Animol Review: Gritty Young Offenders Drama Challenges Conventional Machismo
Institutional menace and an idealistic take on redemption sit side-by-side in Top Boy actor Ashley Walters' empathic and occasionally over-earnest film. The lawless brutality of a young offender institution serves as the setting for this British movie, written by Marching Powder's Nick Love and directed by Ashley Walters. It's a place where terrified new arrivals quickly realise survival demands abandoning innocence and decency, submitting instead to the gang authority of a psycho top G, which naturally involves a horrible loyalty test.
A World of Drone-Delivered Drugs and Tattooed Menace
This is an environment where drugs arrive by drone, where facially tattooed men meet each other's gaze with a cool opaque challenge in the canteen, and where the cues and balls on the recreation area's pool table have only one purpose: to inflict a three-month stay in the hospital wing while underpaid guards in lanyards and ill-fitting v-neck jumpers look the other way.
Tut Nyuot plays Troy, just arrived on remand for conspiracy to commit murder. Emotionally scarred by his neglectful, vulnerable mum Joy, portrayed by Sharon Duncan-Brewster, he instantly forms a bond with Krystian, a shy Polish kid remanded for a chaotic attempt to burgle a library in order to sniff the glue used to repair bindings, played by Vladyslav Baliuk. They are menaced by the chilling Dion, whose rule they must obey, portrayed by Sekou Diaby; they are wary also of the sinister Mason, played by Ryan Dean. Stephen Graham takes on the role of Claypole, the unit's caring youth worker.
Flawed Yet Empathetic Storytelling
For me, this film doesn't quite have the storytelling ingenuity or plausibility of the comparable Bafta-nominated prison film Wasteman. Graham's role is a bit earnest, and I frankly didn't believe in how the cathartic final scene plays out, where he assembles the inmates to talk to them about shame. However, that scene, and the film in general, possess a bold idealistic belief in redeemability, which Wasteman doesn't, really, and it challenges the genre's hetero machismo.
Animol shows us the prison world's three types of currency:
- Phones: Essential for communication and control.
- Drugs: Often airlifted in by drone, highlighting modern contraband methods.
- Respect: A more intangible but crucial asset.
Those of my generation will smile to remember the quaint economy of "snout", AKA cigarettes, in the 70s BBC comedy Porridge. Dion accumulates and maintains respect through an unending, exhausting theatrical display of menace, which involves appointing consiglieres to hang out in his cell, who must be played off against each other as if in a Renaissance court. Mason has no talent for leadership; he is a loner who can only radiate violent spite.
The Fourth Commodity: Secrets
But there is a fourth commodity: secrets. Knowing these, and threatening to reveal them, is a dangerous business; the irony is that blackmail will be a learning process – almost a coming-of-age process – for the inmates. This is a flawed film, certainly, but it is imbued with empathy and features strong performances. Animol screened at the Berlin film festival, adding to its critical acclaim and visibility in the international film circuit.
