My Thoughts On The Film: Thomas Shelby The Immoral Man
I spoiled myself for the film so I knew the big events for what would happen. Ultimately I think that was a good thing because if I had gone into it with no expectations, I would have been deeply disappointed with what I got. As it is now, I can somewhat appreciate what I watched while at the same time feel a kind of deep down disgust as a fan.
Season 6 ended with Thomas Shelby watching his old life go up in flames and riding off on a white horse. The doctor who he had set out to kill insisted that he was a different man from who he once was and that he wasn't that man anymore. Tommy heard the bells of eleven o'clock ringing, seeing it as a sign of armistice. It seemed the war was over for Tommy and that he would try to become someone new.
And I suppose living in exile is something different for Tommy. The end of season 6 with its burning of his old life as he rode away did signal that he would be trying to leave his family behind. Tommy has frequently insisted that he is cursed and that everything he touches becomes cursed along with him, so it is understandable that he feels he is doing his best by his living family members by trying to stay away from them.
However, the film clearly indicates that this is not true in the form of Duke Shelby, Tommy's oldest illegitimate son, whom we, and Tommy, barely learned about in season 6. Duke felt abandoned by his father all while given the task of running Tommy's kingdom as the leader of the Peaky Blinders. It's been seven years since then and Duke has not done anything good with that time. He claims the world doesn't care about him and so he doesn't care about the world and comparisons are made about how similar he is to Tommy except that he doesn't have a moral code that came from having family around him.
This feels like a somewhat convoluted point to make since Tommy had his family around him, it did sometimes make him moral and it sometimes made him immoral, all the more immoral because his bad dealings would put his family at risk. He himself acknowledges in the film that "he wasn't a father but a form of government". That's true and it isn't, Tommy certainly came through for big moments such as saving Charlie when kidnapped, going through tunnels for him, and actually seemed a pretty involved parent when he was young and it was just the two of them. It's later on that he got less and less involved, with the implication again being that he likely felt that Charlie would be best without his influence.
Every one of his family members (except Finn who is conveniently forgotten, and his two sons) is dead because of him although the majority were due to being connected to Tommy. There is just one exception now which is that Tommy killed Arthur with his own bare hands.
Some people believe Tommy is an unreliable narrator when we learn of this. We first hear of it when he tells Arthur's grave that, "he won't say he imagined it because that would be cowardly and he wasn't a coward." The way the actual events unfold makes me think that he wasn't imagining anything about it and it happened exactly how it was shown, where Tommy could have stopped at a certain point, but didn't because he wanted to be free of him.
This felt like quite the departure from how their relationship was portrayed through out the series. Certainly, there were times when Tommy manipulated Arthur into going against newfound principles, new attempts to change, but it always felt, and we were shown, that there was deep love and respect for each other. This felt particularly true in season 6 when Arthur gets extremely upset at hearing about Tommy's sickness and at the very end, knowing that his brother intended to kill himself, promised in a note that "wherever you go, there I will be soon", essentially promising to kill himself too in order to be with each other.
This does show a co-dependant relationship especially on the part of Arthur where he at least cannot see himself living without Tommy. Likewise, when Tommy mentally breaks down after killing his brother, it shows that Tommy could not live without Arthur either. I think SK had an end goal of ensuring that all of Tommy's family (siblings especially) must die before he does, he had to get rid of Arthur particularly in a way that wouldn't show his face or involve dialogue since the actors for him couldn't work, and then obviously, he wanted Tommy to do one final terrible act. On the one hand, yes, Arthur was supposed to be addicted to drugs again, stealing money from Tommy, and essentially an animal out of his mind. He thought Tommy was the devil, tried to shoot him, and Tommy began choking him and though he could have stopped at a certain point, didn't.
I think there is a comparison being made between thee death of Arthur at Tommy's hands and the eventual death of Tommy at Duke's hands, how both are meant to be like crazed animals that are then "put out of their misery" by a family member. Perhaps it is meant to be a metaphor for Tommy ultimately being the thing that killed Arthur by keeping him from going on the more straight and narrow path that Linda provided. Ultimately, I think SK wanted Tommy to do a big bad thing to balance out the big good thing he does in the film by saving the people of England from being overtaken by Germany.
To be honest though, I just don't see that as redeeming his character. Tommy's strength and morality in our eyes always came from his devotion to his family, even if it was imperfect. We always felt that that was ultimately his goal, to protect and uphold his family. Maybe it could have worked if Arthur had begged him, like Tommy does with Duke, but he doesn't. I know mentally we are supposed to see it as Tommy doing a kindness to Arthur who had no ability to live a normal life- again, putting him out of his misery, but it just makes me feel apathetic about Tommy. It's the final thing to break Tommy's mind, and from what I felt, the final thing to break my belief in him. Tommy and Arthur's relationship was so special because of the devotion they had, because we always felt they had each other's back no matter what. Like I said, if Arthur had just asked for it, I could understand, but as it is, it just left me feeling cold and unemotional about Tommy anymore.
This also explains Ada's death, SK wanted all of Tommy's siblings to die before he did. The scene itself was fine, it's the aftermath that is so jarringly incongruent that it made it absurd. Ada dies, Tommy sees her ghost from afar, hears its confirmation from a police officer, then there is the funny bar scene.
Tommy has just learned that his little sister, his last surviving sibling (again, ignoring Finn) has died, after she asked him to come help and he refused, and... we're immediately going to have a funny moment in a bar scene where Tommy makes jokes with a bunch of rowdy teenagers. It's so bizarre, I cannot get over how awkwardly timed this was. It's like SK wrote this scene long before any others as the Tommy the gangster comes back to his kingdom scene, put in lots of jokes and gags, only to then at the end shove it in between the Ada's death and seeing her body at the morgue scenes like you do with a library book you've decided you don't want to check out but you can't remember where its supposed to go on the book shelf. I get it, it's a movie and they had limited time, but seriously, after this point it just felt like a lampoon.
Actually, many moments made me feel like that, especially the ones involving Kaulo. I know a lot of people when watching Peaky Blinders want to believe that Tommy is just a horndog who will get it wherever he can, but in the show, there was always careful messaging around his choices of sexual trysts. He only ever made love with Grace (and Greta) he had fun with May, he had domination and control with Lizzie, Tatiana was his black mirror as well as a stand in for Grace, and everyone else was just an impartial means to an end. Being able to truly connect with someone, to love them, caress them, kiss passionately, etc. these were all things reserved solely with Grace (and likely Greta). The sex scene between Tommy and Kaulo isn't exactly on par with what he had with Grace, his face is often blank or sad through out it, but it often feels as if the overall tone is trying to make it romantic, especially for audience members who have no idea about the actual backstory of Tommy and Zelda/Kaulo, which is almost nothing. They kiss for long moments, there are memories of Zelda and Tommy from when they actually had sex in 1914, which again tries to make it seem like some wonderful memory. Tommy does come off as you could say feeble, therefore Kaulo is the dominant one. He also knows what her purpose is in coming here, he knows that she came to have Duke kill him, so I guess he has sex just to have sex when obviously he hasn't had it in a long time, which she states in the film. I suppose this goes along with his lack of desire for dominance anymore and that he gets to pat himself on the back that the last woman he slept with wasn't a prostitute whom he needed to pay in order to have sex with him (something that Chester Campbell said which has always haunted him).
The backstory of this just does not work because clearly SK doesn't remember about Greta. Greta Jurossi was the girl Tommy was in love with before he went to war and who died of consumption after he sat at her bedside for three months. This breaks his heart, and is supposed to be a contributor to his going to war as he soon leaves after. In season 6, we learned that two months before he went to war, he met a Romani girl at a gypsy fair and they had sex under a tree. This was how Duke was created. There's nothing really wrong with that if we assume that this was again a casual thing that meant nothing to Tommy in his grief. So it feels off and strange that in the movie, his memory of that moment is supposed to be happy and, as Kaulo says, remind him of the man he was when his mind was still clear. But Tommy's grief over Greta would have meant his mind wasn't clear. It all just feels like insubstantial fluff meant to make this sex scene have more meaning and his connection to Duke have more meaning when really, as fans of the show, we know there isn't anything actually there. Again, I'm sure this is fine for people who are watching these characters for the first time, but it just doesn't work for people who know the history and honestly I was disgusted that time was wasted on this that could have been devoted to characters we actually care about. This honestly felt like for the first time a sex scene just for the sake of a sex scene in peaky blinders. The cringiest part is the dialogue afterwards when Kaulo asks him if it was good or not and he replies, looking numb and bland again, "yeah, maybe" but she then tries to turn teasing by asking him again "Maybe? Maybe?" and he smiles sheepishly. This was where I asked in my head, "what am I watching? Is this Peaky Blinders The Romantic Comedy?" My skin is still crawling.
Speaking of characters we actually care about, there is very little of them. Charlie's almost complete absence is just borderline offensive particularly when the entire movie is about how much fathers need to be involved in their son's lives. We certainly see Tommy learn that about Duke, how he needed to actually show up and talk with him. I feel like a point they're trying to make is that Duke was on a dark path so needed Tommy to set him on the right one, but Charlie already being good and Tommy's light side (or being more like his mother) doesn't need him, would only be tainted by his presence. This seems obviously wrong. Even if Charlie is able to be a good person without his father, he's still going to feel a lot of trauma that his father abandoned him at 11 and, as far as we can tell, never spoke to him again even after he became a soldier. The movie is supposed to be about how much Tommy needed to give his sons certain messages about his life, such as the horrors of war he witnessed as a soldier or the depravity of choices he made as a gangster and how they ruined his life- yet that message is only conveyed to Duke. I'm sure it's in the book Tommy wrote so I guess Charlie will eventually read it, but personally I would have a hard time reading a book written by a father who chose to have no relationship with me after age 11, and yet who did go to the son he didn't know about just 7 years ago, and also named him his heir, and all of that.
I understand the metaphors behind the choice of Duke, he is supposed to be Tommy's dark side as mentioned in the film and Tommy is trying to save him from going down a dark path, doing what his father did not do for him. There is even a throwback allegory qhere Tommy continues writing his book on a barge, which is the answer to the dream he had in season 5 about driving the boat he was born on, his father's boat, and how "they'd never gotten off it". The film suggests that Tommy writing his memoir is his way of getting away from the cycle of his father, of preventing his sons from engaging in that same cycle. Because then they will learn from his mistakes.
But it felt particularly sad to see that Charlie is at Tommy's funeral (there is a soldier and Charles Shelby is in the credits), yet his pain and sadness at his father's passing, particularly without having tried to reach out to him, isn't touched on at all. He is only in the background, the camera never focusing on him so that we don't even know what he looks like. Only Duke's pain matters.
This also occurs with Grace's character, of whom we only see clear examples of at the very end when Tommy is dying and at his funeral. It was touching to see that memories of her were his most prolific. It felt like a slightly odd mix of memories at first, and I'm not completely sure why each one was chosen, for example, her turning around at the Garrison when he asks her about the questions she's been asking Arthur doesn't seem to have a lot of significance other than that she looks very pretty in it. But others, such as them both preparing for their date at the Cheltenham races- which Tommy should never have seen Grace's preparing for so cannot be a memory- signifies them preparing to meet again in the afterlife. They also included her about to confess to him about being a spy, I wonder if this is meant to signify his need to apologize to her. There is also a scene of them dancing together at their wedding, when she was about to ask him to not let anything happen that night and to leave the bad business behind. This would signify his guilt for not agreeing to it at the time. It seems like a deliberate choice that they did not go for solely happy, joyful moments between the two of which there were many examples, so I think they're trying to go instead for what Tommy expects to do when he meets with his family again, at least for some of his memories.
I felt incredibly sad that Charlie only got one memory while there were multiple of Ruby.
Other than that, it seems likely that he does have her painting in his room at the worn down mansion he lives at (is it Arrow? Arthur was clearly buried on the property as were others it seemed, so why bury him on property that Tommy was just randomly living in? Or is it just put in for convenience for the film?). We are never given a close up or a clear shot of the painting, but what little we can see shows blonde hair and facial features that seemed similar to Grace. But the lack of direct acknowledgement just feels like a slap to the face. This is the woman the film shows the most memories of when he's dying and yet there was no need to show her importance in the earlier part of the film? We could just do with seeing the top half of her face in the background when looking through arm holes and the like. Guess they couldn't get a decent painting of her so they just kept it as a background blur.
Other than that, there is Kaulo reading Tommy's palm and noting that his heart breaks twice on one line (referring to Greta and Grace). There is a slight reference to Grace when Tommy goes back to the Garrison and mentions that singing in pubs is a bad idea.
That's all. Oh they did make sure that he still had his Tommy Grace and Charlie tattoo on his arm, you can see it in the aftermath of the Kaulo sex scene. That was nice.
Honestly, by the end I felt bad for Duke and not really Tommy. I haven't seen Barry Keoghan in anything else, and I didn't know if I would like him as Duke, but he at least certainly sold me on the idea that all Duke really wanted was his father in his life. They say he doesn't have family which isn't exactly true since he has his aunt Kaulo, but it's clear what he really wanted and needed was a relationship with his father. Hence it actually feels very tragic when, just after coming into his life, Tommy leaves again, even asking Duke to kill him.
Yes, he does this so that Duke can turn take his place as king of the gypsies, but clearly Duke didn't want to kill his father and would have much preferred that Tommy try to live to have an actual relationship with him. I know Tommy is supposed to be too far gone for that, but it does feel like another let down for his son and for him as a father, and also just gives conflicting messages.
Tommy's life is supposed to be ruined by his ambition, gangster lifestyle, and experiences as a soldier in the war. So why come into Duke's life and not tell him that being the king of anything doesn't matter, only family does? That you can't be a peaky blinders without crossing moral lines that will ultimately destroy your soul? To tell Charlie to not go to war because it might change him from a good, innocent man to the broken one Tommy became?
Guess that must be in the book and as long as they read it, it will have way more effect than if their father actually reached out and tried to have a relationship with them for the last few years of his life.
Tommy had six years where he was supposed to change and be different and all he did was do drugs, get drunk, live with ghosts, staying away from his living family members as much as possible. His final action to go help his son didn't come from duty to his family because he refused Ada when she asked him to in order to help her. He only went after it was promised by a stranger that he would get peace, which I'm sure he understood to mean he could finally die.
They said the film was about family, but it feels like Tommy, even more than ever, did things for himself. Having him do even a great and noble act by saving the people of England from Germany bankrupting the country, just doesn't feel redeeming when it happens at the very last minute. It wouldn't redeem his own father, it wouldn't redeem Chester Campbell, and it doesn't redeem Tommy. Because we do care about his family relationships the most and if he had tried to correct those, he would have gone much farther in redemption than performing this grand deed.
The film insists on not redeeming Tommy, having him ride on a black horse, foregoing the white one he rode away on in season 6. They have him continue to do the wrong thing, he doesn't listen to Ada and she gets killed because of it and he kills his own brother Arthur. After confessing this to Ada's corpse, he says that "some good must come from this bad", meaning his plan to overthrow the Nazi's money scheme. But it just doesn't feel like enough, especially because Tommy is ultimately doing this for himself so that he can finally die.
I wouldn't even mind this unflinching take if it followed through to the end, but despite not being able to change in life, he fully expects to be with his family in the afterlife. We aren't shown it, but the film ends with him talking about it as we see his funeral, and so it feels like we are meant to believe it, that Tommy will finally get peace and happiness in death that he couldn't have while alive.
I find this a troubling message to send to soldiers and those who have dealt with ptsd. That, hey, maybe death is the only solution and also, if you just can't stop doing bad things in life, don't worry, that will all go away in the afterlife.
I felt exhausted and ambivalent and just done with the series by the end of the film. I got the feeling that it too needed to be put out of its misery.
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