Beats – first look review

If the phrase ​‘Rave to the Grave’ hadn’t already been used to title a Return of the Liv­ing Dead sequel, it would have made a fine alter­na­tive name for Bri­an Welsh’s Beats. That refrain pops up many times in the film, most­ly in the con­text of a pirate DJ pro­mot­ing a ware­house par­ty in defi­ance of new restric­tions on UK rave cul­ture in the 1990s. But it’s a mantra appro­pri­ate to the jour­ney of the film’s young ensemble.

While ​‘to the grave’ might be extreme in most of the char­ac­ters’ cir­cum­stances, the threat of vio­lence looms over sev­er­al of them. Their prospects are bleak and they’re con­stant­ly fed false promis­es by their fam­i­lies, roman­tic part­ners and wider soci­ety (archive footage of a pre-Prime Min­is­ter Tony Blair recurs through­out the film). In the face of either utter hope­less­ness or queasy uncer­tain­ty, why not dance like it’s the last night on earth?

Adapt­ed from a play by Kier­an Hur­ley, who also co-wrote the film with Welsh, Beats is set in cen­tral Scot­land in 1994 and focus­es on two teenage boys, John­no (Cris­t­ian Orte­ga) and Span­ner (Lorn Mac­don­ald). Their close friend­ship is threat­ened by Johnno’s immi­nent move to the sub­urbs at the behest of his police­man step­fa­ther, Robert (Bri­an Fer­gu­son). Johnno’s moth­er, Ali­son (Lau­ra Fras­er), is also keen for her son to sev­er his co-depen­dent ties with some­one she regards as ​“scum”.

The prospect of Span­ner being left alone with his vio­lent repro­bate broth­er, Fido (Neil Leiper), and his gang for com­pa­ny dri­ve the pair to join up with a group of old­er counter-cul­ture youths for an ille­gal rave in the wake of The Crim­i­nal Jus­tice and Pub­lic Order Act. Fund­ing for the par­ty comes par­tial­ly from a wad of notes Span­ner swipes from Fido’s stash.

The younger leads and sup­port­ing cast are most­ly first-timers or actors with few screen cred­its to date, with Lorn Mac­don­ald the stand­out per­former. Pre­vi­ous­ly best known for play­ing Ren­ton in a recent stage pro­duc­tion of Trainspot­ting in Glas­gow, Mac­don­ald has the gan­g­ly phys­i­cal­i­ty of fel­low Scot Ewen Brem­n­er (who also played Ren­ton on stage before becom­ing Spud in Dan­ny Boyle’s film adap­ta­tion), and the man­ic, mag­net­ic ener­gy of a young Robert Carlyle.

Fol­low­ing his strik­ing work on For Those in Per­il and Beast, cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Ben­jamin Kra­cun opts to shoot in black-and-white – a broad­er colour palette is used only briefly dur­ing a sequence of drug-induced eupho­ria. As in Anton Corbijn’s Con­trol, the mono­chrome visu­als lend an almost myth­i­cal qual­i­ty to this immer­sive por­trait of a British music scene, and this nos­tal­gic, scrap­book effect is enhanced by pho­tos of the char­ac­ters dur­ing the end cred­its, accom­pa­nied by details of their even­tu­al fates.

Though it shares sim­i­lar­i­ties with com­ing-of-age touch­stones rang­ing from Amer­i­can Graf­fi­ti to Dazed and Con­fused, Beats finds its own voice among the ​‘end of an era’ sub­genre in the char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion of its cen­tral pair­ing. John­no and Spanner’s rela­tion­ship veers into more emo­tion­al­ly com­plex ter­ri­to­ry as the nar­ra­tive unfolds, and both the screen­play and per­for­mances thrive on the ambigu­ous nature of var­i­ous explo­sions of anger and moments of ten­der intimacy.

It’s a text ripe for queer read­ings, but above all this is a mov­ing exam­i­na­tion of two young men whose bond is strength­ened through their shared love of music.