The opening moments of Charles Williams' debut feature film Inside, a prison drama from the Short Film Palme d'Or winner, are an immediate statement of one of the film's three key themes – fate. Grainy film and narration give the viewer a brief glimpse into the past of our protagonist, Mel Blight (well played by rising star Vincent Miller), as his narration explains that ‘mum told me I was made in prison. My dad told me it was a sign I was gonna turn out bad. And he was right.'
It's easy to expect that after this line the film would explode into some heavy metal and ramp up the energy, moving towards the cliches of a prison drama by having our young, hard-headed prisoner protagonist prove his worth through violence and streetwise wit maybe eventually leading to some grand escape effort. But, to its credit, Inside does well from start to finish to move away from the so frequently repeated cliches of the prison film.
Rather than thrashing music and gushing blood, Inside begins with tenderness. Instead, the film begins as Mel is moved from juvie into adult's prison, a procedure cross-cut with second-long visions of his life before he was locked away. Straight away, Mel's character feels humanised and (at least mildly) fleshed out as the audience gains snippets of an understanding of his background before we know anything about what crime(s) he has committed.
Aside from an exploration of fate and how some (particularly the working class and the impoverished) are almost pre-destined for a life of crime because of the circumstances they grow up in, Inside also explores ideas of religion through Mark's character as he delivers sermons to the other prisoners and asks Mel to play keyboard music for his services. Mark's devotion is clearly genuine, providing him some much needed respite from a deeply troubled past, but the other prisoners frequently mock his faith due to the brutal nature of the crime which saw him imprisoned in the first place. Meanwhile, Williams uses the complicated growing bond between Mel and Warren to question ideas of fatherhood and family, with supporting characters also feeding into a wider idea of the pain of being rejected by family and the difficulty of then opening up to others and beginning an improvised ‘found family' elsewhere (only exacerbated by prison life, where showing vulnerability can so easily lead to threatening violence).
Inside is a thoughtful, well acted film. But its slow pacing can make it feel plodding, and it carries a severe self-seriousness which can make some of its less believable plot contrivances feel far removed from its otherwise dour, grounded tone. These narrative issues don't completely hinder the film, but they do stop it from reaching prison-drama greatness. This is despite the impressive quality of its three leading performances, all of which are very strong. Inside has pockets of potential in which a viewer can see shadows of a truly terrific film, but its screenplay isn't quite refined enough to make that potential a reality.
Inside is available on digital, DVD and Blu-ray now from Icon Film Distribution
