Rough Justice: Two New Shorts from the North West – Before the Law and Disposal (2024)

Before the Law is the follow up to Greater Manchester-based writer/director Brett Gregory’s stunning 2022 debut feature film, Nobody Loves You and You Don’t Deserve to Exist. A contemporary adaptation of Franz Kafka’s 1915 parable of the same name, contained within his novel, The Trial, it stars Andrew Joseph as a man whose briefcase informs us he is a representative of the Victoria University of Manchester’s Medical Department. In an atmopsheric pre-title sequence, we watch him as he stands at journey’s end, taking in an imposing and historic brickwork tower that looms large above the rural landscape (in reality, Horwich’s Pigeon Tower, a foreboding architectural structure, used in much the same way as Gregory used Stoodley Pike in his debut film), before recovering his thoughts and courage and making to enter. As an audience, we’re already wanting him to warn him and tell him to turn back.

Gregory’s film is a surreal and nightmarish vision that capitalises further upon the dark and doomy, twisted evocation of social realism he delivered in Nobody Loves You… Like that film, it takes the phantasmagorical to explore the reality of life. Our unnamed protagonist is confronted within the bowels of the ominous building by an equally imposing, bullet-headed and bearded doorkeeper (Luke Richards) and requests to be brought before the law, but it quickly becomes apparant that the further access into the building that our representative of the medical academia requires will not be forthcoming. He is told by the burly and inscrutable doorkeeper to wait, and wait he does…until he becomes a much older man (Robert Hedley). Weirdly, the passage of time does not altar the appearance of the doorkeeper, nor does it move him from his intractable position. The old man now hands over all that he has in an attempt to bribe the doorkeeper, but the copies of Darwin’s The Origin of the Species, Engels’ The Condition of the Working Class in England, and even a collection of Kafka’s Short Stories, leave the man-mountain unmoved. Eventually, the old man, weary and on the brink, asks why no one else has ever sought out the law before now. What the doorkeeper says in reply will astound him.

Before the Law serves as a criticism of the legal system, arguing that its practices are unecessarily inaccessible, cruel and a mystery to ordinary men. But equally, it seems to argue that the protagonist is as culpable as the racalcitrant and stubborn doorkeeper and the system he upholds, because his refusal to act against a legal system that is clearly broken is arguably what seals his fate. He becomes complicit in his own demoralisation, too easily discouraged in his cause. He may have stepped closer than the rest of his class, but it seems that it is still not far enough. A bold and accomplished piece of filmmaking, it serves as both a strong continuation of some of the themes and styles that Gregory explored in his first feature and as a calling card for a proposed quartet of Gothic shorts the filmmaker intends to shoot in and around Bolton. Before the Law enjoyed its first screening at Bolton Central Library in October this year, and is set to receive another screening at the same venue on Thursday November 21st, from 5.30pm to 7.30pm. Prior to that, it will be screened as part of Film Vault Presents at Gullivers, on Oldham Street in Manchester’s Northern Quarter from 7pm on November 14th. Admission for each of these is free.

At the other end of the M62, comes Disposal, Liverpudlian filmmaker Jamie Roach’s short chiller which made it’s debut on YouTube in the run up to Halloween this year. This short film is another example of the splendid sense of community within young scouse filmmaking talent, as not only had Roach had previously worked as a camera operator on Jack McLoughlin’s latest short, The Death of the House Party, his first assistant director here is Thomas Elliott Griffiths, who recently directed the documentary The Little Things, two films that I reviewed earlier this month on the site and which can be read here. Like Gregory’s Before the Law, Disposal is a heady and darkly brooding drama that dances around the peripheries of surrealism and reality, and has much to say on a form of justice. A white transit van parks up in an orderly yet nondescript Liverpudlian street. Its inhabitant steps out from behind the wheel into the crisp, night air. He too is as nondescript as the environs he finds himself in. Played by Andy Edwards, he could be a tradesman on a call out, an electrician or plumber say. One thing is for certain, he has a job to do.

Our mysterious and unnamed protagonist goes to the home of Mr. Billman (Mark Greensmith), who is eager for him to fix the situation he finds himself in. He seems nervous, offering hospitality and talking excessively in the face of the taciturn stranger. For his part, the man looks around the home. We see photos of Mr Billman, identifying him as a priest. There are also video cassettes labelled by boys’ names. The man requests his fee, which Mr. Billman hands over in an unmarked envelope. “Man? Woman?” he asks. “Big? Small?” “Man,” Mr. Billman replies. “Not too heavy” “Age?” the man asks. “Fourteen. I think” comes the answer, and we begin to realise the state of play.

Our enigmatic protagonist is a fixer, rather like Winston Wolf in Pulp Fiction. His duty is to resolve a grim situation for his client, and his client has clearly abused and murdered a fourteen year old boy in his house that evening. The man now informs Mr. Billman of the complications this job has afforded him. He explains how “it” is too young to just disappear. He reassures his client that he will collect “it”, but instructs him to write a suicide note. At this point in the proceedings, a mournful choir begins to be heard upon the soundtrack. Mr. Billman protests, but the man is insistant that this is what is required in the situation. The choir now swells beautifully as the man heads upstairs to perform his grim deed, and an atmospheric montage takes in the religious iconography found in Mr. Billman’s home.

To say any more would spoil the twist of Roach’s film, but I will say that in just five minutes or so, he crafts a technically accomplished, compellingly sombre mood piece. What initially appears to be an ugly premise is resolved in a slyly satisfying manner, marking Roach out as yet another promising young filmmaker on the rise in Merseyside.

Mark’s Archive – Before the Law and Disposal