Broken

Rufus Norris’s Broken is like the early Ken Loach social dramas ramped up to the breaking point. Where British social realism centered on the working class, Broken examines three families in an upper middle class close. The characters live in spacious, well-appointed houses in a quiet North London neighborhood. 
     So class is not an issue here. Nor is economics. Nor even is race, as the classroom easily accommodates some black children and an aerial view shows a black kid practicing his dance moves in the school parking lot -- that even the sensitive teacher Mike Kiernan (Cilliam Murphy) is too self-observed to notice. Instead of those familiar problems, here the issue is -- as you may or may not have inferred from the title -- breakage.

The people are broken. Bob Oswald (Rory Kinnear, unrecognizable) is explosively violent, especially in defense of his equally fragile/brutish three daughters. Teacher Mike  can teach courage but can’t marshall his own to commit to his love Kasia (Zena Marjanovic) until it’s too late. The most literally broken character is Rick (Robert Emms), who suffered brain damage from a childhood drowning and here moves from being beaten by Oswald into killing his own helplessly well-meaning parents. His mother’s welcome home cake may not be broken but it has collapsed. 

The families are broken. Solicitor Archie (Tim Roth) lost his wife to an accountant (!) and struggles to raise his daughter Skunk (Eloise Lawrence) and son Jed (Bill Milner). Oswald’s wife died, leaving him to do the ironing and to express his paternal manhood by beating up any alleged threats to his girls. Though united in love and caring, even Rick’s parents quarrel loudly over how best to handle him.            When Kasia loses patience with her fiance Mike she turns to Archie, but her switch from nanny to possible stepmother rouses Skunk to feeling abandoned even by her father: “Because she'll leave us the way she left Mike. Like Mum left us. Like everyone does.” Oswald loses one daughter, Archie almost loses his, and the Buckleys lose their son in the most dramatic form of family destruction. 

At the root of the breakage lies a barely repressed violence. Oswald explodes twice, savagely beating first Rick, then Mike -- in his way of being a good father. But down the spectrum of violence Rick’s mother (Clare Burt) tries to physically keep Rick from his room, leading to her death. Even the civilized Archie almost loses control in the police station, out of his concern for his missing diabetic daughter. He has to be restrained by his son. The gentle teacher Mike smashes a chair when he owes his freedom to his lost girl’s lover. 

Indeed Broken is a reflection of a broken nation, a shattered culture. There are no community norms any more, no accepted guidance for the children, no community even among the families enjoying the closeness of their close. Their father jailed, the girls throw a wild party. The characters may as well be hard scrabble screamers in the council flats. Perhaps the film’s central metaphor is the automobile junkyard, where impersonal giant jaws shuffle the wrecks from place to place. There Skunk finds refuge in an abandoned van.

Skunk provides the film’s one optimistic note and it’s enough to balance all the despair. Like the lawyer’s daughter Scout in To Kill A Mockingbird, Skunk comes of age learning decency from her dad in an indecent, violent, dishonest world. Instead of Scout’s white-suited father, Skunk has a boyfriend in white denim armour, who warms to her, introduces her to worldlier ways but tries to protect her from the disappointment of his helpless departure. He’s an orphan too, having lost his whole family in a fire, but he manages to grow up with decency and care. 

Skunk has learned her father’s decency but proves more effectual. She gives the isolated Rick friendship and -- in her asylum visit -- a candour that discomfits his parents but opens him up. In his madness his affection almost proves fatal to her: “Don't be scared. I just want your goodness. I just want your goodness.” As things work out, her diabetic fit gives Oswald an unexpected shot at redemption.

Skunk’s diabetes makes her seem broken, too, but that becomes her emblem of strength. She has the courage to monitor her sugar level and give herself insulin shots. She is aware of her vulnerability:

Skunk: What would you do if I died, Dad?

Archie: I can't even answer that question.

Skunk: Would you cry?

Archie: Uh-huh. I wouldn’t be able to stop.

But to her danger Skunk responds with the film’s most exuberant sense of life. She records her blood levels in different brightly coloured inks, finding even in that dreary chore the chance for joy. Her subconscious teems with flights of joy and running. She visualizes the adult future her father dreamt when she was born. She likes him to recount that dream as if that ensures her future. Her revival closes this tense, bleak drama on a ray of hope. In her last vision she chooses life, however grim her reality, over a fantasy of heaven.