‘You are two pay packets from the streets, they say. Well, it’s true’ – Homeless girl interviewed by the Guardian
I’ve long said that you don’t need big action sequences, CGI or a body count to make a good film, much though modern film directors consider these de rigueur. Jake Gavin’s Hector is a prime example of a movie focusing on old-fashioned virtues like a coherent narrative, fine characterisation, ensemble playing, use of close-ups.
That is, what separates this film from many others is that it values its subjects, respects how they live their lives (in this case a trio of homeless Scots), radiates warmth and common humanity through the grief and pain. Gavin’s script brings through the sort of gentle humour to illustrate how people cope against the odds.
Of course, there is the unspoken context here of how a social crisis is dealt with, but that is handled so subtly you need not be aware of it to enjoy the film.
The eponymous Hector, played beautifully and minimally by experienced character actor Peter Mullan, has been a man of the road for many a long year, one who bears his poor health and bad memories like a martyr. Mullan’s Hector has a quiet dignity, the nobility of the disenfranchised, that brought tears to my eyes.
The flip side of this is the charge from some critics that the film paints an unduly optimistic view of homelessness, with little of the despair and violence of the real life on the road, and at Christmas in particular. Who would be homeless when it’s cold and snowing, unless what you’re escaping is worse?
Having done Christmas volunteering for Crisis, I remember well that homeless people don’t talk about how terrible things are but what they have to do to get their next meal, a warm bed, the things we take for granted. They might sound rough but they are relentlessly positive about the here and now because that’s all they have – it keeps them going.
How do they think of the past? To get a different view, try Roger McGough’s poem Unlucky For Some, voices from a women’s shelter in London. In Hector the character admits dropping everything and leaving his life, but now wants to reconnect with his family, each of whom lives an outwardly respectable life but has their own issues, together and severally. Despite his choice to be on the road, Hector is arguably the sanest of the whole family (which includes the marvellous Stephen Tompkinson, Gina McKee and Ewan Stewart as, respectively, Derek, Lizzie and Peter.)
For Hector, along with many other homeless people young and old, the past is a millstone to be carried around and not talked about if you can avoid it. Ignore for a moment the occasional beatific smile and the gentle manner, you can see the past in his gait; see the burden weighing him down, a burden he eventually mentions to a sympathetic hostel warden, one explaining his annual pilgrimage to London.
This is a marvellous piece of film-making, and a credit to all concerned. Can I urge you to forget spies, superheroes and scifi fantasies, and instead grab a warm Loach-like slice of human conscience.