Is ‘Urchin’ the best directorial debut from Cannes?
Homelessness is an experience we have all witnessed in real life, but have so rarely seen on screen as the primary subject. Those who sleep on the streets are instead ‘othered’ in cinema and ignored as in real life. When living in a big city, many people become both saddened and ashamedly desensitised to the suffering of other people, a feeling that is only exacerbated in the midst of a growing wealth gap. The ever-increasing gorge between those who thrive and those who barely get by, with a majority falling into the latter category in a world corrupted by greed and regularly scheduled exploitation.
London is one of the richest cities in the world; yet, one in 51 people is homeless, a shocking statistic that is glaringly obvious in every borough you visit, and one that is too often met with contempt and a lack of compassion. People separate themselves with the ‘us and them’ mindset, reframing the failure of government policies as a widespread personal failing that has led 170,000 people and counting to live on the streets, seemingly as though it were a lifestyle choice.
There aren’t many directors who could have approached this subject matter with simultaneous delicacy and humour, a feat that Harris Dickinson has pulled off through his compassionate and achingly moving directorial debut, Urchin.
Urchin follows a rough sleeper named Mike as he tries to reintegrate after spending time in prison, charting the ebbs and flows of his journey to stay afloat. The film begins with the cut of Mike asking London commuters for spare change outside a station, an image I found incredibly stark and sobering after the realisation dawned on me that I had seen this many times in real life but never onscreen.
Dickinson’s camerawork is restrained and revealing, with stoic wide shots that allow the coldness of the world around the protagonist to fill the frame, with blinkered Londoners avoiding his eyes while ignoring his plea for a hot meal. However, the story truly begins after Mike physically assaults a man after stealing his watch, desperate for money, having his wallet taken and finding himself in jail. Following months spent in confinement, he is released into the outside world and left to forge a new life for himself, armed with nothing but a self-help tape given to him by a care worker and a temporary room in a hostel.
From this point, we see him wrestle between the potential of who he could be and the familiar pull of his past life from the shadows and the claw marks of his drug addiction. But beneath it all, we see Mike for who he is, with Frank Dillane making us deeply feel for him through his endearing innocence and boyish charm, even when acting cruelly to people who try to show him kindness. Underneath these actions, we see the glimmers of a truly beautiful soul, and we know that his trajectory is not his fault.
Dickinson imbues care and compassion into every frame, making our hearts sink for Mike when he is pulled under by old patterns and feeling warmed by his eagerness to turn over a new leaf. Despite containing its fair share of shattering moments, the director impressively manages to introduce equal moments of lightness into the film, with many laugh-out-loud scenes as a result of Mike’s ‘head in the clouds’ persona. It gives him the appearance of being someone who is not quite of this world, a quality that is exaggerated by the flourishes of surrealism that bleed into his reality.
Through this, Dickinson infuses a sense of surrealism into his gritty fairytale, with breathtaking sequences that move into another realm and capture the encroaching darkness that tries to take Frank’s character down. We visualise his inner battles through unnerving sequences that show him sinking into voids, whether in space, a cave or a chapel.
Given how sensitive and thoughtful Dickinson is as a performer, I was not surprised by the richness and empathy of his directorial voice, pointing us to the life cycles that we so often find ourselves trapped in. His take on a man, who, despite his best efforts, often finds himself drowning in his desperation to stay afloat, opens us up to more viscerally understanding his life after being immersed in it and the forces that push him down. Urchin is heartbreaking, strange, raw and deeply moving, and will surely mark the beginning of a new path for Dickinson after helming one of the best directorial debuts from this year’s selection at the Cannes Film Festival.
