Mediocrity is stunted ambition. It’s the lack of talent or chance or sheer force of will, delivering an end product that is neither laudatory nor execrable. It just is.
Which is where Mark Gill’s unauthorized Morrissey biopic, England Is Mine, falls. The film isn’t strictly terrible—it is, for lack of a better neutral word, “watchable”—but it also has no real reason to exist.
One of the producers of England is Mine is Orian Williams, who also produced Anton Corbijn’s Ian Curtis/Joy Division biopic Control. Alas, the differences between the two stories are many. Control had the support and participation of Curtis’s widow and former band mates, while England Is Mine is completely unauthorized. Secondly (and arguably more importantly) the life of Ian Curtis was tragically short, as Curtis hanged himself at the age of 23. As a result, the film had a cohesive narrative arc, and with access to Joy Division’s music and to Curtis’s friends, family and bandmates, a full story could be told. That is barely the case with England is Mine. As Gertrude Stein once remarked, “there is no there there.”
England Is Mine covers the years in the young adult Steven Patrick Morrissey’s life before the Smiths. While his life from 1979 to 1982 may be worthy of a feature film, England Is Mine produces little to no evidence supporting that idea. Still, Jack Lowden’s portrayal as the nascent superstar can reach arresting heights. His gradual progression from shy, virtually mute misanthrope to…slightly more vocal misanthrope is deftly and subtly done, his coming out of his social shell providing for a few of the film’s most memorable moments. The portrayal of his first live performance, especially, is a fleeting but true moment of joy.