Purely Belter

UK 2000

Reviewed by Richard Kelly

Synopsis

Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.

Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the present. Sewell is unemployed and lives with his grandfather. Gerry McCarten won't attend school, and his mum fears visits from her violent ex-husband, who forces the family to move to ever smaller accommodation. Fans of Newcastle United FC, Gerry and Sewell dream of owning season tickets to the home stadium, St James' Park. To meet the 1000 cost they forswear drink and drugs, and attempt various money-making schemes. Gerry makes a pact with a social worker to return to school in exchange for football tickets. The boys are disappointed to discover these tickets are for rival team Sunderland, but decide to see the match anyway.

Sewell falls for schoolgirl Gemma, who has a boyfriend, Zak, but gets pregnant by Sewell. Gerry briefly sees his runaway sister Bridget at an amusement park, but she vanishes. After Gerry's dad steals the money they've been saving for the season tickets, the boys ask Newcastle striker Alan Shearer for tickets, are refused and steal his sports car. Sewell assaults Zak, and is beaten up by his mates. Gerry's mum is taken ill but recovers, while his dad is killed in a traffic accident. After a failed bank robbery, the boys are sentenced to community service. They work in a block of flats overlooking St James' Park, offering a view of the pitch.

Review

It's surely a mark of commercial self-assurance in British cinema when a comedy can seek its laughs in the antipathy between fans of Newcastle United ("Mags") and them lot that's from Sunderland ("Mackems") without fretting over what folk in Iowa will make of it. Such is Purely Belter, adapted from The Season Ticket, a recently published novel by Gateshead schoolteacher Jonathan Tulloch. The title change is probably to assure punters that this is more than just another footie film, and one (probably) doesn't have to be a Mag to appreciate this canny tale, or its central pair of teenage Toon fans.

Director Mark Herman (Brassed Off) has been hailed in some quarters as a sort of cheerier, populist Ken Loach, and his model here might well be Kes (1969). (Of course, Barry Hines was still teaching in Barnsley when he wrote A Kestrel for a Knave.) But stylistically Purely Belter is twice removed from Loach's respectful naturalism, and planted squarely in the mode of 'heart-warming comedy'. Herman shapes his sequences for maximum chuckles, with signposted interludes of poignancy. Still, the urchin-like Gerry - the teenager who launches various money-making schemes to buy a Newcastle United season ticket - sometimes recalls Billy Casper in Kes, if only when he's being browbeaten by sneering teacher Mr Caird, a conflation of the hectoring headmaster and the sadistic football coach in Loach's film. Caird reckons Gerry is a "waste of space" compared to the "good kids" who bring their sports kit to gym classes and can read aloud from Macbeth. But Herman also gives us a Colin Welland figure of sympathetic authority in bonny drama teacher Miss Warren.

The heart-soaring moments of Kes come when Billy is out on the moor, alone with his bird and his passion. Purely Belter's breakout sequence duly comes when the lads nick Alan Shearer's sports car and zip out to Northumberland's glorious Kielder Forest, where they hold an impromptu symposium on class and destiny. Why is it some folk get to be "top drawer" while others are just "scum"? (Gerry's examples are Bobby Robson and Ruud Gullit, which is worth a hollow laugh on Tyneside). By now, his friend Sewell no longer identifies with Gerry's dream of sitting among the corporate rabble at St James' Park. In love with lovely Gemma, he believes he has something more solid. But Gemma will soon desert him for her own dream of a "decent life", leaving the lads with nothing but each other, and the fluctuating fortunes of Newcastle United.

Still, Herman clearly wants us to believe that these boys will get by. Chris Beattie and Greg McLane make very amiable leads, and there are incidental pleasures throughout the cast, from wall-eyed Alan Clarke alumnus Willie Ross to a rueful, almost silent turn from Roy Hudd. Tim Healy is totally repellent as Gerry's bad dad, especially in his startling karaoke rendition of that boozy, lachrymose standard, 'Always on my Mind'. Andy Collins' camera finds a rosy beauty in Tyneside, though it lingers a little too long on Antony Gormley's colossally inane Angel of the North, to which Gerry and Sewell offer prayers until they realise it is a false idol (a "big fuckin' twat", to be precise). A more convincing idol is Shearer, the taciturn talisman of the Toon, once again displaying the talent for self-mockery he first explored in a series of burger adverts.

But Purely Belter's towering comic irony is that when Gerry finally gets a taste of live football, it's at Sunderland's Stadium of Light. While the lads warily savour the atmosphere of a Mackem match day, Sewell can only reminisce about his first trip to St James' Park ("In them days, anyone could go. You didn't have to be loaded"). Sir John Hall, ex-chairman of Newcastle plc, once pledged "a price for every pocket", but Purely Belter describes the shiny new privatised landscape of English football, where teenagers must stump up 500 apiece for season tickets. The irony won't be lost on the loyal Mags who troop along to this toontastic north-east feast.

Credits

Director
Mark Herman
Producer
Elizabeth Karlsen
Screenplay
Mark Herman
Based on the novel The Season Ticket by
Jonathan Tulloch
Director of Photography
Andy Collins
Editor
Michael Ellis
Production Designer
Don Taylor
Music
Ian Broudie
Michael Gibbs
©FilmFour
Production Companies
FilmFour presents a Mumbo Jumbo production
Executive Producer
Stephen Woolley
Line Producer
Cathy Lord
Production Co-ordinator
Deryn Stafford
Newcastle Unit Manager
Linzi Baltrunas
Location Managers
Ben Greenacre
London:
David Seaton
Post-production Supervisor
Deryn Stafford
Assistant Directors
Richard Hewitt
Toby Sherborne
Matthew Penry-Davey
2nd Unit Additional Photography:
Emma Griffiths
Script Supervisor
Libbie Barr
Casting Director
Susie Figgis
Lighting Cameraman
2nd Unit Additional Photography:
Roger McDonald
Camera Operator
Chris Plevin
Art Director
Mark Kebby
Set Decorator
John Bush
Costume Designer
Jill Taylor
Make-up/Hair Designer
Veronica Brebner
Make-up Artist
Marrisse Whittaker
Titles/Opticals
Capital FX (London)
Digital Optical Effects
Computer Film Company
Ian Broudie Music
Keyboards:
Angie Pollock
Michael Gibbs Music
Performers:
The Pro Arte Orchestra of London
Conductor:
Allan Wilson
Leader:
Rolf Wilson
Music Editors
Andy Glen
Tony Lewis
Matt Barr
Music Engineers
Ian Broudie:
Kenny Patterson
Michael Gibbs:
Gary Thomas
Soundtrack
"Always on My Mind" - Tim Healy; "Dreams" - Gabrielle; "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" - John Lennon, Yoko Ono; "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday" - Wizzard; "High Hopes", "Getting Better" - Shed Seven; "Always Be" - The Animalhouse; "Nosedive" - Bleachin'; "Ambulance" - Bleachin'; "Firestarter" - The Prodigy; "Montagues and Capulets (Romeo and Juliet)" - Armenian Philharmonic Orchestra; "The Waters of the Tyne" - Charlie Hardwick; "The Blaydon Races"; "Silent Night"; "Jingle Bells"; "Happy Ending Lies" - Ian Broudie, Terry Hall; "Now Thank We All Our God"
Sound Recordist
Clive Winter
Re-recording Mixers
Ray Merrin
Graham Daniel
Recordists
Lyle Scott-Darling
Adam Daniel
Supervising Sound Editor
Rodney Glenn
Dialogue Editor
Joseph Gallagher
ADR Mixer
Paul Carr
Foley
Artists:
Peter Burgis
Andie Derrick
Mixer:
Paul Carr
Editor:
Michael Feinberg
Stunt Co-ordinators
Nicholas Powell
Andreas Petrides
Animals
Sue Potter
Actadog
Cast
Charlie Hardwick
Mrs McCarten
Tim Healy
Mr McCarten
Roy Hudd
Mr Sewell
Kevin Whately
Mr Caird
Chris Beattie
Gerry McCarten
Greg McLane
Sewell
Jody Baldwin
Gemma
Kerry Ann Christiansen
Bridget
Tracy Whitwell
Clare
Kate Garbutt
Laura Garbutt
baby Sheara
Su Elliott
Mrs Brabin
Daniel James Lake
Matthew Brabin
Tracey Wilkinson
Mrs Caird
Libby Davison
Miss Warren
Val McLane
Maureen
Willie Ross
Ginga
Adam Fogerty
Zak
Jo-Anne Horan
Waterstone's assistant
Anne Orwin
Auntie Maud
Rebekah Joy Gilgan
Lynne Wilmot
cashiers
Michael Hodgson
business man
Bill Gerard
Phil Swinburn
policemen
Joyce Gibbs
magistrate
Christopher Connel
vicar
Veronica Twidle
old dear
Alan Shearer
himself
Charlie Richmond
Mally
Chris Wiper
Jimmy
Richard Dawson
bright boy
Helen Parker
bright girl
Adam Moran
Darren
Anna Maria Gascoigne
dinner lady
Joanne Hickson
Janine
Hayley Murray
kebab shop girl
Madaleine Moffatt
Mrs Harvey
Brendan Healy
park worker
Billy Fane
bingo caller
Trevor Fox
car park attendant
Ben
Rusty the dog
Certificate
15
Distributor
Film Four Distributors
8,905 feet
98 minutes 57 seconds
Dolby Digital
Colour by
DeLuxe
Last Updated: 20 Dec 2011