I watched a film with my oldest son this chilly Autumn afternoon, dogs snoozing in front of the fire, chasing bunnies in their sleep, so we finally got round to watching a film we bought ages ago, called Harry Brown, I guess it was screened in the USA??
Its about a retired Marine, who saw active service in Northern Ireland during what was called here, 'The Troubles', and this is him now living on a sink estate in one of the rough parts of London, whose friend is brutally murdered after finally flipping into insanity, confronting the drug dealers and pimps terrorising the familys living there, Harry becomes a vigilante and begins taking a terrible revenge himself, after the Police appear to be powerless in the face of folk fearing revenge, reluctant to get involved, and the Chief Inspector gives news conferences giving lip service to zero tolerance of gun and drug crime. One by one, Harry takes the gang members out.
It seemed on the face of it, it would be a good old fashioned British good old boy, dishing out punishment to the baddies, it was, infact, one of the most dark and disturbing film I have seen since 'Nil By Mouth' written and starring Gary Oldman,et al.
We both sat in silence at the end of it, not really knowing how to articulate how we felt about it, and I think what I felt about it was this...
I come from a working class family who up until the end of the second world war, lived and worked in the East End of London, generations of the Holden family scratched a living in industry and service, there were a few black sheep, my own father ran with the street gangs who were ruled with a rod of iron by the likes of the Krays and the Richardsons, something now as an old man, my Dad doesn't talk about, and certainly isn't proud of, it was simply how it was, safety in numbers, and, by association.
When they were bombed out in the blitz, my Nan moved the family to Essex, where I was born, and lived in until we moved to rural Norfolk donkeys years ago.
The one thing I and my children have always taken for granted, is how safe, secure and cocooned we are, I often read posts on the general discussion board about how many people in the US carry guns, knives, mace, etc for protection from any number of threats, initially I was quite shocked and amazed that anyone needed to go to such lengths on a dog walk, all I take with me when I walk my lot is enough poop bags to scoop up debris from any one of the 5 of them, oh, and my mobile phone so my daughter can let me know she is at home and whats for tea!
I leave the back and front door unocked a lot of the time when we go to bed, and windows open in the summer when I am out, and it occured to me after watching this film, that tons of people live in fear, squalor and the concrete jungles that are Greater London; hideous carbuncles thrown up in the sixties' by some architect with the idea of eutopian state of life in the skies.
of course all it did was throw people from the slums, (bulldozed after the Luftwafe destroyed most of them towards the end of the war), who, had lost most of their extended family, into a place where they didn't know their new neighbours, and were thrust into a society of mistrust, and bloody power struggles among the criminal underworld.
Had my hugely protective Nan not have made the decision to escape that life, would I be living that life now? could I have raised 3 normal, hard working and well balanced children in the face of all that hate and mistrust?
The one thing that annoyed me about the portrayal of the Police in the film, was their sheer impotence in the way they are bound by law to deal with this scum; No guns, no water cannons, no tear gas, even in Norther Ireland, the Army and Irish Guarda could only fire rubber bullets, and I wondered, what do the Americans, with their right to bear arms, make of this Country and it futile attempts to maintain order in these often, multi-cultural, multi-religious areas with zero chance of actually being effective when it really counts?
Myself, I am a quiet atheist, and yet believe in 'an eye for an eye' if someone does my family a wrong, I deal with it, if something devastating happened to one of my own at the hands of another, I will deal with it, I have little faith in the police or the justice system, and the attitude of one of the characters playing a Police Inspector was, however badly a person behaves, or how heinous the crime he commits, revenge by the same act of violence is unacceptable and wrong in civilised society, that the law should be obeyed and respected, come what may.
I take for granted the sleepy little village in the Norfolk countryside we live in, where the extent of the crime committed on a Saturday evening, is the local Bobby confiscating some tins of beer from a group of tipsy teenagers hanging around the park after dusk.
Maybe I am just getting old, but I find it so very sad that the Great Britain saved from tyranny by the men here and from the USA at great sacrifice at the finish of both wars, is now at the mercy of a bunch of messed up, drugged up, neglected and abused children, who were spat out of some endless, genetically damaged cess pit, who have nothing to offer society, and live squalid, pointess existences with no way out.
Like my subject title says, I am feeling philosophical, and actually rather sad.
Thank you for letting me get it off my chest.
Regards to all
Tracey