Gary Oldman (1997)
Nil by Mouth, re-mastered and re-released for its twenty-fifth birthday, remains the only feature film (so far) directed by Gary Oldman, who also wrote the screenplay. Although Oldman has denied that it’s straightforwardly autobiographical, Nil by Mouth is set in the social environment in which he was born and raised – white, working-class, south-east London. The protagonist Ray, a small-time criminal and violently abusive alcoholic, isn’t, says Oldman, based on his own father though the film, according to the closing dedication, was made in memory of him. Thanks to these connections and because Oldman still hasn’t tried to repeat the success of Nil by Mouth, his prize-winning debut feature now feels like a vindication of the maxim ‘write what you know’ (and put it on screen).
The film begins with an extended sequence in a busy local pub. Ray (Ray Winstone) gets a round of drinks at the bar and takes them back to his family – wife Val (Kathy Burke), her mother Janet (Laila Morse, Oldman’s elder sister), and their friends. Once he’s delivered the drinks, he leaves the group and goes to sit with his own male pals, including Mark (Jamie Foreman). Oldman animates the scene instantly, developing aggressive rhythm through a combination of Brad Fuller’s editing and the men’s fast, sometimes funny, always foul-mouthed natter. There’s no good reason for the atmosphere to be continuously tense but it is. In a crowded space like this, people are bound to bump into each other; any such accidental contact with Ray or Mark and their eyes latch onto the offender, for several seconds – they’re a graphic illustration of people looking for trouble. For as long as violence is only in the air, Nil by Mouth is potently edgy and ominous – but that turns out to be not long at all.
It’s soon after Oldman introduces into proceedings Val’s heroin-addict younger brother Billy (Charlie Creed-Miles) that Ray’s outbursts begin. They can be triggered by situations or remarks as seemingly innocent as the men brushing past him in the pub: because Ray’s naturally volatile and usually well oiled or irritably hung over, the punishment rarely fits the crime. Billy’s first offence isn’t minor: he steals drugs from Ray, who beats him up. Ray’s treatment of his wife, pregnant with the couple’s second child, is both more typical and the most shocking part of the film. They’re meeting up in a bar; Val’s already there with her friends, Paula (Chrissie Cotterill) and Gus (Jon Morrison), and playing pool with a (male) stranger. Ray misreads this, orders Val to leave and, once they’re back in their flat, kicks and thumps her until she’s unconscious – an outcome witnessed by their young daughter Michelle (Leah Fitzgerald). When Janet calls in next day and cries out in horror at the sight of her daughter’s face, Val says she got her black eye etc from being knocked down by a car. It’s only after she miscarries and is taken into hospital that the truth comes out.
Although Nil by Mouth never fails to hold your attention, the bad behaviour, like the bad language, gets repetitive: the film sometimes seems more description than drama. The behavioural quality of the piece also means that monologues given to Billy and Ray are too salient as explanations of them – demonstrations that they-were-fucked-up-in-their-turn. These speeches also verge on mawkishness, though that’s easier to accept in the case of Ray, with his continuing tendency to tearful self-pity. When Val leaves him, he trashes their flat before telling Mark about what his own abusive father did to him and his mother. Ray also talks at this point about a hospital visit and the notice above his disintegrating father’s bed, which Ray has never forgotten and which gives Oldman’s film its fine title. Until he saw that notice, Ray says, nil was only a word in the football scores.
Val’s big speech, when Ray asks if she still loves him and if they can make a new start, is more effective than either of the men’s. Kathy Burke gives the film’s outstanding performance. Without in the least soft-pedalling on her character’s miseries, Burke takes her few opportunities to suggest Val’s surviving appetite for enjoying herself. She’s exhausted but decisive as she tells Ray she wants not the life he offers but to look back on her thirties and ‘say I had a bit of fun instead of saying everyone felt fucking sorry for me ’. Kathy Burke’s unsentimental clarity in this exchange also increases the impact of Nil by Mouth’s last scene. After robbing a man to buy money for drugs, Billy and his mate Danny (Steve Sweeney) get prison sentences. Nil by Mouth ends with the family preparing to visit Billy in jail – and Ray is part of the family: it looks as if he and Val are back together. Oldman directs this closing sequence, like the opening one, particularly well. There’s little suggestion Ray has changed (some of his choicer turns of phrase make Val laugh but then they always did) – every reason to think we’re watching a temporary cease fire rather than a durable peace.
Although Ray Winstone’s apoplectic rages are often impressive, his best acting comes, I think, in the character Ray’s reaction to beating up Val: the violence hasn’t expelled his furious, resentful tension, which is now mixed with panicky horror. Jamie Foreman’s big moment comes early on – Mark talking a blue streak in the pub – but it’s certainly a highlight. Best known as Mo in Eastenders (she first joined the cast a couple of years after Nil by Mouth), Laila Morse is a very limited actress but she’s good in the scene in which Janet is appalled by Val’s facial injuries. As Gus and Paula, Jon Morrison (Kenny in Vera) and Chrissie Cotterill show Val’s social proximity to a decent married relationship and make her own situation more poignant.
Immediately after what we’ve assumed to be the last meeting of Val and Ray, there’s another sequence in a bar, a birthday celebration with Val’s grandmother Kath (Edna Doré) persuaded to go on stage and sing. It’s a refreshing change of pace and tone but Kath’s song – ‘Can’t Help Lovin’ That Man’ – sticks out as too ironically apt (and, in retrospect, as a bridge to the film’s closing sequence). Gary Oldman makes better musical selections on the soundtrack, including ‘Las Vegas’ (sung by Tony Christie) and ‘What Do You Want?’ (Adam Faith). Although the refrain in Franc Ashman’s ‘Pandora (Last Chance to Paradise)’ might also seem to fit too neatly into the storyline, the choice is more than justified by the surprising spectacle of Val and Kath dancing cheek-to-cheek, and by Kathy Burke and Edna Doré’s movement to the music.
16 November 2022
