The Mike Leigh Poll

Jarvis or Leigh?

Naked is so amazing. Lesley Sharp is the best

so good

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAo-43C2xnc

Turned 75 yesterday... revisting his London locations:

http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/features/mike-leigh-london-locations

Meantime out on Criterion. Jarvis Cocker's fumbling interview with Leigh is a minor classic; he still dresses like it's 1983.

OTM. I actually liked the interview more than the movie (which I thought was just ok).

(that said, the movie is already looking better to me in the rearview)

Life is Sweet wrecked me. Beautiful movie. god, that scene with Wendy and Nicola

the tim spall restaurant stuff ruins it imo. it's just so stupidly grotesque.

grotesque? i'd agree that it's kinda shoehorned in, the real meat of the movie is with the kids, but that scene isn't even that long, and idk i found it heartbreaking. but idk i am from the USA

i just didn't believe that person would exist so it made the rest of it weird. alison steadman is amazing as is jane horrocks who's virtually unrecognisable.

love life is sweet so much

Happy go lucky is my absolute fave

Peterloo is a bit of a dud, sadly. I really wanted to like it. It's full of very dubious expositional dialogue and wonkily old fashioned cartoonish acting, for e.g. men staggering like they'd learned a staggering-motion by watching a silent melodrama. Leigh is also tone-deaf, as usual, when presenting upper class characters. Caricature barely covers what he's doing here and it sits uneasily with everything else.

Re: the expositional dialogue you get lots of scenes with mill workers talking about the corn laws in ways that just don't convince (they are actually talking to the cinema audience rather than each other) and one bafflingly ill-judged scene where a magistrate reads a letter about northern insurrection to his maid who then wanders off saying "oh dear" /scene ends. It's actually funny how bad this scene is but there are lots of equivalent scenes that aren't quite as bad.

The scenes around and during the massacre itself are just badly directed, there's no other way to put it. They had barely any impact at all, badly conceived, badly directed. Leigh was just out of his depth here.

It looks absolutely beautiful, for the most part. The colours are wonderful. There's some bad cgi in there though.

There’s video review of this on the Times website where the two film critics are just incredulous at how bad this film is.

http://thequietus.com/articles/25608-mike-leigh-beyond-the-hits

for some reason I was thinking it was Loach who was making the Peterloo movie, which definitely would have contained lots of dubious expositional dialogue as well. I think think this type of movie needs a Peter Watkins type approach or - no pun intended - it will be more corny history drama, of which there is no shortage of.

It makes you years for that kind of invention or for what Bill Douglas brought to the Tolpuddle Martyrs story in Comrades.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_I91gVdG2_Q

this is how you do it

I’ve never even heard of that, thanks.

I’m also thoroughly sick of seeing that Vincent Franklin guy in everything.

Interesting Quietus article, and always keen to see thoughts on 'Another Year' . Find this a bit much to take however:

Gerri has professional satisfaction and has made a peace with her age; Mary is clinging to a kind of femininity and sexuality that isn’t really a possibility anymore, something that’s maybe already left.

Pedantry perhaps, but I feel like Another Year was definitely a 'hit' for Leigh

Yes, I really liked it as a film..I was very sympathetic to Mary and found Tom and Gerri a bit cold and self-satisfied.

for some reason I was thinking it was Loach who was making the Peterloo movie, which definitely would have contained lots of dubious expositional dialogue as well

Fwiw, I'd like to see a Loach take on this. His Spanish civil war film includes lots of exposition but is still very good and moving. I do think it owes a lot to Watkins though, in a very respectful way.

Something about the hand held camera in the debating scenes in Land and Freedom makes it feel very vital.

Also, Loach has a way of depicting the people in power as evil because they just are evil. Leigh's only way of depicting that is to make them catoonishly ridiculous. Although we love in a world where Jacob RM is taken seriously so you could say it's understandable.

Live*

that too though, sometimes

I sometimes think that the debating scenes in land and Freedom are some of the best stuff Loach has ever done. And that that whole sequence, the exciting and tragic liberation of the village, followed by the dull and frustrating debate, is one of the best depictions of politics in film.

what does everyone think of Topsy-Turvy? thinking of checking that one out this week...

I think it's my favorite of all of his films

it's top five

splendid!

my favorite is Life is Sweet... if only for that final scene between Nikola and her mom

Career Girls is still one of his best imo. It's the energy of Katrin Cartlidge, that believable dynamic with the timid Lynda Steadman character. It's just so endearing and appealingly modest, and probably best of all, the pathos isn't overplayed with Ricky, nor the eccentricity of the main characters. Ricky's still a wretched sod and could probably do with a more sympathetic, rounded characterisation than just being some hapless, handicapped foil, but he's someone you can imagine existing in their world, that people of their age might view as entertainment or be casually callous towards, or just misunderstand without it necessarily being an indictment on their character, because he's just kind of there and they're all awkward misfits. Leigh doesn't make him particularly likeable either, instead of patronising and treating Hannah and Annie didactically. The thing with Leigh too is that for all his on the nose caricatures and clumsy melodrama, and Jed massively otm upthread, when he gets it right he leaves the right sort of ambiguity with characterisation, such as with Sally Hawkins in Happy Go Lucky, and Mary, Gerri and Tom in Another Year. It's hard to know exactly where he stands in Another Year, but it's strongly hinted that Gerri and Tom and their son are quite smug and casually haughty, but just as easily Mary can be seen as pathetic, envious and resentful. Maybe Leigh doesn't see it that way, perhaps he's thinking simply that Mary is a misunderstood, downtrodden, mistreated friend whom sees the light at the end, but I doubt that.

yeah career girls is one that didn't impress me much upon release but when i watched it again a couple of years ago i was surprised how much i liked it.

I really like the Career Girls score too, which I've just discovered is by Marianne Jean-Baptiste

Topsy-Turvy is perfection. I can watch it again and again

I am not that keen on his historical ones, even Topsy-Turvy I don't really get, but Career Girls is probably the film of his that I've rewatched more than any other, it really captures a time and a place so well, and Katrin Cartlidge is just brilliant, never got why it was considered minor.

I didn't consider it minor so much as wretched when I saw it 20 years ago. I think I hated it because Katrin Cartlidge seemed a cartoon character. But I'm now super-interested to see it again given what you say and how I think about my 25-year/old self.

Wow, Winstanley is by one of the It Happened Here guys. Thanks!

From that Quietus article:

Arguably the most memorable of Leigh’s female collaborators, Alison Steadman, would meet Leigh during work on Grown Ups – beginning not only a marriage but a creative partnership that would spawn, amongst others, Abigail’s Party and Life is Sweet.

Am I missing something here, or is that a clunking mistake?

Yes, I think it must mean Hard Labour rather than Grown Ups.

I didn't consider it minor so much as wretched when I saw it 20 years ago. I think I hated it because Katrin Cartlidge seemed a cartoon character. But I'm now super-interested to see it again given what you say and how I think about my 25-year/old self.

― Alba, Tuesday, November 6, 2018 4:15 AM (six hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I remember the criticism of the time being that he'd workshopped the characters until they had ridiculous amounts of ticks and quirks, but I knew people who behaved just like that in real life.

Wow, Winstanley is by one of the It Happened Here guys

by both of them. i only wish the Youtube was in slightly better quality.

There's a BFI Blu-Ray of it too (haven't seen it myself, but I imagine the picture quality is superior to the YouTube print)

yeah the BluRay's been on my wishlist for ages

Fopp currently have a BFI sale on the go - Blus at six quid a pop - but annoyingly Winstanley isn't part of the promotion

little-known fact: I own a Career Girls t shirt

― Indiana Morbs and the Curse of the Ivy League Chorister (Dr Morbius)

Still got it?

I was enthralled by Brenda Blethyn in Secrets & Lie, but no one else is at her level in this movie. Timothy Spall especially, who has a few very clunky "big," basically greek chorus lines - he even says "Secrets and lies!" at the end.