Under the Spotlight: Ray Winstone’s brutal, abusive alcoholic husband in ‘Nil by Mouth’
Throughout his career, Ray Winstone has established himself as a true icon of British cinema. Having delivered some truly brilliant performances in the likes of Jonathan Glazer’s Sexy Beast and Alan Clarke’s Scum, Winstone is a genuine acting hero, but as far as his best-ever on-screen efforts go, it’s hard to look beyond his fearsome turn in Gary Oldman’s Nil by Mouth.
The 1997 drama film served as Oldman’s debut as a writer and director and was informed by the kind of south London council estate life that the legendary actor grew up around. With Kathy Burke and Charlie Creed-Miles starring alongside Winstone, Nil by Mouth unflinchingly details the lives of the working class amid domestic violence, addiction, crime and unemployment.
Winstone plays Raymond, an abusive alcoholic husband to Burke’s Valerie and enabling uncle to Creed-Miles’ Billy. While both the later stars give truly brilliant performances, it’s Winstone’s turn as Ray that provides the film with its unwavering intensity and overall tension, with the British acting icon delivering a startling portrait of alcoholism and domestic abuse.
Immediately, we see the sheer disregard Ray has for Valerie. He speaks openly and even brags about sleeping with other women in front of her and leaves her alone in their flat to go on an all-night bender with Billy and his friend Mark. Oldman and Winstone detail Ray as a man caught up in a vicious cycle of toxic masculinity, violence and addiction and every moment in which he is on screen makes us feel anxious and vulnerable.
It’s the sheer intensity of Winstone, though, that brings the fearsome quality of Winstone to light. Even in moments when Ray is calm and having a laugh with friends, he swears with genuine meaning every “cunt” and every “fuck” landing with intention. Of course, it doesn’t help that Ray is pretty much always pissed, which adds to the level of anxiety that surrounds his scenes, and Winstone shows an ability to play his character in a wide range of intoxicated states.
Of course, there are harrowing moments in Nil by Mouth where Ray physically abuses both Valerie and Billy – as well as anyone else who might get in his way. In this light, Winstone is at the peak of his performative powers. Having controlled his vision of Ray and kept his anger under wraps, when he finally lets go in a torrent of verbal and physical violence, he becomes an absolute monster. We don’t see every punch and kick of Ray land on their victims, but the intensity Winstone delivers in such moments makes us feel each of them land in full force.
Winstone also shows Ray’s violence against himself, supping from his vodka bottle and destroying his flat, representative of his unavoidable desire to wreck his domestic life perhaps. Without justifying his actions, though, Winstone just occasionally shows us a vulnerable side to Ray, particularly in a lengthy conversation with Mark, where Ray details the affectless and loveless qualities of his father, indicating perhaps the reasons for his violence and alcoholism.
Clearly, Ray is a man who hates himself but decides to take his emotional pain on those around him. With Winstone in full command of his abusive behaviour, Ray arrives on screen as one of the actor’s best-ever performances. Nil by Mouth is by no stretch of the imagination an easy or comfortable watch, but it is an important film in its portrayal of addiction and toxic masculinity, with Winstone on hand to show the ugliest side of manhood.
