It’s unsurprising the actor has yet to direct another film after giving so much to this blistering debut, acted at full tilt by a remarkable cast
Twenty-five years ago, Gary Oldman opened an artery of anguish with his brilliant, wrenchingly emotional debut as writer-director inspired by his own father and his childhood in south London, positioned between Terence Davies and Martin Scorsese. The title conveys with horrible force both violence and the cost of violence. “Nil by mouth” is what you see over an intravenously fed patient’s hospital bed – and yet the phrase is also a metaphor for the dad’s dysfunction, the walled-off emotional aridity; nil by mouth, no kissing, no talking, nothing.
It is an urban pastoral and social-realist tragedy. Watched again now, you can appreciate how formally accomplished it is, how emotionally extravagant, and acted at full tilt by a remarkable cast. Ray Winstone is Ray, the angry and self-hating drinker and coke addict running a shadowy line in drug distribution with his dodgy mate Mark – an excellent, garrulous performance from Jamie Foreman. Ray has employed his unreliable young brother-in-law Billy (Charlie Creed-Miles) who has evidently tasted the supply and got pathetically hooked on smack. Kathy Burke won Best Actress at Cannes for her moving performance as Ray’s abused wife Val. Oldman cast his sister Laila Morse (in her acting debut) as Val’s mother Janet, and Edna Doré is tremendous as Val’s grandmother Kath; she has a heart-wrenching final song, Can’t Help Loving That Man of Mine (the vocal, in fact, comes from Oldman’s own mum, Kathleen). The young Neil Maskell has a cameo as a guy who gets into a fight with Billy at the local launderette, and Eric Clapton composed the original music.
