I'm a little bemused by the comparisons to "The Full Monty". While that movie was pretty much pure comedy, "Brassed Off" is definitely drama/comedy. I think a better comparison would be to Mike Leigh's films.
I imagine "Brassed Off" might be quite a hard film for an American audience to understand; it relies on a lot of contextual historical knowledge about UK politics from the early 70s onwards. Basically, the miners brought down the Tory government of Edward Heath in 1974 via a series of crippling energy strikes, and Margaret Thatcher became the new Tory leader in opposition. When she eventually gained power, her government deliberately set out to destroy the unions, and indeed the entire UK coal industry. They started by appointing a union-buster to the National Coal Board.
As depicted in the movie, profitable UK mines were shut down on the basis of decisions made years before, often for purely political reasons. The movie shies away from discussing the political dimension of the closures, but accurately depicts the fake reports put together for PR reasons and never read.
Because UK coal mining was deep mining, it will never be possible to just open the pits up again. For better or for worse, Britain is now totally dependent on strip-mined coal from overseas, and an entire industry, culture and way of life has basically been destroyed. (Better hope there's never another war -- the only reason Britain held out in World War II was that it was self-sufficient with regard to energy resources.)
Many in the UK saw the destruction of the coal industry as an act of pure vengeance by the Tories. It's one of the reasons why Margaret Thatcher still commands vitriolic hatred from many UK citizens today. The opinions expressed by the characters in the movie are not exaggerated.
Yes, the movie is a little political -- but if you know the history, you'll know that it has to be. Yes, it's also a bit manipulative -- but it's also surprisingly authentic, and manages to avoid being overly sentimental. Yes, many miners died at an early age from pneumoconiosis and silicosis -- it wasn't all snooker and brass bands. Yes, many attempted suicide when their lives and communities were destroyed. The film doesn't shy away from those facts in an attempt to make the comedy elements more palatable.
Overall, I liked the film itself a lot. I must say a word about its technical problems, though.
I don't know whether it's just the Miramax DVD release, but it seems there was some truly atrocious dialog overdubbing in post-production. Seemingly no attempt was made to disguise the perfect studio dialog and make it fit in with the rest of the dialog recorded on location; even a bit of reverb would have been an improvement. I've never heard a movie soundtrack with more intrusive and distracting dialog overdubs. It's strange, given the effort they must have put in to get all those fine brass band recordings.
Added to the audio problems, there was visible dirt on the movie print in a few places, which isn't something I expect to see in a brand new movie. So I'm subtracting a star for the terrible DVD release and poor editing. A real shame.
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