Scum

Carlin is transferred into a borstal and from the moment he walks in there is one question: who is at the top here. The warders run the place through the inmate hierarchy, so violence is not punished but directed. Carlin rises by fighting and accepts what rising costs. Alan Clarke first made the same script as a television play for the BBC; the channel refused to broadcast it, so he shot the same text again as a feature. It explains nothing anywhere, uses no music and keeps the camera at a distance, so the result reads less like fiction than like a record. It was Ray Winstone's first major role. It fed directly into the debate about the British youth custody system. Who it is for: viewers who like hard British realism and institutional critique. Who it is not for: anyone unable to take scenes of sexual assault, suicide and racist violence.