BEATS

By Brian Welsh • 2019 • 101’ • UK

REVIEWS

★★★★ ”If any rave movie is only as good as the character beats its built on, be assured, as Underworld almost said, you’ve found the right stuff. BEATS splices specifics of period, place and class as lived in frameworks for a rites of passage buddy movie that bursts with ragged energy and raw feeling. And, crucially, a roaringly good playlist”
– Total Film

★★★★ “Given warmth and bittersweet depth through natural, fresh performances, BEATS’ director Brian Welsh showcases an impressive visual talent. Combined with a savvy soundtrack selection it is enough to make you wish those ’90s beats had never stopped repeating. Intoxicating”
– Empire Magazine

“Euphoric Brit grit…infectiously enjoyable…A breakout second theatrical feature from Scottish writer-director Brian Welsh, opening out Kieran Hurley's successful 2012 play with the author's collaboration, it proved the biggest word-of-mouth hit of this year's International Film Festival Rotterdam. The highest-ranked of myriad world premieres in the audience-award voting at the Dutch event — where screenings played more like music gigs than regular film showings — this genial tale of teenage rebellion evidently has the potential to connect with middle-aged and younger viewers alike.
-The Hollywood Reporter

“Terrific! A druggy, mind-blowing, eye-opening, open-air, law-defying rave….Exhilarating…it’s a triumphant vision of a bigger, freer world than any the boys have known, against a positively blissful soundtrack for dance aficionados. ‘Repetitive beats’ and all, it’s a display infectious enough to make you resent the government’s party-pooping all over again.”
– Variety

Every generation has that moment right before they’re forced to grow up and everything goes to shit — before society herds them into the adult lives they never wanted, but had to accept in lieu of a better stable. For the former ravers and ruffians of mid-’90s Scotland, whose already fading dreams were squelched out completely by a government decree that criminalized public music characterized “by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats,” that last gasp of disobedience has now been re-crystallized in all its raging glory.
-IndieWire

CRITICS PICK “Like the party that serves as its climax, the retro teenage-friendship movie BEATS set in 1994 in Scotland, owes its appeal to mood and vibe. The soundtrack provides a constant, toe-tapping thump…this tender, detail-filled movie lives for the moment.”
-The New York Times

★★★★★ "Euphoric. BEATS is a great party movie, but it’s even better on the almost erotic intimacy of teenage friendship and the melancholy that the ardor of these bonds rarely last beyond adolescence. Both leads give star-making performances, and together their chemistry is electric."
– The Skinny

★★★★ "An absolute firecracker of a movie. Whether cinemagoers are nostalgic for the 90s, or just coming of age themselves, BEATS might be the ultimate summer movie, dragging the party atmosphere of DAZED & CONFUSED or HUMAN TRAFFIC across the northern border, and ultimately finding a rare emotional truthfulness."
– The Upcoming

“Shot inside the Arches themselves, the last 25 minutes or so of this movie are the stuff of pure cinema — a throbbing trip into the heart of a moment. A Brechtian assault of Weirdcore club visuals help mix the action into a spiritual-kinetic dimension, and from here we go sublime as Welsh almost wordlessly amplifies (and textures) the tension of Johnno and Spanner’s relationship while the music wallops around them. Macdonald is extra special in these final minutes, the actor finding something heartbreakingly human in a character who spends most of this movie rattling against his cage like a trapped animal. He’s feral, loving, desperate, and — we agree — the smartest person Johnno knows. We know he’ll never get the future he deserves, but no one can take this night away from him.”
-IndieWire

★★★★ “It’s a terrific film that combines the earthy humour and honesty of a Shane Meadows movie with an unexpected expressionistic section — flooded with colour — that channels the boys’ joyful dancefloor abandon.”
– The Observer

“BEATS is bolstered by a rare veracity. It feels like a lived experience and is the most realistic portrayal yet of rave culture in British Cinema. BEATS will inspire nods, smiles and laughs of recognition from those who were there on the dancefloor and the multitudes who wish they were.”
– Sight & Sound

★★★★ “In its earsplitting appetite, BEATS tears through the feeble noise of the status quo to celebrate a bygone time of fearlessness, of rule-breaking exhilaration that an audience at any moment in history can feel akin to soak up. It's intoxicating.”
– Culture Whisper

★★★★ “The performances are awesome and capture that small window of transition from young adult to jumping aboard the grown-ups’ career train.”
– The Sun

★★★★ “This isn’t one of those dreary lottery funded Brit flicks aimed at bringing grim inner city life to comfortable art-house sofas. Occasionally harrowing but frequently funny, BEATS is one of the most authentic coming of age dramas I’ve seen in years.”
– Daily Star

★★★★ “Though it shares similarities with coming-of-age touchstones ranging from AMERICAN GRAFFITI to DAZED & CONFUSED, BEATS finds its own voice among the ‘end of an era’ subgenre — above all this is a moving examination of two young men whose bond is strengthened through their shared love of music.”
– Little White Lies

★★★★★ “Possibly the most authentic and immersive realisation of a party scene on screen in recent memory, elevated only by an incredible soundtrack.”
– Film Stories

PRAISE FOR ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK

“Watching Brian Welsh’s marvelous coming of age/end-of-rave film Beats got me remembering that time in the 1990’s when the UK had a genuinely happening club scene… all rammed with kids like the characters from Beats, best mates Johnno and Spanner liberated by ecstasy and coming together, their euphoria stoked by the era’s immortal sounds — as brilliantly cherry picked by veteran DJ JD Twitch for the soundtrack.” – Electronic Sound

“Welsh resoundingly succeeds where others have failed is in the depiction of and relationship to the music. Whether that’s a character dancing about their room to a belter of a track or a group dropping Es and dancing at a rave, it all feels lived, authentic. The vitality of the music is successfully communicated through the medium of cinema, which is a rare feat indeed.” – Concrete Islands

“[F]or dance music fans in particular, the film could be a reflection of moments in countless lives — those nights when you’ll do anything and everything to get to the party. Not to mention the incredible soundtrack, put together by Optimo’s JD Twitch, a veteran of the Scottish dance music scene.” – DJ Mag

“Perfectly climaxing with the joyous gospel of the Joubert Singers’ Stand on the Word, this immaculate set’s a deafening reminder of the crap state of today’s “dance music”. Essential.“ – Record Collector

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Podcast: Soundtracking with Edith Bowman – Episode 175: Taika Waititi & Brian Welsh On The Music Of Jojo Rabbit and Beats