Diractors is an ongoing series in which Hassle writer Jack Draper examines films, new and old, whose directors are better known for their work in front of the camera.
It’s an exciting time to be a diractor this year, as it’s becoming quietly normalized to be a storyteller on screen now thinking bigger than just being a movie star. During this time of the endangered movie star, for those who are clearly magnetic on screen and off (see: Kristen Stewart) Harris Dickinson is making a mark already. Dickinson is building up cache as a performer with interesting taste, following the blueprint of the late Robert Redford. With as many original and arty movies that a hot young actor can pick, that time between proving yourself and making a mark in directing grows smaller. Everyone has different reasons for directing, and yet the legitimacy with which a young actor can pull off something depends on who it is. Urchin is unique in that you feel like this is the kind of movie in which the diractor should cast himself– and dismantle that image.
That being said, even if you could direct as a movie star, that doesn’t mean you should. In the case of Dickinson, the actor turns out to have found an exciting voice in filmmaking that doesn’t play artistic decisions safe. Urchin is a movie that cribs from Mike Leigh, Ken Loach, and even the Safdies, but because there’s no true redemption it never feels like he makes an attempt to mirror those filmmakers too directly. Frank Dilane plays Mike, an unhoused junkie with no direction or goals. We see him steal a watch from a lost soul who is reaching out to him, and soon after gets reprimanded from security footage. From here Mike’s options are either prison or to remain clean; he can see right through the authority figures in his life talking down to him, yet we do see change is realistic. He then tries to maintain a job as a line cook, but even that falls through when he can’t handle the heat in the kitchen. He is surrounded by coworkers who don’t mind his presence, who even take him out to karaoke where we hear him perform Atomic Kitten’s “Whole Again” in a moment when everything seems to be going right.
Urchin is all about what it takes to maintain proximity to such a mercurial figure, understanding someone so much they can float through life. Mike just kinda blends into so many of the on-screen fuck-ups and idiots that for Dickinson to make an entire film about such a specific kind of guy is commendable. Mike isn’t exactly charming either, but does manage to thread the needle between charming and sleazy. Yet there’s a sense of security, with so many mistakes and faults that being decent is what’s now uncomfortable. Personally I believe, and I think Dickinson does too, that people don’t change, and all that can happen now is a self awareness of this fact. He made Urchin to show that maybe Mike is past assimilation into functional urban life in the UK, a country with such strictly enforced classism (even more than we do in the US) that guys like Mike are never going to do better, social work assistance be damned. Even in the scene when Mike is given the chance for redemption and ask for forgiveness with the mugging, he can hardly look the victim in the eye.
Harris Dickinson finds interesting ways to pad out the movie with all sorts of moments like this. He’s had a fascination in directing ever since he was a kid; while the movie started out being written with the interest of the character in mind, Harris said the movie was deserving of “humor and levity.” This bleeds through elsewhere, and there’s a joy with which Dickinson entwines it with contentment. I’ve been impressed with Dickinson consistently, even if I don’t love some of the movies he is a part of, like Babygirl or Triangle of Sadness (though I do love The Souvenir Part 2 and The Iron Claw). It’s so thrilling to have someone with innate charm like Dickinson. We love an understated tall British guy who has the juice. Then again, we are getting a lot of him with those godforsaken Beatles movies– but better to forget that’s happening until it happens.
Urchin
2025
dir. Harris Dickinson
99 min.
Opens Friday, 10/17 @ Coolidge Corner Theatre & AMC Boston Common
