“Once a mod, always a mod”. Who is a mod, is forever. It is the maxim that is repeated throughout the film bound for Brighton, by Chris Green (Theatrical release February 4). It is a popular maxim among mods. Those that remain are originals from the sixties, those that were revived at the end of the seventies and the eighties accompanied by the success of Quadrophenia (Franc Roddam, 1979) and of all those who in the following decades have joined one of the best-dressed urban tribes in history (indisputable fact).
By that maxim, they appear in Destination to Brighton fifty s cooters, Lambrettas and Vespas made up, ridden by veteran mods to say goodbye to a friend and partner. This is how the movie starts John (Patrick McNamee) who already knew his father's mod past, comes across all his memorabilia: clothes, records, newspaper clippings about those frantic 60's... And decides to scatter his ashes in the quintessential mod mecca, Brighton.
Nicki (Sacha Parkinson) in Brighton.
Chris Green, the director of Destino a Brighton, was one of those who became a mod in the eighties revival. Fan of The Jam and Paul Weller, he found the premise for the film precisely by listening to a record of it, As is Now, with the song he took for the original title in English, The Pebble and The Boy. "It all started with this idea to write about what you know," says Green. "But I never thought about this, until one morning I ran into Paul Weller coming back from a concert in Cork in 2009. I took a picture with him and on the way back I started writing this story of father and son."
Paul Weller is a macguffin in the story, in addition, to a good part of the soundtrack. Shy John sets out on the long roadtrip in his father's Lambretta, from Manchester to Brighton (over 400Km), for the devotion of another mod daughter, new mod, Nicki (Sasha Parkinson) because Weller will give a concert, precisely, in Brighton. And there they go, each on his old motorcycle. With their hoodies and t-shirts Row, Sergio Tacchini, Adidas, the well-buttoned polo shirts, the parka.
The 400 km are covered by small country roads. At a leisurely pace, between meadows, sheep and rural pubs. And arriving in Brighton, the quintessential English resort town, John is disappointed. There is not even sand on the beach. They are rocks. The decline of the place the charred skeleton of the pier that burned in the early 2000s and the remains of a better past invade the nostalgia of the protagonist and the viewer. And they are also an invitation to return to Brighton and remember other times.
mods vs. rockers.
The film, of course, returns to Brighton and revives the great clash between mods and rockers in the year 64, the same one that told Quadrophenia. When thousands of young people from one gang and another clashed with each other and the police. And he takes that moment as an excuse for a twist in the story and in the feelings of the protagonist who follows the last steps of his father to places still of mod pilgrimage, such as Jumd the Gun shop or that walk along the beach and, of course, the Quadrophenia Alley.
The most beautiful thing about the film, perhaps, is that that "once a mod, always a mod" and the camaraderie that always united them turned upside down with the production. Green got part of the film's budget thanks to the support of collectives and mod brands, such as Scomadi, a legend of classic scooters who gave them The Who model up for auction and he left them some of the ones that appear in the film. Although the protagonist Lambretta belongs to a Manchester mod that generously gave it away. And, in fact, the gang of mods that appears at the beginning of the film, they were not extras in costume, They were true veterans. The director wrote in a couple of Facebook groups and met almost a hundred on the day of the shoot. Once a mod, always a mod. And always better together.
He goes to Brighton with a parka.