10 Great Rites Of Passage Movies

3. This Is England (2006)

The turmoil of Thatcher's England sees young schoolboy Shaun and his mother slogging through life in Shane Meadow's intimate depiction of the working class eighties. This is a rite of passage film in the more traditional coming of age sense; it's about Shaun deciding what kind of man he wants to grow up to be, about seeing just how fallible his influential figures are, about how circumstances shape peoples' attitudes and how he is supposed to step into this world when it's on such shaky ground. Shaun's troublesome school life is changed by a chance meeting with Woody and his band of friendly skinhead chums. Life starts looking up as Shaun begins to involve himself in his fast-becoming surrogate family, but in comes original skinhead group member Combo. Having just served a sentence in prison, Combo is released with a disenchanted view of England and a fairly indoctrinated advocation of nationalist supremacy. Combo's blend of charismatic passion, misplaced anger and frustration is enticing to most who feel the same apathetic weight to their own unheeded struggles. Shaun faces a choice between two intrinsically reactionary world-views: justified anger with misplaced aggression at the unfairness of his life, or an acceptance and the will to struggle on regardless of the cards he's been dealt. With the skinhead movement split, his initial rite of passage comes from adopting the aesthetics of skinhead culture, finding friends and a family. The second concerns his place in the world and whether the paths he chooses have to be set in stone.