Review: County Lines (2019)
Directed by Henry Blake; screenplay by Henry Blake; starring Conrad Khan, Ashley Madekwe and Harris Dickinson.
At the recommendation of Mark Kermode, I decided to watch this on the BFI Player, having heard about it before but not really knowing about it.
County Lines is a piece of social realism but it isn't devoid of visual poetry or even some kind of catharsis. The world painted by writer/director Henry Blake here in a kind of cold blue is bleak but still allows the occasional sunbeam or hopeful ember to burn. Blake draws on his real-world experience as a social worker here but doesn't lean on it to sell the story he's telling. There's more than just authenticity going on here, this is sincere and impactful activist filmmaking.
The film follows Tyler (Conrad Khan, nominated for Best Rising Star at the BAFTAs), a fourteen year-old boy, and his mother, Toni (Ashley Madekwe, also nominated for a BAFTA for her part), as they struggle against their unforgiving environments at home, at school and at work. Tyler, having fallen afoul of his teachers for retaliating against a bully - perhaps with good reason, Toni suggests - is courted and inducted into the underworld of County Lines drug trafficking by the devilishly compelling and sinister Simon (Harris Dickinson), who dubs himself an "entrepreneur" when Tyler asks for the first time.
The film is certainly harrowing at times, communicating with an efficient style the brutality of the world Tyler has found himself trapped within, and it's in large part thanks to the standout central performances of Khan, Madekwe and Dickinson. Khan in particular plays Tyler with a great deal of sensitivity and completely sells that childlike joy bubbling beneath Tyler's hardened surface, so much so that the heartbreak felt when seeing it corrupted and fractured physically aches. It has been a little while since the last time I've genuinely felt this way for a character and their struggle and I feel strongly that it's primarily down to performance.
This isn't to take away from the filmmaking though. As mentioned, the efficient filmmaking and refusal to allow the cinematographic elements to fall completely into murky bitterness really aid in giving the film a unique identity. Characters are often hidden in shadow and partial silhouette. That blueish colouring to everything. The sort of prismatic, incredibly shallow depth of field layered over some closeups. All of these films contribute as well to sense of care Blake has for the world he's depicting and potentially even aid in not making the world too unforgivingly grey and brooding.
And though the explicit subject matter being tackled here could easily justify the sensibility I'm talking about, the film does more than just skim lightly across the surface of the central, sociological problem of County Lines. On display here is a depiction of the mechanisms that allow such an underworld to exist. In Blake's firing line is the failure of the education system - and to be clear not the teachers that occupy its schools - the scourge of poverty, the coopting of masculinity by those with power and the intersection of all these elements.
As I've mentioned as well, though, Blake manages to sell a degree of catharsis by the end without taking away from the horror we've just witnessed. All too often, a film depicting poverty or real social issues will shy away from any kind of impactful ending because it would mean leaving certain themes and questions unresolved. Hell, it's even an issue I had with the great Sir David Attenborough's last documentary. But Blake steers County Lines between these two poles quite successfully in my view. Though we've seemingly returned to some kind of normality and have received some closure for Tyler and his family's story, clues are dropped that things aren't entirely right in the world. Something lingers. We, along with the central players, have learned something profane about the world that we can't now unlearn.
It's brilliant, modern, British social realism and I recommend it for everyone; regardless of whether social realism is your cup of tea, the art of County Lines is well worth the watch.
Watched on 23rd April 2021