Recent years have given us so much copaganda – the positive portrayal of policing and prison in popular culture – Iimagine even the cops suspect there’s asecret marketing team buried in the bowels of New Scotland Yard. As someone who is, shall we say, less enthusiastic about policing and incarceration, and actively scathing of portrayals that heroise these systems and those who work within them, Iwas ready to seethe as Iwatched prison dramaWasteman.In this case, however, Iwas proven wrong. Mostly.
Wasteman,the debut feature film from director Cal McMau,is exceptionally gritty, brutal and claustrophobic; its tight shots give us nowhere to escape to when violence ensues. It centres on seemingly gentle wallflower Taylor, played by adazzling David Jonsson, who is mere weeks away from being released on parole. When the chaotic, macho Dee, played by ahighly energised Tom Blyth, becomes Taylor’s new cellmate, Dee’s raucous craving for violence and revenge on fellow prisoners threatens Taylor’s release.
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Jonsson’s consistently scrunched brow and unnerving eye twitches are as painful to watch as they are areminder of the actor’s absurd ability to bear his character’s soul through minute and intricate movements. Blyth equally commands the screen as Dee, with his obnoxious confidence and muscly physique striking astark contrast between the two main characters. Though Dee struts around like afanned-out peacock on crack, he doesn’t actually take drugs, he just sells them, but Taylor’s addiction to the heroin substitute Subutex triggers much of the action that follows.After Dee steals another prisoner’s drugs supply, aslightly predictable gang war ensues – Dee is stabbed, he wants revenge, and he blackmails Taylor to enactit.
The prison drama genre in general would benefit from awider analysis of the violence of incarceration beyond the physical, andWastemanis no exception. Blood, bruises and broken bones are visible manifestations of asystem designed to subdue, oppress and marginalise society’s cast offs. We see this inWasteman, but only in glimpses. More troubling is the lack of even anominal acknowledgement of race and class, not least because they cast aBlack and awhite actor in the two main roles. This is no small omission – prison is akey pillar in maintaining racial and class oppression and it impacts us all, whether or not we are ever in its direct clutches. Aprison film that fails to acknowledge this can’t really claim to be afilm about prison atall.
However, this film does two things very well. The first is to lay bare the way prison strips people of their ability to make choices. When Dee blackmails Taylor into committing ahorrific act of violence by threatening to hurt his son if he doesn’t, Taylor’s response can hardly surprise us; if you cage humans like wild animals and tell them they’re worthless scum, they’re likely to act accordingly.
Its second success is its depiction of both Taylor and Dee as complex characters who sit within agrey area outside the hero/villain binary. This is aparticularly overused trope in prison dramas, butWastemandoesn’t imply that either of these men is more or less deserving of being inside or that we should be rooting for one of them over the other. Both men are troubled, sad, selfish and violent, mired in trauma that Dee expresses through bravado and physical domination, which manifests more inwardly in Taylor.