One in a million!!
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fabGirl — 19 years ago(July 03, 2006 05:57 PM)
Im studying film at university at the moment and we did a lecture on Auteur theory.
Mike Leigh was not mentioned, it was Woody Allen and Ridley Scott.
I agree with you on Scott and Woody, total croud pleasers. No passion for risk taking.
Anyway, Leigh dominated our lectures on realism, social realism in particular. -
cedrus-libani — 19 years ago(January 12, 2007 08:14 AM)
I agree with the OP, and would only add that Leigh belongs to a brave handful of filmmakers (e.g. Mexican director Arturo Ripstein and the late Luis Bunuel) who refuse to romanticize, patronize, or condescend to poor and disadvantaged people. His body of work reveals his enormous sympathy and compassion for people who, beneath their motley exteriors, are no more nor less worthy than you or I.
I'm also very struck by his insistence on addressing political and ideological issues not in theoretical terms but rather in terms of the routines and rituals of the way real, everyday people conduct their real, everyday lives. He rejects all idealized, abstracted, intellectualized understandings of the social world, believing instead in the importance of the ties that bind people together.