Borstal Boys

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

SCUM

Directed by Alan Clarke Screenplay by Roy Minton

Somehow one does not think that civilized old England has a prison system seriously in need of the services of Brubaker, the reform-minded prison warden recently portrayed by Robert Redford. But aside from the fact that the Borstal, a juvenile facility, in Scum is neat and clean, unlike the pigsty prison farm in Brubaker, the two institutions are identical.

A callous indifference to even rudimentary human needs prevails in both places. Day-to-day management is vested in an informal conspiracy between wardens and toughs who have risen to the top of prison society solely on the basis of physical prowess. Discipline is maintained through beatings, buggery and other less colorful forms of brutality. In Scum, alas, no redeemer appears to offer even brief hope of change. The only appealing character is an individualist named Archer (Mick Ford), whose rebelliousness is of a highly personal sort. He is a vegetarian and an atheist whose insistence on special treatment throws sand into the system, but not the monkey wrench that would bring it to a halt. There is also a hard case named Carlin (Ray Winstone), whose rise from victim to "Daddy" (the inmate who rules over his section) provides the plot with such movement as it has. There is an implication that Carlin's rule may be slightly more humane than that of the Daddy he has literally beaten out of the job, but so severe are the limits both of the Borstal and of his own spirit that his emergence is not a hopeful sign.

It can be argued that the relentlessness of this film is an earnest of its good intentions. The acting is strong, and the film is well photographed. Integrity is stamped all over the project. Yet, in the end, this is just another prison movie, a genre that moviemakers love because it is an easy one in which to make antiauthoritarian gestures with out straining very hard for originality or for fine moral distinctions. Scum is a superior example of a familiar breed. By Richard Schickel

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