Kafka once wrote "i think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for?."Well, I do believe that we need not only this kind of books, but also this kind of remarkable music and movies that shocks us, affects us and makes everyone of us a little bit more human..'Nil By Mouth' is not a colourful picture was made to please us... It's one of the few movies that wake us up to face the real true world around us, this film is not a tale or a yarn, it's exactly the opposite of that, it's a story of a real work class family could be mine or even yours!. If not check up your neighbours and you will get what I mean.. The script is so smooth like you'ed almost forget that it's a film, the dialogue is just so spontaneous, unprompted and way far from any kind of platitude, which make it very easy to believe... I really think the script is the true star of 'Nil By Mouth' by its honesty and simplicity, because the whole story is from the real world out there where people trying their bests - in their different messed up ways- just to pass each and every day with the minimum possible losses.... every character is interesting to watch, and see what's going on deep inside of them and how they think and feel, why they are not doing anything to change their shitty reality , to move on, or maybe they're!. I just don't know. Raymond's talking about his father actually brought me to tears and I think it's one of the best moments I've ever seen on movies, it's just so honest, simple, direct, pure and unaffected.And not only the script, but also the direction is by the great Gary Oldman!! He's just natural... Ray Winston and Kathy Burke are brilliant!! Again thanks for Gary Oldman for casting them and bringing the best of them..I loved this movie and I believed it. I would love to see more from Mr. Oldman as a director and a screenwriter, and I think after 20 years of 'Nil By Mouth' being released now it's the time for him to give us another masterpiece

English actor Gary Oldman sunk $1.5 million of his own money into NIL BY MOUTH, a film he wrote and directed. It is an noncommercial film set in and around the London of his youth - a South London council estate where the sun never shines (these films always work best when shot in winter) and everything has a grey, washed out look to it.There's no real plot in NIL BY MOUTH. It focuses on villain Ray (Ray Winstone), his wife (Kathy Burke) and her brother (Charlie Creed Mills). The film often seems to consist of long scenes of people boozing, swearing and shooting up heroin. Much of the dialogue consists of the 'F' word used over and over again. Oldman does have an acute ear for discomforting dialogue (one character says of a woman he saw "getting a severe portion right up the f**king Gary") - it never sounds scripted and the whole film seems to happening spontaneously in front of the camera.Winstone delivers a career-best performance as the drunk Ray and Kathy Burke (who won the Best Actress prize at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival for this role) wears an expression of down-trodden weariness on her face in every scene. When Ray beats her up in a drunken rage (she is pregnant at the time), it's a wince inducing scene complete with moans of pain from Burke. It's an astonishing moment that stays with you days, months, even years after you witness it. This is the underclass at its rawest and filmmaking at its rawest. It's grimness and imagery burns into your mind and once seen you'll find it difficult to shake or forget, a distinction it shares with Alan Clarke's SCUM - and Clarke was one of Oldman's stated influences when shooting the movie.

Nil by Mouth is proof that actor-turned-director for this piece Gary Oldman has an eye for grotty, grimy cinematography which he knows compliments his idea of raw; down-and-dirty, urban set films. His idea of dark, night-set streets and neo-realist inspired sets that encompass apartment flats, as the sorts of people that inhabit the screen are introduced to us, plunge the viewer into a world of anxiety; danger; near-poverty and a gross sense of unpredictability as we realise Nil by Mouth will not follow conventional narrative formula. Instead, it'll spend a lot of time with pent-up, aggressive males doing whatever it is they do. If there's a reason not to be blown away by Nil by Mouth, and this is linked to why I don't think Gary Oldman has directed much since, then it's because the film is a documentation; a hark-back to times and conditions of old brought into the 1990s. It's a basic re-telling of hostile people living amidst low-level living conditions more than it is a substantial study of anything.This is not an eerie look into the life and world of a drug addict alá Trainspotting and this is not a study of one man questioning his identity and role within a 'group' further still within society alá The Football Factory, although the look and structure of the film, particularly the opening, will remind you of these examples. I'm not sure what Nil by Mouth is; perhaps a faux 'grab the camera and shoot on street level' urban drama that utilises necessary acting heavy weights to carry it; perhaps a very straight forward and simplistic look at life in a specific place at a specific time as the proverbial bottle of fizzy liquid is shook and shook before opened and just exploding in a fury of anger, activity and mess.The film is about a collection of individuals living on a less than glamorous London housing estate, while it predominantly covers Ray (Winstone) and his no-nonsense, mess-about mate Mark (Foreman) with supporting turns from a number of others including Oldman's real-life sister Laila Morse, who he gets to swear a lot, (playing Janet) and Valerie (Burke) who's Ray's wife. Oldman peppers the opening twenty minutes, which turns into the opening thirty and then onto the opening forty before quickly becoming an hour; with a number of seemingly random and unconnected incidences. Characters go to a pub; some try to acquire drugs; others go to strip-joints whereas in other scenes, characters target and set up organised attacks on other men whom, in rather a sick 'in joke' on the writer's behalf, step out of a fast-food restaurant named 'Wimpy'.Ray and Mark drive the early scenes almost entirely on their own. The scenes are accompanied by the sorts of dialogue that land you in the world within a film, creating the illusion you're in the room with them, or that you've seen and heard people exchange words like this before. The things these people talk about are pithy, undemanding and feel improvised in their realism and the effortless delivery on the performer's behalf. We see, or observe, these people through the wary and watchful eyes of Valerie and a young man called Billy (Creed-Miles); we see them as they see them: we are made aware of their presence and what sorts of people they are as they drink with us; dine with us; drive us and occupy our living rooms. But Nil by Mouth is one long, and I think somewhat deliberately, arduous building and building to a certain scene much later on. We are plunged into the fire of the world and these people that inhabit it, but it's a one note tune; setting up the characters and the setting and everyone's relationship to one-other and the setting; but we don't get much else afterwards.After an hour or so of Mark and Ray and friends standing around talking of things they've been up to lately; swearing a little; smoking and cursing the police whenever a siren revs up in the distance, we get a little tired. Nil by Mouth has no direction bar the scene it gives us involving Ray and Valeire nearer the end. Trainspotting and The Football Factory give us an equally street-set, low level look at a 'group' of people you would never, and I mean never, want to get involved with or interact with. But as it progressed its characters, peppering their journeys with light comic relief, towards an inevitable confrontation with their way of life ("Was it worth it?" in The Football Factory and "Choose life" in Trainspotting); we were interested and engaged with these low-lives as a seemingly random passage of events propelled them through their existences. If Nil by Mouth could be compared to a piece of this ilk at the time, it'd be 1999's Human Traffic; a film that nothing more than documents the lives of specific no-body individuals; the protagonist of which, horrifically, just needed a good sex session to figure everything out. Whilst it isn't as bad as Human Traffic, it's as disappointing.Surprinsignly and annoyingly, Nil by Mouth goes on a bit more after the 'scene' has occurred. It would've been better if it'd ended after we get the obligatory 'angry male trashes room' scene; a scene that carries no dramatic weight in cinema anymore. The film looses all interest and engagement after 'the scene'; descending into a series of nicey-nicey interactions around which one character is jailed for involvement in drugs giving off a false sense of actual closure. If the film is anything at all, then it's a few would-be neo realistic scenes that are carried by some great dialogue and some two dimensional characters being brought to life by talent that can do better anyway. The rest is somewhat of a chore.

Gary Oldman dedicates this film to his father. I don't think that means anything good about Gary Oldman's relationship with his father. However, the film in question is one of the best films of the 90s. The stark reality of this film comes off all too strong and not forced at all.Ray Winstone has a talent of making his lines sound unscripted and improvised. It's so strange to watch him in NIL BY MOUTH. His character is simply a monster of a man, constantly drunk or high, constantly beating up the people around him, and ridiculing and harming his wife in increasingly extreme ways. The Charlie Creed-Miles character is a sad sap of a man. He's a thief, a skank, and completely untrustworthy, yet he's one of the most likable characters in the film. There's the wife, played by Kathy Burke in the film's finest performance, who displays such a unique range of passion and passiveness. She's simply a fascinating sight to behold.You may have noticed that I haven't mentioned a plot. Well that's because there isn't one to speak of. This isn't a film that you can simply explain. It's more the kind of film that you can just describe in hope that the people around you would find it intriguing. Truth be told, the concept of a bunch of people being miserable in a dank underground smutty portion of London doesn't sound as appealing as I would hope, but this is a great film to really seek out. It's a thrilling and completely unusual film than most would expect. It is extremely unflinching in it's graphic violence and drug use so it's not for the squeamish. For anyone else, however, who wants to see something that they've never seen before, this is definitely one of the films you will ever see.