‘Urchin’ Review: Harris Dickinson’s Directorial Debut Is a Devastating, Delicate Drama

When you’re a film critic who sees film after film and reviews them over the course of a busy festival, there can be a tendency to leave yourself out of the picture in order to prioritize being more analytical and detached about what it is you’re seeing. There is no doing that with actor Harris Dickinson’s debut feature “Urchin.”

A drama about a man who goes from living on the streets of London to trying to start his life over again and break free from the stranglehold of addiction after a stint in prison, it’s the first film where the final moments made my breath catch in my throat as I began to tear up at Cannes this year. This is no small achievement. It’s the type of moment that serves as a testament to just how confidently written and directed it is as it takes what was an otherwise simple yet still effective film then transforms it into something more unexpectedly shattering.

Even as this year’s festival has already benefited from a great instance of an actor making a memorable directorial debut in Kristen Stewart’s evocative “The Chronology of Water,” Dickinson’s “Urchin” is more than worth holding in the same esteem. Going even further, while Dickinson has drawn some comparisons to the work of the great director Mike Leigh, the film that was most rattling around my head while watching this was Danny Boyle’s “Trainspotting.” This isn’t because it utilizes narration or music in a similar way — it’s entirely without the former — but because of the soul to it. Both are films about deeply flawed people trying to do better, only to find themselves continually getting drawn back into the same old painful patterns and making the same mistakes.

This all rests on the shoulders of a fantastic Frank Dillane who doesn’t just play Mike, he fully embodies him. From the opening scene where we see him awaken on the street, unable to sleep because of a shouting street preacher who is hawking bibles, we feel the frustration and agony that comes from not even being able to have a moment of peace to yourself. Dillane will likely be known to most for his brief role as a young Tom Riddle in the film “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” but you immediately forget any such history and instead get completely wrapped up in Mike’s day-to-day life.

He tries to get money for food from uncaring Londoners who stare right through him, is kicked out of a restaurant where he is trying to charge his phone before falling asleep, and finally manages to find a place to rest in a parking garage. His life is then about drifting through each day before he gets in a confrontation with another resident of the streets (who is notably played by Dickinson himself) after he stole his wallet. When Mike is then assisted by a stranger who breaks up the fight and offers to buy him food, he waits until the two are alone. He then attacks and robs him.

It’s a sudden moment of violence that the film spends the rest of the runtime gently interrogating. Rather than seeking to alienate us from Mike or reduce him to someone to look down on, the film simply observes him with all his many complications. Dickinson is not interested in absolving his protagonist for what he’s done nor, it seems, is Mike himself. As he serves his time, gets clean, starts a job, and initially builds a new life for himself, he’s open about what it is that he did. While it’s clear he did it out of desperation for a fix, this is not something that he uses to let himself off the hook. He still hurt another person and now he will have to figure out how to carry on after this.

Shot with an emphasis on character in its frequent close ups, including an emotionally complicated scene built around restorative justice that is one of many where the film knocks you sideways, we also get glimpses of people within a system who are trying to help someone like Mike yet are still, along with him, falling short. This is then juxtaposed with the moments where he retreats into his mind, with several strikingly shot sequences that take us deep into what appears to be a cave far out in the forest. It’s a mesmerizing way of expressing the peace that Mike desires most yet is unable to stay in for very long. No matter what he does, it always feels many miles from his own world.

As Dickinson then traces the fits and starts of Mike trying to imagine a new future for himself, he withholds much about his background. We are briefly told that he is adopted and hear the reaction of a likely parental figure on the other end of a phone call he makes from prison, though this is essentially it. Everything else comes from Dillane’s delicate and devastating performance.

It’s not about making him palatable to us, as if only people who are without flaw are deserving of compassion. We instead get to take in the full complicated person and still deeply care for him every step of the way. It’s an intimate performance. This is a full character that Dillane and Dickinson have built from the ground up, where the little details of how he reacts to things can tear right through when you least expect it.

This includes a scene where he is not even at the center of the frame, but out of focus at a critical moment. As you see him lift his head in response to information he’s been given, put it back down again, and remain still, you can feel every crushing pound of the tension that is playing out inside him. It’s a remarkable moment that Dickinson constructs which also marks the moment where everything begins falling apart. Where lesser films could make this feel like a trite inevitability, “Urchin” was so patient in the buildup to it that it makes the preceding fall that much more devastating.

This extends all the way through to the final sequence that blows the doors off the entire film. This is where “Trainspotting” again feels like an influence, but there is also a fantastic final shot that is closer to something like “Aftersun.” Just as these are high points of praise, Dickinson also does much that he can call his own. It cements the film as a breathtaking work of overwhelming humanity and a debut for the ages.