“Very, very tired.” These are the three words that Steve (Cillian Murphy) uses to describe himself to the documentary crew that’s visiting Stanton Wood, the school where he’s a head teacher. The student body is comprised of troubled young men who are struggling to figure out who they’ll become. Based on Max Porter’s bestselling novel Shy, Steve is a film that spans one day in the life of these boys and their teachers, offering a glimpse into the ways in which we can never really know what’s going on in another person’s life. And the teacher who is doing everything to save his students might also need to figure out how to save himself.
Joining Murphy at the heart of the film is Jay Lycurgo as Shy, a student who’s never seen without his headphones, which play the drum-and-bass soundtrack to his life. The three words Shy uses to define himself are “angry and bored,” and while it’s clear that he means it when he says it, it’s also clear that encapsulating anyone’s life in the span of three words is an impossibility. The only way to understand who we are is by being present in each other’s lives, paying attention to what’s going unsaid, and refusing to look away or edit out the hard parts — no matter how much it hurts.
Below, Murphy, Lycurgo, Porter (who adapted his novel for the screen), actor and rapper Simbi Ajikawo, and director Tim Mielants talk about the film. As Mielants says, it can be “a starting point for discussion and contemplation.”
Set in the mid-’90s, Steve takes place at Stanton Wood, a fictional school in the UK funded by the government and occupying a shambolic privately owned manor. The school is meant to offer a home to troubled young men, give them an education, and prepare them to enter the adult world with a solid foundation. There’s an intrinsic hopefulness to the venture, but also a weight to it — the staff understand how high the cost will be if they don’t succeed in helping these kids. This duality infuses the film: The students have an almost anarchic energy even as they work to control their impulses and be the best versions of themselves. As for the teachers, nobody embodies this paradox more than Steve, who’s both an excellent and caring mentor for his students and also grappling with his own struggles — including addiction, guilt, and pain.
Even the era in which this film is set is filled with cognitive dissonance. As Porter tells Netflix about what it meant to be young at this time in the UK, “It was that kind of Cool Britannia era — but what did Cool Britannia mean to a bunch of really unhappy kids who’ve made mistakes and been failed repeatedly, then met someone who cares for them in a way that it does matter to them? Do they feel they’re in 1996? No, they’re just living their lives.”
Of course, how to live a life can be the most simple or most difficult thing to figure out. For Shy, the challenge is in feeling alone — and also in coming to terms with what’s brought him to the school in the first place. What would it mean if Stanton Wood were no longer a place he could call home?
The school is receiving a good amount of attention, thanks to a documentary crew that’s on-site, interviewing students and staff and capturing everyone in their most vulnerable moments. It’s revealed that Stanton Wood will need to find a new location if it’s going to continue operating. This is unlikely, so the school will need to shut down, leaving its students without a comparable place to learn and leaving its staff with a surplus of good intentions and nowhere to direct their energies.
An urgency infuses the staff once it’s clear that the school will be closing. They want to figure out how to still be of help to all the kids who desperately need it. But they also understand that there’s no way to fix the problem in the moment — any solution will have to come with time and with better systems than any one person or institution can offer.
As another teacher, Amanda (Tracey Ullman), tells the documentary crew, “[Stanton Wood] was supposed to be a center for excellence.” But after lots of budget cuts, it’s “down to the bare bones and we’re just limping along, and it’s always permanent crisis mode. And Steve feels bad about it, and he shouldn’t. And I get it, because I feel bad about it, and I shouldn’t. But I think that’s why we work, because both of us are really locked into this place for better or for worse. And it’s almost always worse.”
Meanwhile, there are other things to address, like what’s happening right in front of the teachers, in the present — not in a future they can’t control.
One of the newer teachers at Stanton Wood, Shola (Simbi Ajikawo) describes herself succinctly and accurately: “Focused. Dedicated. Flexible.” She’s a calming and quiet presence who radiates control despite being closer in age to the students than some of her fellow staff. However unflappable she may appear, Shola is also dealing with difficulties of her own, including sexual harassment from one of the students. She must navigate how best to do her job while also taking care of herself. It’s an almost impossible tightrope to walk, and Ajikawo says that playing the role led her to have a different perspective about what it means to be a teacher.
“You think their life is centered around you,” she says. “Playing this role has allowed me to humanize teachers a lot more and understand them a lot more. I do believe some of them truly care and truly want to understand kids and what they’re going through ... And that’s hard to do with a bunch of teenagers that are figuring themselves out — and then having your own life stuff on the side.”
Ajikawo, who’s also known as Little Simz in her acclaimed music career, wrote a song specifically for the film, called “Don’t Leave Too Soon.” She says, “I was blown away by Jay’s performance and I wanted to write a song for Shy, just because I feel like he just desperately wants to be seen. And maybe he doesn’t know that’s what he wants, but it was very clear to me. So I wanted to make a song for him that shows him, ‘I see you.’ ”
Shy first appears listening to his Walkman, getting high before class, full of an infectious and joyful spirit — but it can also disappear in an instant. He’s clearly won a special place in Steve’s heart, but that doesn’t protect him from pain in other parts of his life.
Early in the film, Shy is seen on the phone with his mother, who tells him that she’s going to cease contact with him, despite his pleas that she reconsider. It’s hard to reconcile the Shy who’s obsessed with drum and bass and unafraid to stand up to a pompous MP visiting the school, with the Shy who admits to stabbing his stepfather in the hand. Then there’s the Shy who throws furniture in anger and who loads up his backpack with rocks and steps into a pond on the school’s campus, backpack on his back, and steps into the water.
And yet, it is all one person, a person who, Lycurgo says he recognized instantly. He says, “I remember Tim asking me in the second round of casting, ‘What do you think of Shy?’ And I said, ‘I just know this guy, I know him from me. I know my friends are like this, and I’ve just been surrounded by him my whole life.’ ”
Murphy recalls the process for casting Lycurgo, saying, “We had all seen the tape, and it broke everybody’s heart. Everyone was weeping, and we knew that he was the kid. Jay has such a mature and complex approach to film acting — he’s really a stunning actor for someone so young.”
The sensitivity Lycurgo exhibits as Shy leaves an indelible impression. It’s impossible not to want Shy to have a second chance — and as many chances as it might take to figure out how to navigate the world and his own pain. As many chances as it takes to stop him from taking one more step into the water and to find someone to really listen to his story, and to really listen to what he’s saying.
And, the film allows for that possibility: Shy does not sink to the bottom of the pond, to the depths of his pain. He makes it out. He makes it to another day.
In a film that’s filled with pain, Steve is hardly immune — even if he tries to suppress it with alcohol and painkillers. In fact, the head teacher is a crucible of sorts for his students’ struggles — though he ultimately can’t take all the pressure.
Steve’s respect for his students as individuals is evident from his very first interaction with Shy, and he talks about all his students with tenderness, care, and specificity. Unlike the documentary crew’s superficial and frankly exploitative interest in the school and its residents, Steve cares about his students and their futures — more, perhaps, than he cares about his own.
For as much as Steve might be able to help others, he’s destroying himself. He’s wracked by guilt over a car accident he was in that resulted in the death of a child, and he punishes himself even as he attempts to save other people.
As Steve reaches bottom, scrounging on the floor for a bottle of oxycodone, Amanda tells him he needs to accept that he’s not responsible for all the pain in the world. “It’s not your fault,” she says to him. “Somebody died, and you’re numbing,” she tells him. “I want you to say it’s not your fault. You’re in agony, you really are, and you can’t stop it, and you can’t numb it.”
This message is reflective of the heart of the film — a reminder that pain can’t be repressed, that it will always bubble back to the surface if it’s ignored. It’s essential to confront it head-on and to trust each other enough to show our soft, wounded sides. As Mielants says, “Vulnerability is the strongest weapon we possess as human beings.” It’s only through vulnerability that we build trust and repair what’s broken.
At the end of Steve, we see a group of people who have all experienced pain, who know the only way out is through it, and who are determined to help each other on that journey. Steve says, “I want all of these lads to know that there’s something else … That there’s infinite things … The disaster changes shape and it becomes tomorrow’s joy, or whatever.” Steve knows that the hurt and trauma might not disappear entirely, but it can be outweighed by everything else — by music, by love, by life — as long as we pay attention to each other.
“It’s enough, isn’t it?” Steve makes the case that it is.
