The Rule Of Three: Its Mike Leigh

Nuts in May completely brilliant (esp. when Keith starts wielding a branch). Abigail's Party also - somehow here the OTTness works. Naked unique and starngely I can't remember how I rated it - think I had some kind of moral objection that I probably wouldn't have today.

Life is Sweet + Secrets and Lies - humane, lovely, sad.

Secrets & Lies: BRILLIANT

Career Girls: RUB, although the welsh bloke is BRILLIANT

haven't seen any others.

Pete may be right that he is as good as his actors, in that he does allow them a lot of freedom, and they develop the script in improvisation with him, which gives them a much greater weight in the outcome than usual.

Peter Bradshaw in today's Guardian is fairly dismissive of the 'caricature' allegations, for what it's worth. He doesn't address the other major regular criticism, of being 'patronising', except implicitly rejecting it while addressing the first.

He co-wrote 'Baddiel's Syndrome' -> it is worth nothing.

I though Topsy Turvy was great after all and thinkl that sometimes it might be interesting if Leigh lifted himself out of the "gutter" to stretch his range a touch.

Sarah kept falling asleep and then waking up and saying "is anything happening yet?". Apparently I was laughing all the way through, though I don't remember.

Okay, well I'll watch it when I'm on my own then.

And Alfred Molina!!

"Vera Drake", incidentally, is amazing and worth seeing whoever you are.

did someone see "happy go lucky"?
should i stay or should i go?

I saw it a couple of weeks back.

It stuck in my mind for a bit - mainly because of the acting skills, especially Eddie Marsan as the Driving Instructor.

it's a bit grating but its heart is in the right place.

I don't take what Mike Leigh says at face value about Poppy being a happy character we ought to admire.

To me, she's yet another of his characters that's got trapped in a certain way of speaking and acting and the film is kind of about that.

I did find the (pre-bonk) pub scene with the social worker completely cringe-inducing.

the critics generally loved the movie, but the users comments in the "time out" review shows most people mainly hated it.

http://www.timeout.com/film/reviews/85152/happy-go-lucky.html?cpage=1&ccat=11#top_comments_main

a paradox, so to speak

not for the first time,of course, but the first for a Leigh movie.

I agree with 'Harriet':

...I'd describe myself as a Mike Leigh fan but this movie, from the story (or lack of one) to the two dimensional characters (in some cases one dimensional), and the unrealistic dialogue and acting seemed by turns tediously shallow and surprisingly irritating. I initially tolerated Poppy's exaggerated, monotone chirpiness because I guessed that there lay something behind it, an event or neurosis from her past that it was a reaction to, which would be revealed and form the basis of the story and bring the film and Poppy to life but that was not to be....

i liked 'naked' a lot when i saw it, 'meantime' almost as much. haven't seen anything else.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51ECTR9Q7QL.jpg

'everyone just say what you think'

Loved this movie.

CAD I will see it with you! I am super excited for this movie!

― dr bronner's new and improved peppermint (soda), Friday, December 26, 2014 9:20 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hey maybe we should do this! appears to open on the 9th here.

Didn't know that Ruskin was Elmer Fudd about his r's -- reminds me that I haven't read his art crit since my college Victorian lit class.

needs theater viewing fer chrissakes

agreed

Yeah, this was really impressive.

interview

First of all, what was for sure, is that I wasn’t gonna start at the beginning.... So here we are, spanning 26 years, you know. I was not turned on by the idea of the film starting with a baby being born in ‘75. Apart from anything else, we’d have had to find a small fat boy who looked like Tim Spall, who could draw and paint. I find that very boring, really. You don’t need to go through all that thing of having a younger actor and then changing to an older actor. I can’t be bothered with all that, and it’s not necessary, because the thing is to drop anchor. We’ve managed, I think, to put in backstory information laid into what you see without it being crass and crude, you know. Apart from anything else, it’s just to allow Tim Spall, within his acting range, to go through that phase. I think it’s more interesting to come in when it’s all happening, and then to move on from there. Anyway, all the interesting things that I wanted to deal with were from his father’s death, his relationship with Mrs. Booth, certain famous events, like the famous event that did actually happen, in the Royal Academy, where he puts a red blob on a painting; all that actually happened. And other things, and also that period, most importantly, where he was being more radical, and people were reviling him, not least amongst whom Queen Victoria, who loathed his stuff! There are no Turners in the royal collection to this day in London.

http://penguinrandomhouse.ca/hazlitt/feature/thats-fairly-silly-question-interview-mike-leigh

OTM about starting from childhood being boring -- a thing I hate not only about biopics but the whole genre of biography.

It's a small thing, but for some reason I keep thinking about the Ruskin scene, the moment where Ruskin is describing the ocean painter he finds boring (claude something, forget the name), and Turner is kind of sitting there thinking the guy is full of hot air and finally weighs in that "Claude ___ was a genius," and the other painters agree. It just rang true for me somehow, the way there's always that artist's artist that the artists speak about in reverential tones but not many other people seem to get, someone otherwise out of fashion or "boring," but who does something subtle or technical that other artists appreciate. Anyway it just seems like a good example of a way that the movie gets artists right where most other movies about artists fail.

I loved this movie.

Really want to go see it again while still in theaters, if it is. Probably won't get a chance.

it hasn't even opened in South Florida.

In that scene there is also that flippant, pie comment from Spall, another even smaller thing but still good!

Man alive, Ruskin himself was an artist and a very great one at that.

The envy and suspicion among artists who are generally on friendly terms was also portrayed beautifully, subtly. Plus the scenes of his father buying pigment, grinding pigment, stretching canvas... All things I had read about Turner's old father actually doing and not quite understanding how he could get his dad, of all people, to do such laborious work. It was beyond poignant for me to see this come to life.

I wouldn't call Ruskin a great artist, an influential thinker and accomplished design artist maybe?

excellent writer and terrifying husband

"There have been various representations of Ruskin and they are always, by definition, incredibly dull. … I just thought it would be a good wheeze to render him in this way," Leigh states. "There is no suggestion on my part that that is a documentary representation of Ruskin."

It's a shame that people may see this and assume Ruskin was some kind of fool. I've no idea what Leigh means by "by definition... dull".

The Ruskin scenes were really funny. I'm so glad they were in there.

I watched the movie bearing the criticism in mind and I didn't see a fool so much as an artful (heh) hustler, ponderous like many mid Victorian men and thus typical.

An overindulged spoilt Edwardian child was my reading, a prodigy ruined by his parents, but still pretty fucking good at what he does.

^^ this

"Edwardian" means seventy years later, no?

I should have said Georgian, sorry.

I didn't think it was portraying Ruskin as a fool, just a bit of a self-sniffing windbag.

needs theater viewing fer chrissakes

― touch of a love-starved cobra (Dr Morbius), Monday, January 5, 2015 4:33 AM (2 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Absolutely. Finally saw this this weekend -- it's just now made it to our flyover screens. Really enjoyed it all the way through. Spall is so much fun to watch, getting multiple meanings out of every grunt and snort. No idea if that's anywhere close to the real Turner, but that doesn't matter, it works for the film's conception of him. And the way the landscapes and seascapes are shot not so much to look like his paintings as to suggest what he saw in them that he carried through to his paintings -- seeing the world through his eyes.

This and Topsy Turvy are my favorite Leigh films. He should do more period biopics! One thing I love is that he really tries to give the details of daily life in another time -- to the degree that it is disorienting at first, it feels like a somewhat alien place. Which is what it would do, of course. That's something a lot of period films don't even bother to try, they just give you modern people and mores in period dress.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxEqqRa_Tn4

Y'all should watch Hard Truths!

Genuinely excited to see it, and I’m not a particular Leigh fan, even though Keith in Nuts in May was apparently based on my high school maths teacher. It’s not out here till the end of the month.

As ever, Mike Leigh somehow talks engagingly for an hour without really giving much away.

i know the ending of hard truths was intentionally open-ended to make you think about what could happen next but i'm enjoying thinking it's a setup for the big sequel harder truths

great movie btw. i'm not a mike leigh expert though i've seen a smattering of movies from the range of his career, but i agree that's weird to think that the guy who makes these small, incisive modern character studies also made "topsy turvy." i really need to see "mr. turner"

I didn't think of it as opened-ended as much as the door closing on Pansy's options, after escaping her present life became a possibility.

Loved seeing this, especially after our collective celebration of David Lynch. This is such the opposite of Lynch's work: no angles, line readings, moments of laughing at the characters from a distance; the opposite of a dream.

My favorite film of 2024. Feel like it's already in danger of being considered a "minor work" but then I think of how much I love Another Year and Happy Go Lucky and I guess they got the same treatment.

We got a discussion in the A Real Pain thread about Happy-Go-Lucky.

Ouch. I know personally that intergenerational trauma is a bitch, but that was grueling.

Mr. Turner is great. I actually need to go back and rewatch Topsy Turvy sometime because it didn't click with me as a college student who was into Leigh because of Secrets and Lies and Career Girls and Life is Sweet. But my enjoyment of Mr. Turner (and to a lesser extent Peterloo) make me think I'd like it better now.

I should see Naked again, having only seen it the week it opened. It was so much of its time, such a pure early-90s Gen X movie, and I only mostly remember the long scene after hours in the empty office building.

Something I loved about Hard Truths was that Pansy most of all reminded me of embittered male characters: Thewlis in Naked, Kingsley in Sexy Beast, Jack Nicholson in more things than not. I guess there have been supporting characters like Diane Weist and Judy Davis in Woody Allen movies, but I'm not sure I've seen a protagonist like that before.

We got a discussion in the A Real Pain thread about Happy-Go-Lucky.

― the talented mr pimply (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 20 January 2025 16:01 (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

I've seen so few Mike Leigh films. Only HGL and Another Year. But I would rank Happy Go Lucky as one of my favourite films of all time so it's no wonder I enjoyed A Real Pain, which (as has been discussed a little in that thread) has a good few parallels

Something I loved about Hard Truths was that Pansy most of all reminded me of embittered male characters: Thewlis in Naked, Kingsley in Sexy Beast, Jack Nicholson in more things than not. I guess there have been supporting characters like Diane Weist and Judy Davis in Woody Allen movies, but I'm not sure I've seen a protagonist like that before.

― braunschweiger winter (Eazy), Tuesday, January 21, 2025 9:57 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

it's not really the same but tilda swinton in problemista is maybe the broader version of the character of pansy? didn't 100% love that movie but her performance is great

The Swinton character is a 'terrible boss,' kind of like Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada. I just realized that Laurie Metcalf's mom in Lady Bird is a bit like Jean-Baptiste, as someone who sometimes winces at their own behavior but can't help but be themselves and be difficult.

Good comparison -- Metcalf also constitutionally unable to have a good time, seems to will bad tidings on herself and others.

At least Lady Bird proffers a clue: "My mother was an abusive alcoholic."

there's a few on Criterion right now, I watched High Hopes last night and enjoyed it a lot

Decent radio doc on BBC

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002752j

an interesting take on Hard Truths: https://completeworks.substack.com/p/diagnosis-fiction

Amis' The Green Man is worth reading.

That feels like a lack of recognition and empathy on Butler's part. (Then again, I'm not a fan of his.) My mom was a whole lot like Pansy, but no one put a label on her (other than "bitch" or "difficult"). The character was too familiar for me to experience her with a diagnosis in mind.

Amis' The Green Man is worth reading

agreed, good book

xp we'll have to talk about Butler sometime