Brassed Off (1996) on Netflix
Grimley's pit may close, and the miners' brass band with it. Gloria arrives in the village with her flugelhorn and joins the players; among them is Andy, determined to fight the closures.
- Netflix3.6/5
- IMDb7.2/1022,581 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes79%
Trailer
Plot summary
Grimley's colliery is under review, with the pit's future in the balance. The Grimley Colliery Brass Band is a hundred years old, as old as the mine, and its players are the miners whose jobs are at stake. Gloria arrives in the village with her flugelhorn, and after playing Concierto de Aranjuez, which the band calls Orange Juice, she is allowed to play with them. Danny Ormondroyd, the conductor, keeps urging the players on toward the national competition. Andy Barrow is bitter about the pit closures and ready to fight, though he expects the men to vote four to one for closure and redundancy. Phil, another of the band, is badly in debt.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Brassed Off (1996)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The fictional town of Grimley is a thinly disguised stand-in for Grimethorpe, a South Yorkshire mining village that the European Union had officially named the poorest village in Britain in 1994.
- A monologue by the main character Danny, played by Pete Postlethwaite, is sampled at the opening of "Tubthumping", from Chumbawamba's 1997 album Tubthumper: "Truth is, I thought it mattered; I thought that music mattered. But does it bollocks!"
- The soundtrack was recorded by the real Grimethorpe Colliery Band, the story roughly reflects that band's own history, and the film was largely shot in Grimethorpe itself.
- Parts of the film refer to the huge increase in suicides that resulted from the end of the coal industry in Britain, and to the struggle to retain hope in those circumstances.
- The hospital scene, with Pete Postlethwaite lying in bed, was not shot in a hospital at all: the production used Doncaster College for it.
