Rate Mike Leigh's Films
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RabidAnchovy345 — 17 years ago(January 18, 2009 01:49 PM)
I finally just got into Leigh. While I find his films always interesting, most of the ones I've seen so far never quite come together; the whole is not as great as its parts. The acting is almost always top-notch, though. Maybe second viewings will amend this. Any way, of the films I've seen so far:
- "Happy-Go-Lucky" (the first film of his I saw and still the one I like the best)
- "Naked" (this one really jerks you around a lot, la Cassavetes)
- "Career Girls" (don't know why people rank this lower than most of his othersb68 I liked these girlsand kudos to Andy Serkis' scene-stealing performance)
- "Vera Drake" (very solid but left me hoping for a little more)
- "All or Nothing" (became rather unbalanced after Rory's near-heart attack; the other 2 families completely disappeared)
- "Topsy-Turvy" (perhaps his most accessible film; Serkis was hilarious in this [as the bouncy, balding choreographer] as well)
- "Secrets and Lies" (I have to admit Brenda Blethyn's incessant snivelling started to annoy me a bit; everything else was good, though)
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somesunnyday — 17 years ago(January 19, 2009 09:43 PM)
Vera Drake (2004) - 7/10
All or Nothing (2002) - 8/10
Topsy-Turvy (1999) - haven't seen
Career Girls (1997) - haven't seen
Secrets & Lies (1996) - 8/10
Naked (1993) - 9/10
Life Is Sweet (1990) - 8/10
High Hopes (1988) - 8/10
Bleak Moments (1971) - 1016d0/10
plus!
Meantime - 10/10
Hard Labour - 10/10
Nuts in May - 8/10
Happy Go Lucky - 8/10 -
grchereck — 17 years ago(March 12, 2009 12:46 PM)
Vera Drake (2004) - 10/10
All or Nothing (2002) - 7/10
Topsy-Turvy (1999) - 9/10
Career Girls (1997) - 7/10
Secrets & Lies (1996) - 9/10
Naked (1993) - haven't seen
Life Is Sweet (1990) - 10/10 (my #1 favorite)
High Hopes (1988) - 10/10
Bleak Moments (1971) - haven't seen
Plus:
Happy Go Lucky - 8/10 (just saw this one on DVD)
Abigail's Party - 8/10
"I know I'm not normal but I'm trying to change!" ~ Muriel's Wedding -
podwilliams — 16 years ago(April 26, 2009 02:23 AM)
For me, of those Leigh films looked upon favourably among fellow fans, 10 in particular tend to crop up in conversation. Of those,
Bleak Moments
,
Naked
,
Secrets and Lies
and
Happy-Go-Lucky
are my favourite features (with an honourable mention for
High Hopes
). Of his TV work,
Nuts in May
,
Abigail's Party
and
Meantime
are essential viewing. Of those I haven't seen,
Hard Labour
and
The Kiss of Death
(both made for the
Play for Today
strand) are top of the list.
The lion and the calf shall lie down together, but the calf won't get much sleep. -
grchereck — 16 years ago(September 12, 2009 03:06 PM)
"Of his TV work, Nuts in May, Abigail's Party and Meantime are essential viewing."
I haven't seen Meantime yet (I hope to do so soon), but I would agree with the first two.
I've finally gotten to see:
Hard Labour 7/10
Nuts In May 9/10 (hysterical, easily Mike's funniest work)
The Kiss Of Death 8/10
Who's Who 8/10
Grown-Ups 9/10 (probably my favorite of the TV projects)
Home Sweet Home 8/10
"I know I'm not normal but I'm trying to change!" ~ Muriel's Wedding
Alice Army -
grchereck — 16 years ago(September 19, 2009 05:39 PM)
Cool.
I just got to see "Meantime." Rather depressing (the parents especially drove me crazy), but I loved Tim Roth (so adorable) and Phil Daniels as the brothers, and Gary Oldman was great as the skinhead friend.
"I know I'm not normal but I'm trying to change!" ~ Muriel's Wedding
Alice Army -
podwilliams — 16 years ago(September 24, 2009 06:46 AM)
Meantime
deserves its status as a classic, I think (even if does reveal the problems I have with much of Leigh's work - which I've highlighted here:
http://www.imdb.com/board/20005139/board/flat/30592998
).
I've seen
Who's Who
now (thanks to 'Lovefilm' and the Mike Leigh Box Set). Excellent - brilliant performances all round. I was especially taken with Phil Davis, who creates the kind of articulate, 'ordinary' character that I hadn't come to expect from him, as he tended to play more lugubrious, less articulate characters later on.
The lion and the calf shall lie down together, but the calf won't get much sleep. -
grchereck — 16 years ago(September 24, 2009 05:58 PM)
You've got some good points.
I think the point Leigh often makes in his films about social climbers is that they do so at the expense of their own humanity the higher-up in the world they go (or try to go), it seems the more selfish and arrogant they become (the character of Alan in "Who's Who" is a great example), whereas the least well-to-do characters seem to care the most about other people. That may be true a lot of the time in the real world, but to suggest that that's always they way things are is like saying that upward mobility is a bad thing in itself that arrogance and stupidity are natural by-products of it (rather than character flaws that anybody can have).
(I love your sig quote, by the way
)
"I know I'm not normal but I'm trying to change!" ~ Muriel's Wedding
Alice Army -
podwilliams — 16 years ago(September 25, 2009 02:30 AM)
Paradoxically perhaps, I think it makes more sense to look at the political sensibilities that have informed Leigh's work than it does to put his characters (or the all too real individuals people are alluding to here) under the microscope, as it were. Leigh so often sets up working class characters with 'ideas above their station' for a fall, disappointed perhaps that the working class didn't trudge obediently down the road towards state socialism. The attachment, in Britain, to the redefinition of socialism in the 1930s as state ownership of key industries led many leftists, in the decades that followed, to see those who had no illusions in cost-cutting state administrators, low paying councils, health authorities, bus and rail networks as betraying their class, when, in fact, the equally forlorn option of turning to the 'freedom' and 'individualism' of the Thatcher government's 'popular capitalism' merely betrayed the failure of Labourism and state socialism to match even the most basic of working class aspirations. (The enduring myths about individualism and collectivism in 80s Britain are taken apart in this brilliant 1996 essay by James Heartfield:
http://drpod.blogspot.com/2009/09/communal-self-sacrifice.html
.)
I think this provides some of the context to the way in which Leigh often, if not always, portrays those who dare to 'get on' with so little sympathy.
Having said that, after finally getting around to see 5 or 6 of his films I'd never seen before (all of which were excellent) it looks more and more like I'm overstating my case now, with only a small number of Leigh's films triggering the thoughts I've outlined above.
On that positive note, Neil Davenport, a superb commentator on class and culture (
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/author/Neil Davenport/
), can't praise
Abigail's Party
enough, defending its compassionate core against those who would suggest it's 'laying into the aspirational, suburban masses':
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/4032/
The lion and the calf shall lie down together, but the calf won't get much sleep. -
podwilliams — 16 years ago(September 25, 2009 02:24 PM)
You can take Abigail out of the chipshop but you can't take the chipshop out of Abigail.
Hmm, substitute any ethnic epithet for your euphemism for proletarian - 'chipshop' - and look what we have.
The lion and the calf shall lie down together, but the calf won't get much sleep. -
podwilliams — 16 years ago(September 26, 2009 09:07 AM)
I didn't miss them, but was instead petrified in the presence of your 'know your place', quasi-Nietzschean declaration about remaining rooted to one's origins. Squeeth, who, this side of a social revolution, would actually choose to be working class? This recalls the anti-humanism of the environmentalist movement, whose visions of 'sustainable development' and 'fair trade' consign millions to 'stick to their roots', which, for greens, translates as the bucolic idyll of being 'closer to nature', while for the vast majority of the earth's population it means being closer to death.
The grasping opportunism that we're all aware of, and which Mike Leigh has caricatured in the aristocratic pretensions of the 'nouveau-riche' and aspirant petit-bourgeoisie, is one thing, but the fact that a desire to want more, to improve oneself, to escape one's sociological origins can be perverted by the ideological and cultural norms of bourgeois society is not an arguments to 'stay true' to a class (in the sense in which you've suggested), unless of course, like all moral and political conservatives, left and right, you just don't want things to change (something that, when listening to Leigh's DVD commentaries, he's guilty of more than most).
The lion and the calf shall lie down together, but the calf won't get much sleep.