearts and minds of this once great mining tradition throughout England and Wales. Rumours of MI5 infiltration via spies, phone tapping's and its anti subversive and heavy handed State Police style tactics and the new laws formed by then Tory party that prevented striking miners any State Benefits that lead many families into vast amounts of debt. This only succeeded in the English coal mining communities to further dig their heels in and fight for their jobs, their rights and their families. One only has to see the opening sequence to the true story of the 2000 movie Billy Elliot, that set against the 1984 strike itself, to get a taste of the extreme harsh dictatorship and demoralising positions the miners were placed under.
The year is now 1992, and we now see the aftermath of the last eight years and how this particular mining community has adapted to its changing climate of crumbling poverty and hollow existence. Now the threat of closure has finally caught up with them and they too must make a stance to regain any dignity they have left. With pickets and their rallying calls of "Miners united will never be defeated", the harsh facts are more relevant in 1992 as it was back in the mid '80's.
Brassed Off centres on the future of the Grimethorpe (Grimley) Colliery Brass Band and its bandmaster Danny (Pete Postlethwaite) ambition to reach the finals of the National Brass Band competition. While walking on eggshells his is a story of pride and bitter resentment that he just might be the last of his kind. The fabric of the band is interwoven within the collieries future, one cannot exist without the other, Danny's refusal to give in, to accept this fate is more than commendable to his ever-increasing worries of ill heath, family concerns and dashed and missed hopes. This is a movie of civic pride, the battered, bruised, withered and imploded egos, the cold unforgiving nagging of the pressures of older men beaten down by the new age of Privatisation and globalisation and the younger men who too are falling victim to this new giant of corporate sell-outs'. There after, to add insult to injury Grimethorpe, via a 1994 E.U. enquiry into poverty, had become of the poorest and destitute towns in both England and the European Union.
Brassed Off shows just a very tiny tip of the poverty stricken district on this South Yorkshire village here, the debt collectors, Pawn Shops, picket lines, the feuding and divided relationships between men and their wives and their children and the struggle to make ends meet for the basics is at times harrowing to witness. This may be a fictional place but the times and actions are as true as the mines that have now become housing estates, parks or wastelands and sad reminders of a once thriving British industry, very much liken to the Steel industry of Sheffield, as seen in the 1997 movie The Full Monty.
We see a young Ewan McGregor as Union member Andy, and his love interest with the pretty clerical worker Gloria (Tara Fitzgerald) making a nice metaphor for the dealings between management and the betrayed workforce, but in the end it was all about the music; these guys weren't just brassed off they were punched and kicked to the ground.
During a radio interview with the actor Stephen Tompkinson (Phil) in early 2007, it was said that the movie showed the band winning the Trophy at the Royal Albert Hall some two weeks after the closure of the pit, but the reality was that they won it the day after the pit had closed its gates for the final time. This two-week time scale was added because the writers thought that the movies audience would seem this to be a little far-fetched and unbelievable.
Mark Herman (b. East Yorkshire, 1954) has written and directed this fable of trouble and strive, if a little on the sentimental side, but rightly so, a hard-hitting realistic flashback of the times of a land of prosperity turned upside down and laid to waste and the terror of despair of a people that died a little with it.
Where there's camaraderie there's always hope and always glory, even in this land of gold and brass.