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