Back in the day, an event took place within an island country, known as Brexit. That event exposed a country split in two, and more than that, it exposed a philosophical divide, xenophobia versus inclusion, Singapore style capitalism versus social democracy. Of course, the elements that were at work in the the process which has become known as Brexit were at play all along, and had been for decades, centuries even. These conflicts are the product of history, geography and power, and these elements are always present in the social structure. All of which brings us to Marco Martins astonishing, brutal film, Great Yarmouth.
Great Yarmouth is one of the first films to assess the state of the British nation in the latter stages of the second decade of the twenty first century. Perhaps inevitably, it’s not a film made by a British director. Where the likes of Morgan rattle off royalty porn and Graham explores political porn, (I realise the latter in particular is unfair, but let’s leave it there), very few seem to want to get down and dirty with Brexit porn. Marco Martins film examines the period just before the full effects of Brexit come into play. Set in the distressed Norfolk town, a town where the effects of immigration and xenophobia doubtless played into the Brexit vote (71.5% Leave), one of the main sources of work and profit is a turkey farm an hour’s drive away. The turkey farm has a problem: British people don’t want to do the dirty work of killing turkeys, a process Martin’s film shows us, unflinchingly. In order to deal with this problem, Portuguese workers are drafted in. These workers also generate a secondary industry of accommodating and feeding them. The immigrants are treated little better than the turkeys, stuffed into rancid hotels, inhabiting three to a room the decaying rot of the onetime Norfolk riviera. In order to drive the Singapore style capitalism, the UK needs workers who are prepared to do the things the British aren’t, something freedom of movement permits.
At the centre of the film is Tânia, a Portuguese woman who has a job as the immigrants’ ‘mother’. She has a relationship with one of the local men who get rich off the accommodation side-business. Tânia acts as overseer, rent collector and trouble shooter. The accommodation racket is a lucrative business in a two horse town and the film hints at the criminal elements involved. Tânia is trapped in a hellish limbo, both perpetrator and victim of the grotesque system she is caught up in. Great Yarmouth is a perfect setting for this hellish limbo, and anyone who has known an East Anglian seaside resort will recognise the tawdry sub-USA vibe of line-dancing pubs, slot machines, and cheap breakfasts. Beatriz Batarda gives a phenomenal performance, a raging against dying light, a desperate attempt to cling to humanity in a world where that status has little real currency, something made explicit in the film’s coda, which declares that humans are no more special than birds, and possibly more cursed than their avian cousins.
More than anything, Great Yarmouth, which an end-piece tells us is based on the verbatim accounts of local residents, is an eviscerating account of a society that has been cannibalised from the inside out. It might be that no film since Nil By Mouth has depicted such an impassioned, tragic vision of this sceptred isle. It’s a film which grabs you by the entrails and never lets go. We staggered out of the cinema into an autumnal night, thankful that we were far away from Great Yarmouth.
The film ends with a vision of the turkey factory, empty. Both the slaughter and the profit have ended. The immigrants have gone and the factory has died.
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