'My Ain Folk' is the second of three autobiographical films written and directed by Bill Douglas, recounting his childhood and adolescence. In all three films, the protagonist -- ostensibly Bill Douglas's alter ego -- is cried Jamie. The name change warns us that some fictionalisation is in the works, but we're never told precisely at which points in the story, nor how extensively. The most famous case of this sort of substitution would be the example of Francois Truffaut and his cinematic alter ego Antoine Doinel. I suspect that Jamie conforms more closely to Bill Douglas's life than Doinel to Truffaut's.
SPOILERS AHEAD. Cleverly yet bitterly, this movie opens with displays of triumph. We see a collie (a Scottish breed) standing atop a mountain above a glorious vista of landscape, in full colour. This quickly turns out to be a Lassie movie being screened in Jamie's local cinema, a tuppenny fleapit in a coal-mining town. From here out, the rest of the film is in monochrome. From collie to colliery in one painful reel change.
I found the first instalment in this trilogy, 'My Childhood', so utterly realistic as to be a painful experience. 'My Ain Folk', by contrast, felt slightly more like something Dickens invented for one of his novels. 'My Childhood' bleakly but expertly limned the utter desperation and grinding poverty of Jamie and his half-brother Tommy, raised by their elderly 'gran' while their mother languishes in a mental institution. Very realistic and compelling. Here in 'My Ain Folk', up pops some tosh about a necklace which Jamie's mother has hidden, which apparently has enough value that someone else wants to find it. Pull the other one! Although I'm more than a decade younger than Douglas, I came from a background very similar (in Perthshire and a Glasgow council estate) and I know damned well that people this poor never have any heirlooms. Any object that can stave off hunger for a couple of hours is sold, bartered or pawned.
Throughout this bleak trilogy, Douglas uses apples symbolically: they seem to represent prized treasures which are highly desirable in this impoverished landscape. In 'My Ain Folk', there's a close-up of a large dish containing only one small Bramley apple and a set mousetrap. This felt to me like the sort of art-house image which director Douglas normally avoided ... but it turned out that there was a legitimate reason for placing the trap next to the apple.
During one shot of Jamie standing astride the local railway line, we hear on the soundtrack an offscreen train coming steadily nearer and louder, yet Jamie shows no inclination to get off the sleepers. (In the previous instalment, he actually lay down with his head on the rails!) Suddenly the train comes hurtling into the frame ... on a different track we hadn't noticed before. This one shot reminded me of several Buster Keaton films.
Elsewhere in this movie, the soundtrack cuts out entirely. I started to put this down to alienation or some other symbolism, but apparently Douglas just had grotty film recording.
After the death of Jamie's gran, the film ends with a slight note of triumph: we see a Highland band marching downhill (another symbol?) while piping 'Scotland the Brave'.
In all three instalments of this trilogy, Douglas wrings astonishing performances from a (mostly) non-professional cast, and gets full benefit from the cinema-verite settings. I found the first instalment of this bleak trilogy ('My Childhood') deeply depressing yet moving, partly because some of it resembled my own experiences. I found 'My Ain Folk' equally depressing yet less cathartic. I'll rate this downer 6 out of 10, mostly in recognition of Douglas's skill rather than his depressing choice of subject matter.
SPOILERS AHEAD. Cleverly yet bitterly, this movie opens with displays of triumph. We see a collie (a Scottish breed) standing atop a mountain above a glorious vista of landscape, in full colour. This quickly turns out to be a Lassie movie being screened in Jamie's local cinema, a tuppenny fleapit in a coal-mining town. From here out, the rest of the film is in monochrome. From collie to colliery in one painful reel change.
I found the first instalment in this trilogy, 'My Childhood', so utterly realistic as to be a painful experience. 'My Ain Folk', by contrast, felt slightly more like something Dickens invented for one of his novels. 'My Childhood' bleakly but expertly limned the utter desperation and grinding poverty of Jamie and his half-brother Tommy, raised by their elderly 'gran' while their mother languishes in a mental institution. Very realistic and compelling. Here in 'My Ain Folk', up pops some tosh about a necklace which Jamie's mother has hidden, which apparently has enough value that someone else wants to find it. Pull the other one! Although I'm more than a decade younger than Douglas, I came from a background very similar (in Perthshire and a Glasgow council estate) and I know damned well that people this poor never have any heirlooms. Any object that can stave off hunger for a couple of hours is sold, bartered or pawned.
Throughout this bleak trilogy, Douglas uses apples symbolically: they seem to represent prized treasures which are highly desirable in this impoverished landscape. In 'My Ain Folk', there's a close-up of a large dish containing only one small Bramley apple and a set mousetrap. This felt to me like the sort of art-house image which director Douglas normally avoided ... but it turned out that there was a legitimate reason for placing the trap next to the apple.
During one shot of Jamie standing astride the local railway line, we hear on the soundtrack an offscreen train coming steadily nearer and louder, yet Jamie shows no inclination to get off the sleepers. (In the previous instalment, he actually lay down with his head on the rails!) Suddenly the train comes hurtling into the frame ... on a different track we hadn't noticed before. This one shot reminded me of several Buster Keaton films.
Elsewhere in this movie, the soundtrack cuts out entirely. I started to put this down to alienation or some other symbolism, but apparently Douglas just had grotty film recording.
After the death of Jamie's gran, the film ends with a slight note of triumph: we see a Highland band marching downhill (another symbol?) while piping 'Scotland the Brave'.
In all three instalments of this trilogy, Douglas wrings astonishing performances from a (mostly) non-professional cast, and gets full benefit from the cinema-verite settings. I found the first instalment of this bleak trilogy ('My Childhood') deeply depressing yet moving, partly because some of it resembled my own experiences. I found 'My Ain Folk' equally depressing yet less cathartic. I'll rate this downer 6 out of 10, mostly in recognition of Douglas's skill rather than his depressing choice of subject matter.