Devised and Directed by Mike Leigh 9781623565992, 9781628928662, 9781623569532

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Devised and Directed by Mike Leigh

Devised and Directed by Mike Leigh Edited by Bryan Cardinale-Powell and Marc DiPaolo

N E W Y OR K • L ON DON • N E W DE L H I • SY DN EY

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

1385 Broadway New York NY 10018 USA

50 Bedford Square London WC1B 3DP UK

www.bloomsbury.com First published 2013 © Bryan Cardinale-Powell, Marc DiPaolo and the contributors, 2013 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury Academic or the author. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Devised and directed by Mike Leigh / edited by Bryan Cardinale-Powell & Marc DiPaolo. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-62356-599-2 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Leigh, Mike, 1943–Criticism and interpretation. I. Cardinale-Powell, Bryan, editor of compilation. II. DiPaolo, Marc, editor of compilation. PN1998.3.L445D48 2013 791.4302’33092–dc23 2013005684 eISBN: 978-1-6235-6953-2

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For Jennifer  – Bryan For Quentin  – Marc

Contents Introduction: The Politics and Poetics of Comic-Realist Cinema Marc DiPaolo

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Part One  Devising Leigh 1 The Industry and/of the Auteur: Producing and Marketing Mike Leigh  Christopher Meir

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2  Devising and Directing  Robert Marchand

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3 Every Performance Is a Contrivance: Art and Truth in Topsy-Turvy  Andrew Crowther

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4 Costuming Choices: Stylization and Leigh’s Selective Realism Brenda Wentworth, Christopher Jordan and Sharon E. Cogdill

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5 Cultural Stillbirth: An Examination of Reactions to Vera Drake  Bryan Cardinale-Powell

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Part Two  It’s an Ordinary Life 6 The Uniqueness of Ordinary Lives: Home Sweet Home and Grown-Ups 119 Leonard Quart 7 ‘Taking the Temperature’: Masculinities and Male Identities from Bleak Moments to Happy-Go-Lucky  Sarah Godfrey

133

8 Transgression and Transcendence  William Verrone

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Part Three  Beyond Verisimilitude 9 Melodrama and Tradition in Vera Drake and Another Year  Stella Hockenhull

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Contents

10 Class, Loss and Space: Reframing Secrets & Lies  Frances Pheasant-Kelly

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11 All or Nothing: Mike Leigh and the Fickle Finger Bryan Cardinale-Powell

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Part Four  Leigh versus the Tories 12 ‘Those Days Are Over’: Naked and Something Rotten in the Early 1990s Steven Morrison

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13 Gendered Troubles on Screen: Reproduction and Nationalism in Mike Leigh’s Four Days in July   Derek Gladwin

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14 ‘No Room to Live’: Learning Disability, Class and Fluctuating Identifications in Meantime  Ana Katherine Miller

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15 The Grotesque State of the Nation: Mike Leigh’s High Hopes and the Lessons of Cultural Studies  Kevin M. Flanagan

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16 ‘I Spy’: Mike Leigh in the Age of Britpop (A Critical Memoir)  David Sweeney

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About the Contributors

349

Index

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Int ro duc t ion:

The Politics and Poetics of Comic-Realist Cinema Marc DiPaolo

Renowned for making films that are at once sly domestic satires and heartbreaking ‘social realist’ dramas, British writer-director Mike Leigh confronts his viewers with an un-romanticized dramatization of modern-day society in the hopes of inspiring them to strive for greater self-awareness and compassion for others. This collection features new, interdisciplinary essays that cover all phases of the BAFTA-award-winner’s film career, from his early made-for-television film work to his theatrical releases, including Life is Sweet (1990), Naked (1993), Secrets & Lies (1996), Career Girls (1997), Topsy-Turvy (1999), All or Nothing (2002), Vera Drake (2004), Happy-Go-Lucky (2008) and Another Year (2010). Leigh has frequently explained that the inspiration for his domestic comedy-dramas is his exploration of – and challenging of – the notion of bourgeois respectability drilled into his head by society during his 1950s upbringing and how difficult it was for anyone he knew to do anything but ‘the done thing’. Consequently, Leigh’s heroes are those who have a mordant self-awareness and are capable of laughing at the ridiculousness of society and go about the business of living despite the limitations placed upon them by social values and economic circumstance. Leigh’s heroes – especially his economically disadvantaged ones – are not defined by their noble victimhood or frozen in time as tragic examples of economic and militaristic oppression like the countless dead bodies littering the Odessa steps in The Battleship Potemkin or the humbled father in the final, suffocating moments of Bicycle Thieves. They are more than mere signifiers in

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a Marxist melodrama existing primarily to make a political point. They are, instead, people who ‘just get on with it’ and live life as Leigh puts it time and again in interviews. Those characters in Leigh films that do seem to be frozen in time are those who, to a degree, imprison themselves. Many of his characters occupy the roles of tragic failures or villains in the narrative because they are self-centred without being self-aware. They are intractable, humourless, lack any sense of irony, force others to follow their own idiosyncratic standard of behaviour and are prisoners of their own personalities. These figures often make little ‘progress’ during the course of the film and have no character arc, while the more good-humoured, clever and independent-minded sometimes are allowed to achieve at least a degree of happiness in their lot, even if they are unable to transcend their immediate socio-economic circumstances (see previously published work on Leigh by Carney and Watson). To a degree, Leigh’s films frequently involve examining one extended urban family occupying a lower-socio-economic class that becomes embroiled in a conflict with wealthier neighbours or representatives of a higher, distant authority. Other Leigh films are about several small families of similar means that are pitted against one another, fighting for one small piece of the larger ‘pie’ that has been promised them. The set-up seems almost a parody of Jane Austen’s notion that ‘Three or four families in a country village is the very thing to work on.’ Like Austen, Leigh’s humour and drama frequently arise during hilariously tense mealtime encounters between members of different families with very different personal and political values and very different ideas of decorum. Who’s Who, for example, is replete with uproariously tense discussions over food, and the entire final act of Secrets & Lies is constructed around one extended, brilliantly suspenseful slow-burn mealtime conversation. Like Austen, Leigh’s work is more nuanced and varied than the generalized, sometimes caricatured, representation of it would indicate. Another aspect of Leigh’s film-making career that makes him worthy of critical study is his approach to crafting the narratives of his films. In broad strokes, he begins with collaborating with actors to create characters and relationships and a fully formed fictional community of characters. Then he constructs a basic plot. Then he holds improvisational rehearsals. Only then does he write the script. (It is, of course, all more complicated than this, but we’ll deal with that later.) Leigh called this approach ‘devising’ films early in his career and then thought better of it. But it is a term that intrigues me, and a process that intrigues me even more.

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I only found out that he used this approach to story construction relatively recently, when my co-editor told me about it. Indeed, although I had seen and enjoyed Naked many years ago, and remembered fondly the ‘I’m never bored’ speech, I must confess that I owe my discovery of Leigh to Bryan Cardinale-Powell, who has a poster of All or Nothing hanging in his office at Oklahoma City University. I had known that Leigh’s movies were favourites of my favourite critic, Roger Ebert, and that several character actors from Doctor Who, Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings populated his films, but I couldn’t muster the enthusiasm to watch them all after seeing the excellent-but-depressing Naked. When I asked about All or Nothing and Bryan enthusiastically vouched for its quality, I decided to rent all of Leigh’s films and watch them over the summer as my wife and I were sequestered from the world with our newborn son, Quentin. I had time for little else but Leigh and helping with the baby, and wound up loving the films. During the Quentin-Leigh-movie-marathon, one of the things that struck me about Leigh’s early television films was that his screen credit read ‘Devised and Directed by Mike Leigh’. I really liked the sound of that, and not just because of the alliteration. I had heard from Bryan about Leigh’s unusual method of creating plot and character and writing scripts and I thought that ‘Devised and Directed’ was a great way of signalling that Leigh was doing something different and innovative. After all, if ‘Death-Proof’ was ‘Written and Directed by Quentin Tarantino’, then the normal process of ‘auteur’ script writing is no guarantee of artistic quality. If ‘Death-Proof’ is ‘Written’ and Hard Labour is ‘Devised’, then who needs ‘Written’? I’ll take ‘Devised’ any day. I informed the half-awake Quentin, ‘Mike Leigh is a real director. Quentin Tarantino is a hack. Learn this lesson well.’ He gurgled and moved his fist slightly. ‘By the way, you’re not named after Tarantino’, I reassured him. I was disappointed to see the label ‘Devised and Directed’ fall away from the TV films before long and still more upset to hear that it had been used by some of Leigh’s detractors as a means of questioning his integrity as a film-maker. If he was ‘devising’ movies, some critics claimed, he was not the true auteur. He was, they claimed, someone who generated stories vampirically, exploiting the hard work of improvising actors, not giving them proper credit and not really steering the direction of the film after all. I had made no assumptions along these lines when seeing the ‘Devised’ credit and soon decided that it was time to re-appropriate and redeem the credit as a mark in Leigh’s favour and not a mark against his character. Hence the title of this book.

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Devised and Directed by Mike Leigh

Figure 1.1  Hannah Mills (Katrin Cartlidge) and Annie (Lynda Steadman) get to know each other in the under-appreciated Career Girls (1997)

Leigh’s work has received a great deal of acclaim in both the popular press as well as notable placement in widely publicized lists of classic British films and television narratives. One of his greatest admirers in America is film critic Roger Ebert, who championed Leigh as a gifted film-maker in a 1972 four-star review of Leigh’s first film Bleak Moments. Over the decades, Ebert has granted all subsequent theatrically released Leigh films the same perfect score with the exception of Career Girls (Figure 1.1), which he assigned three out of four stars. Leigh has also been honoured with film-making awards. He won two directing awards for Vera Drake in his home country – the British Academy of Film and Television Arts’ David Lean Award for Direction and the British Independent Film Awards’ Best Director accolade. Also, in 1996, Secrets & Lies won the Alexander Korda BAFTA Award for Best British Film and Leigh won a BAFTA for best Original Screenplay for Secrets & Lies.1 Leigh has had his detractors, including the late Dennis Potter, who was the most notable of several British critics that have claimed that Leigh is not accurately depicting British society in either his theatre or film work. Some have taken issue with Leigh’s apparent caricaturing of the British class system in general and the working classes in particular, while others have felt that his filmic style is now easily identifiable and over-familiar  – that is to say, Mike Leigh has made a career making ‘Mike Leigh films’ – and he has outstayed his welcome. In contrast, the co-editors of this anthology – Bryan Cardinale-Powell and myself – are American scholars who share Ebert’s consistent enthusiasm for

Introduction

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Leigh’s work. Our enthusiasm for Leigh’s work does not, however, preclude our ability to criticize it, or to break from either the ‘scholarly consensus’ concerning his canon or his own firmly stated views and readings of his films. We can also respect Leigh’s style of ‘realism’ without expecting him, or any other single director, to bear the weight of responsibility of finding a way to represent an entire nation accurately on film. As Bryan and I sought contributors to write essays for the book, we noted that several of the British critics we approached expressed an eagerness to participate because they had recently ‘rediscovered’ Leigh after having spent some time undervaluing his post-telefilm career. Some had remembered disliking his 1990s films and had assumed he was past his prime, but the viewing of a recent great Leigh film shocked them out of thinking of him only as the bloke who had peaked with either Nuts in May or Meantime. Perhaps more interestingly, several scholars who have written pieces for this text were vocally despondent over the return of a Tory prime minister to 10 Downing Street and nostalgic for the anti-Tory films Leigh made while Margaret Thatcher and John Major oversaw the state of the nation. After all, they said, David Cameron’s austerity measures and the London Riots seemed to bring certain notorious elements of 1980s culture roaring back to life in the present-day  – this despite the omnipresent contemporary cultural fixtures of Facebook, the European Union and the London Eye ever reminding them that much has changed since the days of the Falklands War, the National Union of Mineworkers strike and Bobby Sands, and the 1981 Irish hunger strike. American viewers of Leigh films might have similar reservations about the strength of the conservative social and economic movements in the United States, but many fans from ‘the colonies’ are merely grateful to Leigh for providing them with films about ‘real’ people during an age when every film in the multiplex appears to be about superheroes or amusing drunks on a road trip cruising for sex. (I write this as someone who quite likes superhero movies  – in their place  – and even wrote a book about them.) We also share Ray Carney’s assertion that Leigh’s films are to be appreciated because they are of a rare breed. They are humanistic, involve and challenge audiences and avoid simplistic characterizations or predictable Hollywood tropes and plot outlines (e.g. the nuclear countdown thriller; the articulate, mob-assassin mentor film; the ‘meet cute’ romantic comedy, etc.). Far from seeing Leigh as a heartlessly snarky caricaturist – as Potter did in his famous review of The Play for Today production of Abigail’s Party  – we see him as a crafter of sincerely

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Devised and Directed by Mike Leigh

heartfelt, sincerely funny, and unabashedly human films, and as one of the few contemporary film-makers who isn’t a heartlessly snarky caricaturist. Carney made much the same assessment in his uncannily apt skewering of American popular culture in the closing chapter of The Films of Mike Leigh: Embracing the World (2000), though the passage of time has provided even better targets than the ones he cites.2 In The Films of Mike Leigh, Carney depicts Leigh as the ultimate realist film-maker  – one who does not use tried-and-true Alfred Hitchcock film-making techniques to imbed in his narratives paint-by-number melodramatic plots, cheap sentimentalism, careworn audio-visual tropes and overt political statements, nor does Leigh attempt to mesmerize viewers into direct identification with a solitary protagonist with a stable, clearly discernable emotional state and infallible moral compass. Chapters by Leonard Quart bring a more biographical and cultural studies sensibility to the forefront, acting as a corrective to Carney’s understandable-but-intractable refusal to adopt such methodologies or acknowledge them as anything but reductive and destructive to the artistic and humanistic sensibility. Bert Cardullo observes in Loach and Leigh, Ltd.: The Cinema of Social Conscience (2010) that Leigh ‘used to be an auteur who, in films like High Hopes, Naked, and Secrets & Lies, was making anything but agenda-driven movies. But he is getting to be a lot like his colleague Loach at his worst: a tendentious, if not downright socialistic, agitator’ (59). It is important to note here that Carney, who has not written on Leigh’s post Life is Sweet work, reportedly shares Cardullo’s assessment of Leigh’s later works. Cardullo’s comments are understandable, as propaganda from both the political Left and the Right can be equally dehumanizing and antithetical to good art and good taste. However, in light of the increasingly corporatized, conservative nature of the mass media, a little socialistic agitation on Leigh’s part might be considered a good thing – and maybe a necessary and laudable thing. In Mike Leigh (2011), Sean O’Sullivan reveals his own impatience with extant Leigh criticism. O’Sullivan is weary of critics that depict Leigh as a magician who effortlessly transforms real life into ‘perfect’ movies, just as he feels that too many published critics are fascinated with Leigh’s ‘Britishness’ and obsess over his politics and his relationship to the British social realist film-makers. These observations strike close to home, as I am drawn to Leigh’s work, in part, for these reasons, and I have taken O’Sullivan’s observations to heart as a corrective to my own view of the film-maker’s oeuvre. Instead of embracing my approach, O’Sullivan

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is much more interested in Leigh as an auteur who uses real filmic techniques, not magic, to craft films that are far more formalist and postmodern in their sensibilities than existing Leigh scholarship admits. O’Sullivan employs a David Bordwell-like methodology to examine how Leigh uses shot compositions and audio techniques to juxtapose polar opposite figures (which he calls ‘centaurs’) as both a joke and a poetic idea. As O’Sullivan aptly argues, Leigh is not Tim Burton or Baz Luhrmann, but his films do feature visual imagery reminiscent of Edward Hopper, thematic ideas found in Italo Calvino and minor characters defined by their amusingly Dickensian foibles and affectations. According to O’Sullivan, none of these stylistic devices are ‘sins’ against the Platonist, Ideal Form of Realist Cinema, but should be regarded, instead, as brilliantly executed filmic storytelling techniques and narrative contrivances. Leigh has stated in interviews that he is proud of his debt to Dickens and other Victorians (Gilbert and Sullivan included), and has recently begun acknowledging more firmly his debt to the tradition of Jewish humour and – as a Jewish director – has seen himself as part of the same broader tradition of ethnic humour that Woody Allen belongs to. The notion that both of these traditions influence Leigh further complicates any assertion that Leigh is a purely objective, influence-free chronicler of modern-day British society, and I acknowledge that even as I remain appreciative of what I see as the realism inherent in his works. Also weighing in on the topic of psychological and social realism in Leigh’s films, Tony Whitehead observes in Mike Leigh (2007), that ‘throughout Leigh’s work, laughter is a survival mechanism, and shared laughter is the key to a clear understanding of oneself and happy, healthy relationships with other people. To be fully appreciated, then, Leigh needs to be seen not as a failed realist, but as a hugely successful humorist’ (4). Finally, Garry Watson’s closing remarks on Leigh in The Cinema of Mike Leigh seem particularly well formulated. He notes that much of the impression of realism in Leigh’s films comes from the fact that his characters are ‘so exactly situated within the English class system’ (186) and that they – like real people and unlike movie people – are prone to fart, have pimples and be allowed to sport blemishes and personality defects that are beyond those even demonstrated by most American character actors in independent films. He writes: The problem is that most movies do not show us people as they are . . . a need is felt to ensure that the characters in most movies are effectively cleansed – with the dictionary definitions of ‘bland’ (meaning ‘smooth and soothing in manner or quality’, ‘exhibiting no personal concern or embarrassment’) and ‘bleach’

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Devised and Directed by Mike Leigh (meaning ‘to remove colour or stains from’ and ‘to make whiter or lighter’) . . . effectively summarizing the main ways in which the mainstream media tries to erase the real. (187)

Our anthology builds upon the scholarship discussed above as well as attempts to break new ground in scholarship on Leigh. The essays in this book include those that examine individual Leigh films; recurring themes and motifs in several films; representations of class and gender, overt social commentary and political subtexts; visual stylizations and storytelling techniques ranging from explorations of the costume design to set design to the music and camerawork and editing; the collaborative process of ‘devising and directing’ a Mike Leigh film that involves character-building, world-construction, plotting, improvisations and script-writing; the process of funding and marketing for these seemingly ‘uncommercial’ projects, and a survey of Leigh’s critical reception and the existing academic scholarship on his work. The articles are written by academics from the United States, Great Britain and Australia for a primarily academic audience, but any informed reader who is a fan of Leigh’s work can appreciate the book’s content. The contributors to this text are scholars from a variety of fields, including film studies, film production, art, theatre, literature and cultural studies. These scholars apply a variety of methodologies when examining various aspects of Leigh’s career including gender studies, new historicist, semiotic and reader response theory. The book is broken down into four sections. The first, ‘Devising Leigh’, concerns the process by which Leigh funds his films, makes them and then markets and distributes them. Also considered are some of the critical and audience responses to these films upon their release. The second section, ‘It’s an Ordinary Life’, considers the argument that Leigh’s films do, indeed, come from a tradition of domestic realism, and said realism is central to his artistic success. Section Three, ‘Beyond Verisimilitude’, looks at the filmic techniques Leigh employs to simulate realism while simultaneously generating works that can be regarded as formalist film art. Section Four, ‘Leigh versus the Tories’, revisits Leigh’s early works and examines them through the eyes of cultural criticism, especially focusing on the anti-neo-liberal sentiments present in films produced during the Margaret Thatcher and John Major administrations. Opening both the ‘Devising Leigh’ section and the anthology as a whole is Christopher Meir’s ‘The Industry and the Auteur’. Meir’s essay examines Leigh’s relationships to his producers, especially Simon Channing Williams, and considers how Leigh evolved from an-up-and-coming crafter of leftist telefilms

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to an unlikely, bankable ‘brand name’ in the international independent film market and fan community. Following the principle laid down by Leigh himself that only those who attempt to write and direct a film in his style can possibly understand his style, Australian film-maker Robert Marchand has worked to recreate the Leigh ‘system’ of film-making in his own work and chronicles his efforts in ‘Devising and Directing’. Marchand uses as evidence observations based upon his own experience in devising and directing films and upon what Leigh has revealed about his mysterious film-making process in interviews and directing master classes. W. S. Gilbert biographer Andrew Crowther considers Leigh’s love affair with Victorian light opera and examines the difference between truth and fiction in ‘Every Performance is a Contrivance: Art & Truth in Topsy-Turvy’. Crowther examines all that is historically accurate about Leigh’s Gilbert and Sullivan ‘biopic’ and explores how some deviations from historical fact may have arisen from Leigh consulting faulty source material, while other ‘errors’ in the film were deliberate ‘mistakes’ made for dramatic effect or to illustrate Leigh’s conception of the nature of collaborative storytelling. Brenda Wentworth, Christopher Jordan and Sharon Cogdill look at how Leigh’s characters are defined, in part, by their clothing, the props they are associated with and the sets they inhabit in ‘Costuming Choices: Stylization and Leigh’s Selective Realism’. Since realistic costumes and sets do not call attention to themselves, these scholars demonstrate how clever and subtle costumes create a sense of realism, while not, in fact, being ‘realistic’ in and of themselves. In ‘Cultural Stillbirth: An examination of reactions to Vera Drake’, Bryan Cardinale-Powell examines why Leigh’s period piece abortion film failed in both of its intended goals: to court widespread controversy and affect the outcome of the 2004 American Presidential Election. Section Two, ‘It’s an Ordinary Life’, begins with a re-presentation of Leonard Quart’s ‘The Uniqueness of Ordinary Lives: Grown-Ups and Home Sweet Home’, a landmark essay and close-reading of two of Leigh’s best-remembered made-for-television films. Sarah Godfrey’s ‘“Taking the Temperature”: Masculinities and Male Identities from Bleak Moments to Happy-Go-Lucky’ offers an overview of Leigh’s most memorable male characters, from those found in Bleak Moments and Hard Labour to the men of Nuts in May and Another Year. In ‘Transgression and Transcendence’, William Verrone offers an almost spiritual and psychoanalytic take on how Leigh’s films inspire viewers to acts of

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transcendent rebellion by modelling such actions with the protagonists Poppy (Happy Go Lucky), Phil (All or Nothing) and Johnny (Naked). Stella Hockenhull’s ‘Melodrama and Tradition in Vera Drake and Another Year’ begins the third section, ‘Beyond Verisimilitude’. Hockenhull provides close readings of two of Leigh’s most recent films, examining Leigh’s signature film style and considering how it compares and contrasts to the British ‘kitchen sink’ film dramas of the 1960s. Formalistic set design and photographic framing are central to F. E. Pheasant-Kelly’s analysis of one of Leigh’s most popular films in ‘Class, Loss and Space: Reframing Secrets & Lies’. Bryan Cardinale-Powell’s ‘All or Nothing: Mike Leigh and the Fickle Finger’ looks at how Leigh’s parallel storytelling, pairing of related character types and calculated use of cutting and photography helps instigate specific emotional and intellectual reactions in the viewer that crafts a worldview, propels a narrative and shapes audience identification with (and alienation from) character. Then begins the final grouping of essays, Leigh versus the Tories. Steven Morrison’s ‘“Those Days Are Over”: Naked & Something Rotten in the1990s’ takes readers back to the days of Prime Minister John Major, and the apocalyptic feel of the final decade of the twentieth century. Morrison’s cultural studies essay notably compares the anti-hero Johnny to iconic, disaffected protagonists like Hamlet and Withnail, and places Johnny in the context of 1990s popular culture. In ‘Gendered Troubles on Screen: Reproducing Nationalism in Four Days in July’, Derek Gladwin considers Leigh’s handling of the Irish Troubles, offering historical context of the split between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, an overview of the way the conflict has been dramatized on screen, and a consideration of the symbolic role of femininity and motherhood in Irish political propaganda and in Leigh’s telefilm. The most vulnerable of figures, a developmentally disabled, unemployed, working class young man living in Thatcher’s England is the focus of Ana Miller’s ‘Fluctuating Identifications, Learning Disability and Class in Meantime’. Miller challenges previous scholarship on Meantime, which she sees as too judgemental of the central characters and, simultaneously, too reluctant to diagnose Colin as disabled. While Leigh has joined several of his most vocal critics in describing his High Hopes as too over-the-top and campy, Kevin M. Flanagan rehabilitates it as a prime example of a subversive sub-genre of films that includes Lindsay Anderson’s Britannia Hospital (1982) and Peter Smith and Alan Bleasdale’s No Surrender (1985) – the ‘State of the Nation’ film. His essay is called ‘The Grotesque State of the Nation: Mike Leigh’s High Hopes and the Thatcherite Comedy of

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Errors’. The book ends with David Sweeney’s personal essay ‘“I Spy”: Mike Leigh in the Age of Britpop’, which examines the Leigh films that were most embraced by the British youth culture and music industry. Sweeney pairs Jarvis Cocker’s music with the inspiration it took from Abigail’s Party, considers Graham Coxon along Meantime, places Suede and Blur with Naked and aligns Oasis with Nuts in May. Sweeney ends with a consideration of the sitcom Gavin and Stacey as the heir apparent to Leigh’s early, youth-friendly work. Collectively, these essays strive to bring new critical perspectives to bear on the long and venerable career of Mike Leigh. They deal with the widest possible array of Leigh’s film work from the beginning of his career up to his 2012 Olympics short film ‘A Running Jump’, while returning repeatedly to two of Leigh’s most significant works, Naked and All or Nothing, as conversational touchstones. Our hope is that the combination of film theory and cultural criticism approaches featured in these pages, as well as the variety of scholarly voices, will help energize and advance the study of Leigh’s films and inspire further critical discussion and appreciation of this innovative, comic-realist film-maker.

Notes 1 Additionally, two British institutions – the British Film Institute (BFI) and Time Out Magazine – have singled out Leigh’s work for distinction. In 2000, BFI released its list of the 100 best British television programmes, granting Fawlty Towers (1975, 1979), Cathy Come Home (1966) and Doctor Who (1963–89, 1996) the top three slots, while landmark Leigh Play for Today telefilms Abigail’s Party (1977) and Nuts in May (1976) occupied slots 11 and 49, respectively. BFI’s 1999 list of the 100 best British films – which featured The Third Man (1949), Brief Encounter (1945) and Lawrence of Arabia (1962) in the top three positions – placed Secrets & Lies at position 40 and Life is Sweet at 95. In 2011, Time Out magazine also published a list of the 100 greatest British films, placing Don’t Look Now (1973) first, The Third Man second and Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988) third. Mike Leigh appears four times on the list, matching the number of entries by Alfred Hitchcock, David Lean and Nicholas Roeg: Naked was #11, Secrets & Lies #33, Nuts in May #63 and Topsy-Turvy #64. 2 I, for one, would here single out for approbation Seth McFarland, Michael Bay and Dick Wolf as the producers of some of the aesthetically and morally worst, high-profile and financially successful film and television projects. I would then single out for special praise their polar opposites – Alexander Payne, Liza Johnson,

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Devised and Directed by Mike Leigh Nicole Holofcener, Zoe Cassavetes and screenwriter Angus MacLachlan – for making recent American films that could speak to the same kind of psychological depth, humour and humanism found in Leigh’s films.

Works cited Cardullo, Bert. Loach and Leigh, Ltd.: The Cinema of Social Conscience. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010. Carney, Raymond and Leonard Quart. The Films of Mike Leigh: Embracing the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, xi. O’Sullivan, Sean. Mike Leigh. Urbana-Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2011. Watson, Garry. The Cinema of Mike Leigh: A Sense of the Real. London: Wallflower Press, 2004. Whitehead, Tony. Mike Leigh. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007.

Part One

Devising Leigh

1

The Industry and/of the Auteur: Producing and Marketing Mike Leigh Christopher Meir

The paradigm of the auteur has always been one that is implicitly and sometimes explicitly Romantic in nature, tending to see the auteur director as one that stands apart and in isolation from all worldly concerns and contexts. Among other problems, this bent on the part of auteur critics has led to the neglect of important creative collaborators, a tendency to view directors as somehow existing separately from history and culture and a sometimes willful disavowal of the economic realities of film-making. All of these tendencies can be found in the scholarship surrounding Mike Leigh, and they have collectively created gaps and misunderstandings about the film-maker’s career that must be remedied if we are to more fully appreciate the historical realities of Leigh’s film-making and various contexts that surround his work. This chapter will illuminate the commercial contexts of Mike Leigh’s film-making, aspects of his work that have received surprisingly little attention from critics and scholars. As such, it will first provide an overview of the production contexts for his films and television plays. This section of the chapter will examine the entities that have funded and continue to fund his work  – including British subsidy bodies and public service broadcasters – as well as the producers who have worked with Leigh throughout his career and who have often gone unheralded by nearly everyone except – significantly – Leigh himself. This latter concern is particularly of interest following the death in 2009 of Leigh’s long-time producer Simon Channing Williams. This section will also engage with the economics that underpin Leigh’s film-making, including budget, box office performance and business models, all concerns that ultimately fall to film

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producers. The chapter’s second section explores the marketing of Mike Leigh’s films, which, unsurprisingly, centres on Leigh himself. Here I will elucidate Leigh’s auteur persona as seen across the vast corpus of interviews that the director has given over the years. As such, this section will discuss the ways in which Leigh is branded as an auteur director in a time when the figure of the auteur director has become an accepted staple of popular film culture, even while theorists and historians continue to debate its usefulness for Film Studies. This exploration of the commercial side of Leigh’s career will shed new light on the director’s work and answer questions that may have puzzled admirers of his films. These questions typically centre around how it is that Leigh continues to get his films made when they seem so patently non-commercial in form and content and when he almost never has a script or even outline to pitch to potential funders. This chapter will take on these questions and in so doing demonstrate that the films are in their own way very commercially viable as long as they are made and marketed in the correct manner. Appreciating the ways in which Leigh’s films have been handled from pre-production through marketing and distribution means starting with the figure of the producer, a figure who typically looms large in both of these spheres of a film’s commercial life.

Producing Mike Leigh One learned how to produce Mike Leigh. David Aukin1 My debt to him is massive and my respect is huge. Mike Leigh on Tony Garnett2

The figure of the producer is one that has been widely neglected in Film Studies, with stars and directors receiving the bulk of the attention from critics and scholars. Auteurism has played a large role in this marginalization, not only by favouring directors but also by habitually pitting the auteur director against avaricious and philistine producers. Film history is thus littered with stories of Hitchcock’s feuds with Selznick, Von Stroheim’s struggles with Thalberg, and others, all of which cast the director as the hero and producer as villain.3 But more often than not, the great auteurs have actually benefitted from producers who have managed the commercial and organizational sides of film-making and thus allowed directors the freedom to bring their visions to the screen.

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Though the producers who have worked with auteur directors are vitally important to the films they work on, the scholars who study those films seldom recognize them. In this regard, Mike Leigh scholarship is no exception: Simon Channing Williams, Leigh’s producer for almost 20 years, is not mentioned a single time in Garry Watson’s book on Leigh,4 and he only gets the briefest possible mention in Raymond Carney and Leonard Quart’s book on the director, that being in the authors’ acknowledgements.5 Similarly, Sean O’Sullivan’s recent monograph on the director6 only features one mention of the producer, that being in a chapter-length interview with Leigh himself.7 This latter example is not surprising. The one place Channing Williams is discussed at length is in Leigh’s interviews, where the director pays homage at several points to the important role played not only by Channing Williams but also other important producers and executive producers, including David Rose, David Aukin, Georgina Lowe and others. This is perhaps the best testament to the importance of producers in Leigh’s career. Like many independent film-makers before and since, Leigh’s career began with an audacious attempt at scraping together whatever money could be begged and/or borrowed from friends to make his debut feature Bleak Moments (1971). Unlike Kevin Smith or John Cassavetes, however, Leigh had an established product in the successfully staged version of his play Bleak Moments and wealthy and famous friends like actors Les Blair and Albert Finney. Finney  – who attended Salford Grammar School at around the same time as Leigh – agreed to fund almost all of the film’s budget, save for the paltry £100 provided by the BFI Production Board, the leading subsidy body at the time for new film-makers. The micro-budget feature was made for a total of £18,5008 and, along with his established career in theatre, put Leigh on the radar of the first important producer that would shape his film-making career. Tony Garnett – one of the most important producers in the history of British television – was then in charge of the BBC’s Play for Today series. In this role he had worked with a virtual who’s who of British auteurs in the making, including Stephen Frears and Ken Loach. In retrospect, the amount of future film-making talent employed by the BBC in the early 1970s supports Leigh’s claims that, ‘the British film industry was alive and well and hiding out in television’.9 Garnett provided Leigh with the break the director needed to move from the unstable footing of maverick independent film-maker to the relatively predictable world of television drama.

18

Devised and Directed by Mike Leigh

As Garnett told Michael Coveney, this decision was made based on his knowledge of Leigh’s now famous working methods and the practical problems the producer knew these would cause: I could see that [Leigh] was never going to be able to do what he wants to do in the cinema. His conditions were expensive, not for the scale of the thing . . . but for the time required. I knew nothing would happen for him until he got established. So I decided that I would give him one of my last available slots.10

While there is no reason to doubt Leigh’s claims of complete autonomy during his BBC days, the impact of the Play for Today ‘house style’ – a sort of realism infused with Lord Reith’s dictum that public service media should ‘inform, educate and entertain’  – on Leigh’s style, or indeed that of Loach, Frears and other great British auteurs, remains underappreciated. Once Leigh began working with Play for Today, he entered a period of steady and prolific film production. Despite working in what was for all intents and purposes a studio job, Leigh has spoken favourably of the creative freedom he enjoyed at the BBC. Leigh was allowed to make whatever films fit his interests while seldom if ever worrying about budgets.11 Two of his most popular works were made during this period: Nuts in May (1973) and Abigail’s Party (1978). Leigh enjoyed the free reign offered by the BBC, but he grew increasingly frustrated with the limited scale of television distribution, describing it in one interview as ‘really, really choking’.12 This frustration would ultimately lead Leigh to film-making aimed at theatrical distribution, and his time at the BBC gave him occasion to work with two producers who would play central roles in his later transition to the cinema: David Rose and Simon Channing Williams. In the early 1970s, David Rose was head of English regions drama at the BBC. In this capacity, he not only commissioned Nuts in May, but also put his personal stamp on the film when he suggested that Leigh shoot on location in Dorset – Rose’s home county – a decision which Leigh still credits as being vital to the film’s satirical project.13 As Coveney points out, Nuts in May ‘marked Leigh’s major breakthrough with the British public’,14 an accomplishment due in no small part to the vision and influence of David Rose. Rose continued to play a major role in Leigh’s development as a film-maker, commissioning and producing The Kiss of Death (1977), set in Lancashire. By this time, the relationship between director and producer was so close that Leigh included an inside joke aimed at Rose in the film itself.15

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Rose went on to play a significant role in British film and television history as commissioning editor at Channel 4 which was established in 1982 as an outlet for independent television production by the otherwise neo-liberal and deeply conservative Thatcher regime. Here Rose not only commissioned some of the most important works of the 1980s, including landmarks such as My Beautiful Laundrette (Stephen Frears, 1985) and The Draughtsman’s Contract (Peter Greenaway, 1982), but he also pushed the channel  – and consequently all of British television – towards theatrical distribution of its films. This policy reshaped British cinema and ultimately provided Leigh with the scale of distribution he had sought in the 1970s. Even before greenlighting the channel’s investment in High Hopes (1988), Leigh’s first theatrical film since Bleak Moments, Rose played a vital role in Leigh’s career in the 1980s. Rose commissioned Meantime (1984), which along with Four Days in July (1985) and High Hopes formed what Leigh would later describe as ‘a trilogy of Thatcher-motivated films’.16 The success of these films laid a foundation for Leigh’s eventual move to theatrical distribution. Meantime in particular proved very popular with audiences and had a theatrical run in Australia.17 Rose also stepped in to revive Leigh’s career in the mid-1980s when he commissioned Leigh to make The Short and Curlies (1988). This project was intended to provide Leigh a chance to show potential backers that he was again able to stand the rigors of film-making after suffering a bout of depression after the completion of Four Days.18 Beyond Rose, perhaps the only person who cast a longer shadow over Leigh’s career was Simon Channing Williams. Channing Williams met and worked with Leigh during the director’s time at the BBC on the film Grown-Ups (1980). As first assistant director, Channing Williams demonstrated the unique set of skills needed to produce Leigh’s mode of film-making. At a pivotal moment in the making of the film when Leigh was attempting to formulate its ending – a decision he always makes during shooting – Channing Williams arranged for the cast and crew to take a break from work on the film which allowed Leigh the time he needed to write the necessary scenes.19 According to theatrical producer David Aukin – who would later act as Head of Film at Channel 4 and in this capacity invest in nearly all of Leigh’s films in the 1990s – ‘One learned to produce Mike Leigh’.20 Channing Williams, however, did not need to learn how to produce Leigh. Instead, he immediately displayed the organizational, persuasive and improvisational skills needed to protect Leigh from production pressures, a task he performed again and again over the next 28 years.

20

Devised and Directed by Mike Leigh

Channing Williams began his career at the BBC as a runner doing more or less anything that was asked of him on set.21 As he rose in the ranks at the corporation, he took on the position of first assistant director, overseeing the on-set production of a number of films including seven with Stephen Frears.22 Ironically, he lost his job at the BBC because of his use of petty cash to smooth over relations with homeowners who lent their homes to the production of Grown-Ups, his first project with Leigh. Speaking of this incident, Channing Williams claimed he actually saved the BBC money, but he nonetheless paid the price for not following protocol at the notoriously bureaucratic broadcaster.23 Channing Williams went on to work as a freelance associate producer and first assistant throughout the mid-1980s. He was offered a role in making Meantime, though he turned it down to work on Wagner (Tony Palmer, 1984).24 The next Leigh film that Channing Williams worked on was High Hopes, which he co-produced with veteran television producer Victor Glynn who assembled the funding package for the film. Soon after, Channing Williams and Leigh founded Thin Man Films, and Channing Williams took on the key responsibility of finding funding for the company’s projects, which was no small task considering the director’s refusal to provide treatments or scripts to funders. For the first film, Life is Sweet (1991), Channing Williams followed the precedent Glynn set with High Hopes – raising money from Film4 and British Screen. He also added an American distributor in the form of October Films, a company he himself helped found,25 and which later handled the US distribution of a number of Leigh’s films including Secrets & Lies. Channing Williams continued to use this basic funding formula as a starting point for Leigh’s films up to and including Another Year (2010). Film4 and British Screen (or its successor, the UK Film Council) participated in nearly every film during this phase of Leigh’s career. Beyond personal contacts like Rose, Aukin, and Simon Relph, head of British Screen in the 1990s, these funders were drawn to Leigh because of his popularity and auteur reputation. Channel 4 hits like Nuts in May and Abigail’s Party demonstrated the director’s ability to find an audience and paved the way for commissioning of Meantime, which was seen by over 6 million people over the course of two evening screenings on the Channel.26 That success then paved the way for investment in his features.27 Moreover, funding through Channel 4 and British Screen/UK Film Council advanced public cultural policy through the patronage of British auteur film-makers like Leigh, Ken Loach, Stephen Frears and others even if their

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completed films proved more popular outside of Britain than at home, as was sometimes the case with Leigh. The ‘stamp of approval’ these companies lent to projects in the United Kingdom was very valuable as a fund-raising resource. Such support showed that the film was likely to be completed and that the film was guaranteed distribution, at the very least on British television. Also, funders such as the UK Film Council and British Screen typically agreed to be the last investor to be recouped, allowing private investors to get paid in a manner that is faster than on most productions. As Leigh’s career progressed, Channing Williams, later with the help of executive producer Gail Egan, built on this production base with increasingly complex deals with a range of national and international investors. The international critical success of Naked (1993), which was made for £1.5 million (approximately $2.5 million USD) led to a relatively larger budget for Secrets & Lies, $4.5 million.28 Channing Williams raised that money through CiBY 2000, a French-based production company with a history of investing in British co-productions, including auteur works such as The Piano (Jane Campion, 1993). Though Career Girls (1997) was made for Channel 4 on a modest ($1.9 million) budget – a budget that reflects the fact that the project was commissioned before the release of Secrets – the film involved a new, complex fundraising strategy on the part of Channing Williams. The producer engaged Matrix Films, a company that matches film producers with ‘high worth individuals’ looking to invest in films.29 Channing Williams sought this option as a way to secure even greater freedom for Leigh by releasing the director from the constraints of working with normative film financiers.30 The runaway success of Secrets & Lies (having made over $50 million USD worldwide)31 deserves closer examination. Not only did the film’s box office results help Thin Man secure larger budgets for Leigh but the financing of the project reveals a great deal about the business plans underpinning the company’s film-making. Channing Williams’ rough estimate of its global box office returns – $53 million USD – is nearly nine times the most generous estimate of its budget (between $4.5 million and $6 million depending on sources). Even after discounting its distribution costs and the ‘creative accounting’ that distribution companies routinely use to hide profits from producers, Secrets & Lies was an extraordinarily profitable film on box office receipts alone, not to mention the revenue from all other sources. The important term here is profitability, which is distinct from the total profits produced by a film. A film made for $100 million may make $20 or $30 million in profits for a Hollywood

22

Devised and Directed by Mike Leigh

studio but this would not be as profitable as a film like Secrets & Lies, which would boast a much higher rate of return (perhaps 400% or 500% compared to 20–30% for the Hollywood film). Thus, highly profitable films are more attractive to investors, particularly investors who wish to limit their overall risk by making relatively small investments in multiparty co-productions. This approach – not surprisingly, the standard commercial strategy adopted by independent cinema in general  – underpinned the arrangements made by Channing Williams for the remainder of Thin Man’s films. As Tiuu Lukk details in her work on film marketing, films as disparate in tone and content as Howards End (James Ivory, 1993), Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994) and Welcome to the Dollhouse (Todd Solondz, 1995) have been made and marketed in hopes of achieving high rates of profitability, not necessarily widespread popularity.32 Once the financial success of Secrets & Lies was apparent, Thin Man began work on Topsy-Turvy (1999), their most expensive film to date. Channing Williams once again turned to co-production and unconventional sources of finance, this time involving backers from eight countries including Japan, Korea, Germany and France.33 Close examination of this arrangement provides insight into both the potential benefits and hazards of transnational co-production. By diversifying the investment sources involved in the film, Channing Williams was able to make sure that no one backer would have too much power over the production. This strategy of using co-production to increase creative freedom for film-makers is one that contradicts conventional wisdom. Most assume that as the number of co-producers increases, creative freedom for film-makers decreases. Not so from Mike Leigh’s perspective. Leigh credits the creative financing arranged by Channing Williams with ensuring complete control over the film.34 However, there were some concessions and unexpected complications. To raise the initial budget of £11.75 million from these disparate financiers, Leigh had to provide a treatment for the film and guarantee a cast for the first time in his career. Once the funding package was in place, other problems began to surface. Firstly, due to a devaluation of their currency, the South Korean backers pulled out at the last minute, taking approximately $800,000 USD with them. Then the UK distributor for the film – Pathé Pictures – cut their valuation of the film and consequently their minimum guarantee by $1 million USD.35 This left the company short of funds and forced them to cut scenes. Later in the production process, backers in Japan and Germany demanded Leigh cut song sequences they felt would alienate their home markets. Leigh refused and the

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film was not released in either territory,36 robbing the film of proceeds from two lucrative markets. In part because of these problems, Topsy-Turvy was a commercial disappointment for Thin Man who, due to the structuring of the deal, absorbed most of the losses. Still, by falling on its sword, Thin Man left the co-production partners (and therefore their relationships with Thin Man) unharmed.37 Undeterred, Channing Williams was able to cut a deal with French producer Alain Sarde  – another veteran co-producer of European auteur films whose collaborators have included Roman Polanski, David Lynch and Jean-Luc Godard  – to pre-sell the distribution rights to Thin Man’s next three films to French media powerhouse StudioCanal. Although this agreement was very advantageous to Leigh in creative terms as Sarde was extremely supportive of the director,38 it turned out to be a commercial disappointment. The first film made under the deal was All or Nothing (2002), Leigh’s least successful film ever at the box office. Stung by their losses on the project, Sarde and StudioCanal backed out of the contract after Vera Drake (2005), which ironically was a much more successful film in Europe than Topsy-Turvy and All or Nothing. Beginning with Vera Drake, Thin Man hired Gail Egan, an entertainment lawyer with a background in finance, as an expert in raising production finance. Channing Williams had already worked with Egan at Potboiler Films – a company that the producer had set up to pursue his own projects – and wanted to put her skills to work for Leigh’s films. Through Egan’s and Channing Williams’ efforts, Leigh’s budgets have from this point consistently remained around the $12–$15 million USD mark, with large portions coming not only from Film4 and the UK Film Council but also from private investors. This figure allows Leigh the resources he requires to make films on the scale he requires but remains small enough to keep investors from meddling too much in the films, a freedom further guaranteed by the complex structuring of the deals. In short, Channing Williams and Egan have created the industrial conditions for Leigh to be the auteur he is. Channing Williams passed away in 2009 following a long battle with cancer, but with the continuity provided by Egan’s presence at Thin Man and the efforts of Channing Williams’ protégé Georgina Lowe, who has worked with Leigh and Channing Williams since Naked, it is likely that Leigh will continue to have access to a dependable production base and supportive producers. Lowe has indicated that she will maintain the creative role that Channing Williams played on Leigh’s sets (which is to say a very minimal one) and will continue to work

24

Devised and Directed by Mike Leigh

with Gail Egan on raising funds for the director’s films.39 In other words, Egan and Lowe will continue to ‘produce Leigh’ in the ways in which they learned from Channing Williams. Besides the transition to a new producer, one other concern going forward for Thin Man is funding Leigh’s films in the wake of the abolition of the UK Film Council by the coalition government headed by David Cameron. While this policy decision was initially decried by many in the independent film community in the United Kingdom, including Leigh himself,40 the initial worries over a substantive cut to Lottery funding has so far not been realized. For their part, the government has promised the film industry the same amount of previously available funds, with cuts only affecting the administration of that funding and the BFI replacing the Council as custodian of the monies. It remains to be seen whether these promises will be adhered to by this or indeed future governments, but for the time being Leigh’s film-making appears to be less at risk than others. Given his high critical profile as an indigenous auteur and relatively healthy commercial track record, it is unlikely that his films will be denied funding. Instead, it is more likely that new, emerging and untested film-makers – perhaps the Mike Leighs of the future – are most at risk if cuts begin to weigh on the sector.

Marketing Mike Leigh: Evoking auteurship Marketing discourses  – discourses that are often overlooked by auteur scholarship – shape the commercial life of a film and a film-maker. In the case of Mike Leigh, the discursive emphasis placed on Leigh himself in academic circles  – at the expense of recognizing other collaborators  – reflects a similar imbalance in popular discourses around Leigh’s films. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this imbalance can be traced to the work of those who market and promote Mike Leigh films. Leigh and his partners mobilize auteurism, and such a strategy is inextricably linked to the fundamental economics of his brand of cinema. As Timothy Corrigan has influentially documented, auteurism, despite its relative decline in popularity in academic circles during the 1970s and 1980s, became central to the popular commercial discourses surrounding cinema during that same period.41 Such discourses, Corrigan demonstrates, were visible in the most influential movements of the period including New German Cinema and New Hollywood. Directors and studios harnessed the cultural

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capital inherent in these discourses to secure funding and bring in audiences on a mass scale. But the usage of these strategies did not stop in the early1980s. Instead the ‘commerce of auteurism’ has remained a significant part of world film industries as shown by scholars like Catherine Grant and Devin Orgeron who have built upon Corrigan’s ideas and applied them to the examination of new film marketing technologies and tactics. Following their lead, discussion of the marketing of Mike Leigh’s films in terms of the discursivity of authorship in cinema begins with the following basic premises: auteurs are at the heart of the marketing of their films; auteur cinema is in essence an industrial genre with marketing conventions based on the cultural assumption that a film is more valuable if it is the product of its director;42 and the popular conception of film authorship residing solely with the film’s director. Hence the most significant promotional materials for these kinds of films are directors’ interviews in various media, including newspapers, magazines, television appearances, websites, blogs, DVD extras and commentary tracks and so on. As Lukk shows in the case of Todd Solondz’s films, such marketing tactics carry significant commercial advantages. For instance, media outlets often seek out promotional materials based on director interviews and pass them on as original content to their audiences.43 Many auteur films can thus promote and publicize themselves without paying for airtime or space in newspapers, realizing great savings on prints and advertising (‘P&A’) costs. Since P&A costs are often the biggest distribution expense on many films, savings in this area can go a long way towards ensuring the rates of profitability critical to the success of the independent cinema business model. Even when other promotional materials like posters, trailers and television commercials are produced, such campaigns typically feature the director by name and include evidence of good critical ‘word of mouth’ in the form of festival prizes and/or positive comments from reviewers. These marketing elements bolster the cultural capital necessary for this branch of the film industry to survive commercially. Focus on the director in marketing discourses surrounding auteur films underscores another of Corrigan’s insights. Drawing on Richard Dyer’s seminal analysis of the popular personae of film stars,44 Corrigan argues that directors also take on personae that are products of self-promotion and the content of their films.45 With this in mind, Corrigan suggests we should pay attention to the ways in which director interviews frame the director and place his or her work in relation to the marketplace rather than simply take the content of such interviews at face value. As Howie Movshovitz reminds us, film-makers like

26

Devised and Directed by Mike Leigh

Mike Leigh do not do interviews because they like talking about their films, they do them to promote those films.46 This does not mean that Leigh’s (or any director’s) interviews are necessarily disingenuous or cynically calculated to draw in audiences, but it does remind us that when a director is as central to the marketing of his films as Leigh is, we must understand this aspect of his career if we are to understand his relationship to the market. The prominence of Leigh himself as a ‘hook’ in the marketing of his films can be easily seen in the media surrounding his films. Without exception, marketing materials such as posters and trailers mention Leigh by name and feature other markers of cultural capital including festival prizes, awards and examples of critical praise for the film and/or Leigh himself. Aside from these fairly standard materials, publicity interviews with Leigh – and to a lesser extent the actors in his films – dominate the discourses around his films. While no formal count of these interviews has been undertaken, it is reasonable to assume that Leigh has done hundreds over the years. So prolific has he been in speaking about his films that two books of his interviews have been published, one being a collection of the promotional interviews he gave after the releases of films ranging from High Hopes to Career Girls47 and one book-length interview on his oeuvre as a whole (up to Happy-Go-Lucky) that, significantly, seems to have been commissioned by Leigh himself, or at least by Thin Man Films.48 Leigh’s persona is multifaceted and a complete description is beyond the scope of this essay, but sketching some of its contours can be useful for understanding the commercial discourses of auteurism in Leigh’s career. One unique contour for Leigh involves his famous working methods. Leigh’s improvisational and collaborative approach to screenwriting is perhaps the single most famous aspect of his career, but it has led to confusion on the part of the popular press and audiences, a confusion that threatens to undermine his auteur status. As both Movshovitz49 and Raphael50 have noted, Leigh is very defensive about this issue when being interviewed. When asked about his working methods, Leigh generally makes two interrelated points. The first of these is that some think his films are wholly improvised and therefore chaotic and unplanned, that Leigh’s method is comparable to the techniques practiced by film-makers like John Cassavetes. Leigh has spent years stridently disputing this misconception, speaking often of the control he exerts over the script and characters and the precision with which he works on set. As described by Robert Gore-Langton, ‘finesse has always been his [Leigh’s] aim’.51 Similarly, Leigh told Kenneth Turan that not a single extraneous line of dialogue is allowed to be spoken on his sets

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when the cameras are rolling.52 The second conclusion drawn by audiences and critics that Leigh regrets is that the director’s role in creating the final film is marginalized. Leigh worries that critics and audiences attribute too much creative influence to his films’ actors. During his television days, Leigh himself encouraged such an understanding by officially crediting his films as ‘Devised and Directed by Mike Leigh’. He later rued this decision, calling it in one interview ‘one of the biggest single mistakes of my career’,53 because of the confusion it caused over questions of authorship. Explaining to Amy Raphael the decision to change his credits, Leigh put the reasons rather bluntly: ‘auteur films are written and directed by the auteur’.54 Such strong language leaves little doubt about how Leigh wishes to frame his own persona. In part to clear up confusion regarding his working methods, Leigh routinely recaps the process and his creative role therein, and he goes further, using interviews to explain the autobiographical subtexts of his films. The result is that many films are portrayed as being essentially ‘about’ Mike Leigh himself. The quarrels over whether or not to have children in Grown-Ups and High Hopes? Those arguments are said to mirror similar arguments in his own home.55 The marital strife in All or Nothing? That reflects the dissolution of his own marriage to Alison Steadman.56 Leigh says even small details such as the security guard’s routines in Naked stem from the director’s own experiences.57 This personalization project is most apparent in historical works like Vera Drake and Topsy-Turvy – films whose settings appear difficult to view as reflections of Leigh’s biographical experience. Leigh assures interviewers that Vera Drake is based on his remembrance of a childhood neighbour.58 Topsy-Turvy was developed based on his family’s theatre-going tastes and Leigh’s own historical interests.59 These attempts to emphasize his own creative control over the films and to discursively personalize them are attempts to place his work comfortably within the domain of auteur cinema. While even the most militant auteurists of the 1950s and 1960s would not naively claim the director was the sole contributor to what ends up on the screen, a large segment of international film culture has adopted such an understanding. Given this commonsense (mis)understanding of film authorship, Leigh’s frustration over the perceptions of his role in his own film-making process can be seen as an attempt to claim the cultural capital that Grant argues comes from being the single person responsible for a work of art. This is not to say that Leigh’s contributors are ignored in Leigh’s interviews. Throughout his career, Leigh has been quick to credit his contributors. Indeed, much of what we know about some figures, including Channing Williams,

28

Devised and Directed by Mike Leigh

comes from Leigh’s interviews. At first glance, all of the credit given to actors, cinematographers, producers and costume designers would seem to weaken Leigh’s claims to auteur status, but as Orgeron has shown in the case of Wes Anderson, directors’ humility and deference to collaborators often is a way of implicitly reinforcing auteurist discourses.60 By firstly making it clear that the director is atop on the on-set hierarchy and then explaining how contributions fit into the overall scheme of his authorial vision, Leigh has managed to balance these seemingly paradoxical stances. Leigh can praise the lighting methods Dick Pope utilized to achieve the look of Naked while making it clear that Pope was going for a look that fit the specifications Leigh provided, thus demonstrating Leigh’s understanding of the medium as well as his role orchestrating all the elements of the film into a cohesive whole, one of the signature qualities of a director aspiring to auteur status. Actors, of course, are the most widely discussed collaborators in this regard, and the publicity campaigns for Leigh’s films are chocked full of anecdotes which basically speak to Leigh’s role in generating the films’ performances and the creative thrill of working with Leigh and his method. In his influential theorization of art cinema – the auteur-driven film genre par excellence – David Bordwell points to the textual strategy of ambiguity and the related dynamics of knowledge and power at the heart of narration in many art films, saying that the invisible presence of the auteur tantalizes the audience with its superior knowledge of the film’s ‘true’ events and meaning.61 All of Leigh’s films exhibit these tendencies with little ever being made explicit and open endings being de riguer. In the promotional efforts surrounding his films, Leigh does what he can to encourage such ambiguity and to frame his mode of cinema as one that is challenging, one that poses questions to viewers. Speaking in an interview on the UK DVD release of Another Year, for instance, Leigh says it is up to the viewer to decide what the fate of Mary (Lesley Manville) will be at the end of the film. Similarly, when promoting Naked Leigh told interviewers from Cineaste, ‘All of [my] films . . . ask for more questions than give answers . . . What is important . . . is that you share questions with the audience, and they go away with things to work on.’62 This refusal to give interviewers ‘the answers’ is tantamount to Leigh saying he doesn’t want to tell audiences what to think, a refusal that frames his films as an alternative to popular cinema, with its easy answers and safe, contained endings. Yet at the same time, Leigh also often reminds interviewers and readers of his own superior knowledge of the films. When pressed by interviewer Will Self, Leigh clears up the purposeful ambiguity

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of Naked’s opening ‘rapistic’ scene. This explanation is not out of the ordinary for Leigh. Again and again he tells his readers the ‘truth’ about textually ambiguous questions such as Vera Drake’s (Imelda Staunton) back-story and future after her release from prison63 or Mark’s (Phil Daniels) motivations for his fateful decision to follow his brother Colin (Tim Roth) to work in Meantime. On this latter point, Leigh’s phrasing is very telling of his awareness of the self-contradiction he is engaging in, saying: ‘I prefer to leave this one to the audience, but if I’m forced to answer. . . .’64 Such responses position Leigh himself as the ultimate authority on his films, able to provide the definitive interpretations, in essence reinforcing his auteur status as the source of knowledge and meaning in his films. Moreover, this overall discursive strategy is also the root of his reputation as a ‘difficult’ interviewee. His tendency to lose patience with interviewers and snipe at his critics are further displays of his own authorial superiority over those who would deign to offer their own interpretations, particularly those which paint his films in unfavourable lights, be they the feminist critics of films like Naked or those – including Dennis Potter – who have faulted the tone of his films and their approaches to character and social satire.65 A final discursive tendency to be discussed here is one in which Leigh frames his films as a thematically unified corpus. As Raphael points, Leigh often invokes Jean Renoir who said that film-makers only make one film in their careers, but do so in many different ways.66 Leigh typically attempts to position each new release within his own overall body of work. This is particularly apparent when Leigh discusses Naked, Topsy-Turvy and Vera Drake, all of which are seen as departures from his favoured setting of contemporary British domestic life. When discussing Naked for instance, Leigh points out that the film’s characters are all in a sense on the run from the off-screen families and domestic dramas Leigh usually depicts. He then consciously compares and contrasts the film’s approach to characterization with that of Bleak Moments and Nuts in May.67 Vera Drake ‘fits’ because of its political dimension (recalling his earlier, self-described ‘political trilogy’ of Meantime, Four Days in July and High Hopes), and because of parallels between Vera and Cynthia from Secrets & Lies (both were haunted by the guilt of having given up children).68 Anticipating the scepticism of audiences regarding his interest in making Topsy-Turvy, Leigh provides Raphael with a detailed, three-part explanation of why he decided to take on the film, pointing out his personal interests (his family’s love for Gilbert and Sullivan and his own love for theatre generally) as well as the ways in which the project fell in with his stylistic interests and working methods, both of which

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Devised and Directed by Mike Leigh

revolve around character.69 These attempts to reclaim seemingly aberrational films are manifestations of what Thomas Elsaesser describes as the impulse for auteur directors to frame their works as constituting chapters in a larger body of work,70 an impulse that often takes the form of labelling films as constituting larger units such as series or trilogies. There are many other aspects of Leigh’s self-promotional discourses which we could examine here – including his concerns with politics and his self-portrayal as a misunderstood, anti-Hollywood outsider among others – but the point here is that Leigh’s persona is one that presents the director and his films in ways that closely mirror the popular understanding of the auteur director. This is a significant – indeed central – aspect of his commercial profile as a film-maker, one that is essential to selling his films. Not only are new releases routinely named as Mike Leigh films in promotional materials, but Leigh’s interviews typically are the most prominent materials in campaigns surrounding the release of his films. Beyond initial release, Leigh’s authorial presence figures prominently in the more lucrative home video phase of each film’s commercial life. Here the packaging of his films into auteur-themed box sets – which feature films packaged with DVD extras typically including interviews with the director as well as in some cases a selection of his short films  – is very significant for ensuring the long-term marketability of Leigh’s films. Such auteur branding creates a product with more long lasting appeal than popular genre films and helps to promote new releases while also making the library of old films all the more valuable. On budgets as tight as Leigh’s have been, this revenue is of course crucial and the longevity of the films as objects of interest is therefore crucial in ensuring Thin Man’s commercial survival. But this auteur status is not only important at the end of the film-making process. Leigh’s name as an auteur is vital to the efforts of his producers to raise production funds71 and one cannot help but think it is also crucial to his ability to secure funding from government bodies and public service broadcasters. In short, Leigh’s ability to portray himself as an auteur is crucial to the making and the selling of Mike Leigh’s films.

Conclusion In an art form as capital-intensive as film-making is, no film is without a commercial context. Leigh’s films are no different and indeed feature distinct tendencies and patterns at the levels of production and marketing which support

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the business models that, in turn, ensure that Leigh continues to make his uniquely powerful brand of cinema. Exploring these tendencies and patterns can help us to appreciate the sometimes nebulous contributions of the film producer, without whom the auteur director cannot exist. This has most definitely been the case for Leigh, and the relationship between the director and producers Simon Channing Williams, David Rose and others is thus one that demands and rewards scholarly attention. Similarly, auteurism is a paradigm that is easily applied to the work of Mike Leigh, but it is also a paradigm that from historical and industrial perspectives has shaped the ways in which Leigh funds, promotes and markets his works, and we must understand these industrial contexts if we are to appreciate the position of the auteur generally – and Leigh specifically – in the contemporary global film industry.

Notes 1 Quoted in Michael Coveney, The World According to Mike Leigh. London: Harper Collins, 1996, 113. 2 Amy Raphael, ed., Mike Leigh on Mike Leigh. London: Faber and Faber, 2008, 66. 3 Matthew Bernstein, ‘The Producer as Auteur’, in Auteurs and Authorship: A Film Reader, ed. Barry Keith Grant. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2008, 181. 4 Garry Watson, The Cinema of Mike Leigh: A Sense of the Real. London: Wallflower Press, 2004. 5 Raymond Carney and Leonard Quart, The Films of Mike Leigh: Embracing the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, xi. 6 Sean O’Sullivan, Mike Leigh. Urbana-Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2011. 7 Ibid., 149. 8 Raphael, Mike Leigh on Mike Leigh, 51. 9 Desson Howe, ‘It’s the Movie of the Decade. No It’s Just a Decadent Movie’, Washington Post, 30 January 1994. 10 Coveney, The World According to Mike Leigh, 89. 11 For example, Mirra Bank, ‘Mike Leigh’, in Mike Leigh Interviews, ed. Howie Movshovitz. Jackson, MI: University Press of Mississippi, 2000, 118; Raphael, Mike Leigh on Mike Leigh, 66. 12 John Naughton, ‘There’s No Face Like Gnome’, in Mike Leigh Interviews, ed. Howie Movshovitz. Jackson, MI: University Press of Mississippi, 2000, 127. 13 Raphael, Mike Leigh on Mike Leigh, 76.

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14 Coveney, The World According to Mike Leigh, 100. 15 Raphael, Mike Leigh on Mike Leigh, 105. Leigh had composer Carl Davis reference the score from Z-Cars, a famous British television series that Rose worked on, in the score for The Kiss of Death. 16 Raphael, Mike Leigh on Mike Leigh, 157. 17 Geoff Mayer, Guide to British Cinema. London: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2003, 243. 18 Raphael, Mike Leigh on Mike Leigh, 184. 19 Ibid., 137. 20 Coveney, The World According to Mike Leigh, 113. 21 Helen De Winter, ‘What I Really Want to do is Produce’: Top Producers Talk Movies and Money. London: Faber and Faber, 2006, 49. 22 Ibid., 50. 23 Ibid., 52. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid., 57. 26 John Pym, Film on 4: 1982–1991, A Survey. London: BFI, 1992, 29. 27 De Winter, What I Really Want to do is Produce, 54. 28 Ibid. In Simon Channing Williams’ interview with Helen de Winter, he puts the budget for the film at $6 million USD (De Winter, 58), but numerous other sources (including: Sarah Street, Transatlantic Crossings: British Feature Film in the USA. London: Continuum, 2002, 211 and Alan Riding, ‘An Original Who Plumbs the Ordinary’, in Mike Leigh Interviews, ed. Howie Movshovitz. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2000, 104), put the budget at approximately $4.5 million. 29 De Winter, What I Really Want to do is Produce, 58. 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid. 32 Tiiu Lukk, Marketing the Movies: Opening the Picture and Giving it Legs. New York: Silman-James Press, 1997, 120–43. 33 De Winter, What I Really Want to do is Produce, 59. 34 Raphael, Mike Leigh on Mike Leigh, 137 35 De Winter, What I Really Want to do is Produce, 59. 36 Raphael, Mike Leigh on Mike Leigh, 297–298. 37 De Winter, What I Really Want to do is Produce, 61. 38 Raphael, Mike Leigh on Mike Leigh, 321. 39 Geoffrey Macnab, ‘Georgina Lowe, Producer’, Screen Daily, accessed 1 May 2011, www.screendaily.com/registeraccount.aspx?rtn=www.screendaily.com/reports/ one-on-one/georgina-lowe-producer/5013493.article.

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40 Matthew Moore, ‘Mike Leigh: Scrapping the UK Film Council is like “Abolishing the NHS”’, The Telegraph, accessed 1 May 2011, www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/ film/film-news/7911246/Mike-Leigh-scrapping-UK-Film-Council-islike-abolishing-the-NHS.html. 41 Timothy Corrigan, A Cinema without Walls: Movies and Film Culture after Vietnam. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1991, 101–36. 42 Catherine Grant, Screen 41, www.auteur.com, 101. 43 Lukk, Marketing the Movies, 125. 44 Richard Dyer, Stars. London: BFI, 1979. 45 Corrigan, A Cinema without Walls, 103–5. 46 Howie Movshovitz, ‘Introduction’, in Mike Leigh Interviews, ed. Howie Movshovitz. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2000, viii. 47 Movshovitz, ‘Introduction’, xi. 48 Raphael, Mike Leigh on Mike Leigh. In her Foreword to the book Leigh on Leigh, Amy Raphael says it was Leigh who approached her to edit the book, x. 49 Movshovitz, ‘Introduction’, xi. 50 Raphael Mike Leigh on Mike Leigh, xi. 51 Roger Gore-Langton, ‘The Leigh Way’, Plays and Players, November/December 1988. 52 Kenneth Turan, ‘The Case for Mike Leigh’, in Mike Leigh Interviews, ed. Howie Movshovitz. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2000, 96. 53 Judy Bloch, ‘A Conversation with Mike Leigh and Alison Steadman’, Film Quarterly 45:3 (Spring 1992): 52–3. 54 Raphael, Mike Leigh on Mike Leigh, 196. 55 Ibid., 196. 56 Ibid., 323. 57 Will Self, ‘Interview with Mike Leigh’, in Art Zone, BBC (Criterion Collection, DVD). 58 Raphael, Mike Leigh on Mike Leigh, 341. 59 Ibid., 294–5. 60 Devin Orgeron, ‘La Camera-Crayola: Authorship Comes of Age in the Cinema of Wes Anderson’, Cinema Journal 46 (2007): 59. 61 David Bordwell, Narration in the Fiction Film. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985, 209. 62 Lee Ellickson and Richard Porton, ‘I Find the Tragicomic Things in Life: An Interview with Mike Leigh’, Cineaste 20:3 (1994). 63 Raphael, Mike Leigh on Mike Leigh, 351, 363. 64 Ibid., 166.

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65 Ibid., 120. See for instance, his attack on Potter for the writer’s scathing critique of Abigail’s Party. 66 Ibid., xi. 67 Ibid., 227. 68 Ibid., 343, 346. 69 Ibid., 296. 70 Thomas Elsaesser, European Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood (Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press, 2005), 52. 71 De Winter, What I Really Want to do is Produce, 54.

Works cited Bank, Mirra. ‘Mike Leigh’, in Mike Leigh Interviews, ed. Howie Movshovitz. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2000, 118. Bernstein, Matthew. ‘The Producer as Auteur’, in Auteurs and Authorship: A Film Reader, ed. Barry Keith Grant. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2008, 181. Bloch, Judy. ‘A Conversation with Mike Leigh and Alison Steadman’, Film Quarterly 45:3 (Spring 1992): 52–3. Bordwell, David. Narration in the Fiction Film. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985, 209. Carney, Raymond and Leonard Quart. The Films of Mike Leigh: Embracing the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, xi. Corrigan, Timothy. A Cinema without Walls: Movies and Film Culture after Vietnam. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1991, 101–36. Coveney, Michael. The World According to Mike Leigh. London: Harper Collins, 1996, 113. De Winter, Helen. ‘What I Really Want to do is Produce’: Top Producers Talk Movies and Money. London: Faber and Faber, 2006, 49. Dyer, Richard. Stars. London: BFI, 1979. Ellickson, Lee and Richard Porton. ‘I Find the Tragicomic Things in Life: An Interview with Mike Leigh’, Cineaste 20:3 (1994). Elsaesser, Thomas. European Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press, 2005, 52. Gore-Langton, Roger. ‘The Leigh Way’, Plays and Players, November/December 1988. Grant, Catherine. Screen 41, www.auteur.com, 101. Howe, Desson. ‘It’s the Movie of the Decade. No It’s Just a Decadent Movie’, Washington Post, 30 January 1994. Lukk, Tiiu. Marketing the Movies: Opening the Picture and Giving it Legs. New York: Silman-James Press, 1997, 120–43.

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Macnab, Geoffrey. ‘Georgina Lowe, Producer’, Screen Daily, accessed 1 May 2011, www. screendaily.com/registeraccount.aspx?rtn=www.screendaily.com/reports/one-onone/georgina-lowe-producer/5013493.article. Mayer, Geoff. Guide to British Cinema. London: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2003, 243. Moore, Matthew. ‘Mike Leigh: Scrapping the UK Film Council is like “Abolishing the NHS”’, The Telegraph, accessed 1 May 2011, www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/ film/film-news/7911246/Mike-Leigh-scrapping-UK-Film-Council-islike-abolishing-the-NHS.html. Movshovitz, Howie. ‘Introduction’, in Mike Leigh Interviews, ed. Howie Movshovitz. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2000, viii. Naughton, John. ‘There’s No Face Like Gnome’, in Mike Leigh Interviews, ed. Howie Movshovitz. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2000, 127. Orgeron, Devin. ‘La Camera-Crayola: Authorship Comes of Age in the Cinema of Wes Anderson’, Cinema Journal 46 (2007): 59. O’Sullivan, Sean. Mike Leigh. Urbana-Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2011. Pym, John. Film on 4: 1982–1991, A Survey. London: BFI, 1992, 29. Raphael, Amy, ed. Mike Leigh on Mike Leigh. London: Faber and Faber, 2008, 66. Self, Will. ‘Interview with Mike Leigh’, in Art Zone, BBC (Criterion Collection, DVD). Turan, Kenneth. ‘The Case for Mike Leigh’, in Mike Leigh Interviews, ed. Howie Movshovitz. Jackson, MI: University Press of Mississippi, 2000, 96. Watson, Garry. The Cinema of Mike Leigh: A Sense of the Real. London: Wallflower Press, 2004.

2

Devising and Directing Robert Marchand

Introduction Mike Leigh’s films appear to have some constants associated with them. These include complex characters and strong performances by his actors; characters and situations that focus on the ordinary in everyday British life; a seeming verisimilitude within any given film in relation to the ‘real’ world (and how this conforms to audiences’ perceptions of their own worlds); and how his films appear to reflect the changing cultural and political landscape of Great Britain.1 As Andy Medhurst observes: . . . although all Leigh’s characters inhabit social and cultural identity categories . . . they are never allowed to overshadow or hollow out their emotional, domestic, familial and interpersonal singularities . . . we respond to the characters as individuals rather than filing them away as types. (Medhurst 2007, 177)

My interest in Leigh’s work is primarily about process: how do these qualities come into being? My research has been practice-led and my contribution here is a practitioner’s perspective on process. These observations are drawn from the experience of conducting a year-long film-making experiment, investigating and testing each facet of the process through developing improvisations, distilling the results into a narrative and then directing (and editing) a feature film.2 Other film-makers have chosen to assimilate aspects of Leigh’s process into their work, and my research has led me to examine their processes also and in some cases to interview the film-makers.3 Each has their own unique way of working (within the process) and their films are distinctive, different

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from each other  – and by no means clones of Leigh’s oeuvre. Leigh has been reported as saying there are risks associated with ‘codifying or quantifying’ his approach and he is uncomfortable with it being seen as a reproducible ‘method’ (Smith and Dean 1997, 223). Nevertheless, there are some common features of methodology as used by this diverse group of film-makers. I call the generic process the Character-Based Improvisation (CBI) process, reflecting the methods used to create the characters – and to distinguish the process from other forms of improvisation in drama.4 As an improvisation method, CBI process takes as a given that actors will create unique characters by drawing on their knowledge of everyday life as it exists in the streets, homes and workplaces of their immediate world. It also takes as a given that audiences will respond to these characters in the same way that they relate to the people around them in their own lives. In general, whatever the subject matter, and allowing that things will happen to characters that may be beyond the immediate experience of audience members, the characters in CBI process films tend to mirror the life experiences of the audience. The world the audience sees in the finished film is a form of reality: extended perhaps, refined and focused, but within the ambit of a recognizable ‘lived reality’ that they can readily relate to.5 Leigh: ‘What I want to do is create a world with that kind of solidity to it, something so three-dimensional and solid you could cut it with a knife’ (Turan 1996, 3). As a result, audiences tend to respond to fictive CBI characters as though they are real people with lived – not imagined – identities. While film-makers and actors working conventionally from a script also create fictive identities as they create their characters, the way the CBI process starts from character independently of narrative; the focus on the detail of the character in all its potential mundanity (at the outset); and the time spent in the gradual accretion of personality characteristics all combine not only to invite the audience to consume the fictional character as if it had identity, but also encourage the director and actor (each individually) to proceed as though the characters they create have lived identities. There is a qualitative difference between on the one hand following the technical steps of a process, replicating the creative structure which one knows exists,  and on the other hand engaging with the intellectual concepts which underpin any single aspect of a process. For many film-makers – I would include myself in this group before this project – some of the creative steps applied by CBI practitioners like Leigh appear to be grounded on little more than common sense

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or common practice without recognition of foundational intellectual concepts. This is not meant to imply that Leigh is unaware of the power of this form of mimetic realism or of the theories across several disciplines that lie behind it. In fact I assert the opposite: the control he exercises over the creation of meaning is extraordinarily refined. Despite his assertions that he is not an intellectual film-maker, Leigh appears to have an innate understanding of theoretical concepts in his practice. However, in the transmission of the techniques of CBI, other film-makers do not necessarily share this natural inclination; perhaps the process itself is built on unexamined assumptions – particularly in relation to the creation of fictive character identities. To get to the bottom of these assumptions, my approach to Leigh’s work has been empirical: to investigate how fictive character identities come into being by applying the process myself and to consider how the process draws on discourses into identity.6 In this chapter I examine some of the techniques used by Leigh, and (sometimes) adopted by other CBI practitioners, and I discuss the results of my experiments. I begin with the originating creative impulses that precede casting, consider certain aspects of the director–actor discourse, and conclude at the point where the character is sufficiently developed and deemed dramatically stable by the director for the construction of the drama for the film – a stage described by Leigh as ‘dropping the anchor’. Leigh has described himself as ‘totally intuitive, emotional, subjective, empirical, instinctive’ – this is in itself a reason why this method of working has high appeal for other CBI practitioners who see themselves the same way (Movshovitz 2000, 46). Character development in the CBI process is a creative undertaking – not a scientific practice – based on the triadic foundation of director–actor discussions, improvisations, and research.7 Moment by moment as the work progresses the director and actor engage all manner of theoretical models regarding the concept of identity, selecting from them the elements that suit even when the models may be inherently contradictory. One position that might be appropriated by CBI film-makers is that of philosopher Madan Sarup who describes identity as both psychological and sociological, as ‘fabricated, constructed, in process’ and as ‘fragmented, full of contradictions and ambiguities’ (Sarup 1996, 14). Despite the contradictions and ambiguities that emerge as film-makers grasp what they deem appropriate from other disciplines to shape fictive character identities, my own experience through the work undertaken in the laboratory phase of this project suggests some logic may be discerned, that CBI practices can be linked to foundational concepts rather than mere common sense.8

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The initiating idea It would seem logical to assert that the beginning of creating a fictional character ought to be the casting of the actor. However, this does not take into account that the director will have engaged in some preliminary ruminations before seeing any actors, even if such thoughts are hard to articulate. According to Leigh, at the very beginning of his process: ‘I don’t really ever know quite what I’m going to do and sometimes I have no idea at all’ (BBC 1995). Despite the hint of facetiousness in that remark, Leigh has undoubtedly been thinking deeply. Put simply, before directors can cast, they must know who or what they are looking for. In CBI process, the imagined or conceptual idea – what I have called the initiating idea – can be described as a creative impulse or concept, emanating from the director, from which all other creative decisions are derived. Decisions can be made regarding (sequentially) casting; the bringing into existence of invented characters; the creation of a fictional world – leading ultimately to the director having available all the dramatic material from which to make the film. The comparison I would draw is with an uncommissioned writer at the outset of starting the first draft of a screenplay. He or she is metaphorically staring at a blank screen or sheet of paper. What impulses will produce the first words – or, in the case of CBI process, the decision to meet with a particular actor? Motivation can be diverse: it might be to investigate a particular milieu; a physical landscape or a hub event, or perhaps a theme or societal condition; it might be intensely personal or autobiographical; it may be even more abstract. As Leigh himself describes: I’m always walking around with certain feelings and ideas kicking around, and I put myself in the position any artist can understand: Here is the space, here is the canvas. Every decision I make, starting with choosing actors, gives you different combinations, stimulates you. What I’m doing is looking for the film, testing what is going on against what I think I’m doing. It’s an elusive combination of what I know and what I don’t know, and no one should underestimate the importance of the fact that I’m only answerable to myself, even if I don’t know what I’m doing. (Turan 1996, 2)

The writer makes tangible his or her initiating idea by writing the screenplay: immediately ideas become, by being defined, prescribed and contained. For the CBI process director on the other hand, an open-ended state continues

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well into the casting period and sometimes beyond. Leigh: ‘People say to me “Do you know the story (when you begin)? Do you know the end? Do you know the narrative? The answer to those questions is No, No and No’ (Carney 2000, 6). The manner in which a director arrives at creative decisions in such ‘open’ circumstances is a study in itself: here I will restrict myself to reporting (from my own experiences with the laboratory phase of this project) that the director has preoccupations and predispositions which manifest themselves almost unbidden, acting as an influence or filtering mechanism, inclining him or her to selections in their favour at micro and macro levels. Without doubt these preoccupations affect the director at all stages of the creative process, though I would underline its significance at the initiating idea stage, especially as he or she approaches casting. Leigh: ‘I actually have got a very open brief for myself . . . for example, I may think it’s going to focus on a family in some way . . . Or I may have a notion that it needs a particular kind of guy in a certain sort of area. Those notions will be going on when I’m meeting and talking to actors, considering them for roles’ (Leigh 2004). These subjective, possibly psychologically derived preoccupations provide a ‘watermark’ for all the director’s work, no matter what that work is – and are going to be reflected in the kind of initiating idea chosen. Comments from a variety of sources indicate there is an observable ‘watermark’ to Leigh’s filmed output:9 ‘His work is so distinctive in both focus and style that almost everybody knows what you mean by a “Mike Leigh film”’ (Billington 2006).

Casting Leigh has remarked that, ‘casting the first actor is like putting the first brush-stroke on the canvas’ (Steadman in Turan 1996). From a number of sources it is known that Leigh, at the point that he starts meeting actors – and notwithstanding any initiating ideas he may have  – does not have a script of any kind. From a practitioner point of view, especially if one is steeped in the orthodoxy of film-making practice, this can be challenging. With orthodox film-making practice, a script provides data. Most obviously, there is information about character. There is also information about the ‘world’ the characters will inhabit and there is information about the style, tone and genre of the film. One may elicit yet further information in the way that a character intersects with its environment, and also the kind of journey – metaphoric, narrative and

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literal – that it is on. In a generally unexamined way, based on the parameters just described, the script makes it possible for there to be agreement between producer, director and casting director as to the kind of actor to be considered for any role. This generally unremarked-upon aspect of orthodox film-making process contrasts with Leigh’s methods. He describes how he has informal meetings with the actors, one at a time, inviting them to speak about their experiences and opinions. Later, he will have them return to take part in simple improvisational exercises (Leigh 2004). Underneath this statement is a significant aspect of process. In the absence of a script the director must invent ways of assessing the appropriateness of any given actor for their film. As Clements notes: ‘The matter of correct casting is obviously crucial . . . because there is no role to fall back on, no part requiring an actor of “appropriate” qualities. The criteria (Leigh) applies to the choice of actors is partly practical, partly philosophical’ (Clements 1983). Clements goes on to observe that Leigh tends only to cast actors who are professionally trained and who in most cases have experience in film and television. Unlike Savage or Joy who might cast someone because they already embody characteristics that relate to an imagined character, or Loach, who might cast a non-actor, Leigh seeks out professional ‘character actors’ because their training and experience provides discipline and precision  – which for him becomes crucial at the distillation stage, when the work moves beyond improvisations into structured scene building.10 The significance of this is that the actors under consideration all understand the representational conventions that are used to create fictional identities; they are using a process that draws on lived reality to bring a seeming verisimilitude to the imaginary; their characters ‘stand’ for real people in their reception by an audience. It is an assumption by many practitioners of CBI process – indeed of drama film-makers working within Western cultures  – that a character reflects the attributes of a real person, and that ‘truthfulness’ in performance equates with identifiable human behaviour. While there is a distinction between lived reality as a resource and representations of lived reality as an outcome, a great deal of the actor’s work with the director is about creating lifelike situations and relationships, inviting the conclusion that reality for its own sake is the objective when in fact it is a means to a (dramatic) end. The casting of professional actors might satisfy Leigh’s practical requirements, but the philosophical requires greater examination. Some form of personality assessment is an inevitable component of casting. Past discussion with a variety

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of other directors  – a wider group than the ones selected for this research  – indicates consensus that an informal analytical and quasi-psychological test is effectively being conducted each time a director meets a new actor in a casting environment.11 With orthodox film-making practice, the psychological assessment of actor by director and vice versa tends to be channelled by the information provided in the script. Typical questions might be: Is there agreement on the nature of the story? On the tone and style of the material?12 The script provides a template not just for interpretation, but for the nature and scope of the interpersonal relationship between actor and director during the audition period. Conversely, the absence of a script in CBI process puts a premium on, effectively, personality assessment. This may seem self-evident: without a script, a given project’s only tangible asset may be the actor standing in front of the director. In my own case, I engaged with the actors in a generalized discussion in which we might touch upon (in no particular order) their personal history, their past experiences, their outlook and perceptions of the world, their likes, dislikes and attitudes. And it immediately became apparent that there was an unexamined aspect to this experience: transference. Although transference theory has its origins in psychoanalysis – Freud first used the term in 1898 – it has a relevance to the relationship between actor and director, and between both of them and the character, throughout the CBI process (Freud 1925). In clinical psychology, transference occurs when an individual projects his or her emotional history and current psychological needs into the present relationship with the analyst.13 However, as Jung observed, ‘(Transference) is . . . a very frequent natural occurrence. Indeed, in any human relationship that is at all intimate, certain transference phenomena will almost always operate’ (Jung 1946, 171). Applying these phenomena to the specific environment under discussion, I contend transference is present as the director engages with the actor in the casting session. To quote a clinical psychologist: ‘A transference reaction means that you are reacting to someone in terms of what you need to see, you are afraid of, or what you see when you know very little about the person. This all happens without you knowing why you feel and react the way you do’ (Conner 2009). For the director  – and here I am accessing my own experiences from casting sessions over a number of years – transference occurs immediately on encountering the actor: as anecdotal evidence from research into job interviews attests, first impressions are recognized as an influence on subsequent decisions. Experience enables the director to override feelings (when they are negative) that

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may spontaneously arise; feelings that might, if examined, be seen as irrational or lacking any material foundation. From my own practice, I identify two aspects to transference: what I project on to the actors as they impact me in human terms and what I perceive their potential to be in the kinds of character they can play. I suggest that the differentiation is more significant with CBI process. With orthodox film-making where a script exists, the first aspect of transference may well be subsumed or negated completely by the exigencies of that script. The director might instinctively react against, say, ‘an authority figure with poise and charm’, but if that is the kind of character the script requires, and the actor exhibits those characteristics, the director may recognize the need to set aside his or her projections when making a casting decision. The open-endedness of CBI process, on the other hand, means it is possible for a director to unconsciously project a connotation, positive or negative, on to an actor and make a casting decision based only on that. This is a largely hypothetical position: I noted my own impulses during casting but did not yield to them, and my research among other film-makers did not reveal any actual instances, perhaps because I have found many directors will only grudgingly admit to the effects of transference, preferring to cite standard casting criteria as a basis for their decision-making.14 The personality, temperament and preoccupations of the individual director – those things that contribute to the ‘watermark’ – soon assert themselves to make each phase, starting most distinctively with casting, a very individual experience. No two directors think alike, so even if someone chose to slavishly copy Leigh’s methods, the results would be divergent. For me, it was hard to ignore my own latent creative fixations: although the CBI process was ‘adhered to’ through the first phases of process, my own preoccupations with surrealism undoubtedly had an effect on the actor’s choices in discussions and improvisations, through both my nuances in directing and some degree of (inadvertent) transference.15 It was an irony to discover that for a project concerned with identity, the first identity under scrutiny was the director’s own.

Character creation Once actors are cast, the CBI process proper begins. It is well documented that Leigh selects a person (sometimes two or three) from a list of real people provided by the actor to create a ‘base character’. ‘If there’s no script, the actor has to have somewhere to start. You can’t just say, “Okay, stand up and act”’ (Leigh 2004). The

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logic behind this is to provide a set of attributes that through experimentation in improvisation and discussion can be quantified – and modified. This includes inventing a new name and changing such things as background, region and profession. Leigh’s view is that by referencing a real person, the actor has specifics and particularities to draw from, and this is important initially. In time these will be supplanted by invented characteristics, the character having evolved significantly from the ‘base character’ (Gordon 1994). I do not intend to dwell on this stage of the process, other than to acknowledge its importance as a starting point.16 From here onwards, the primary task is to construct the character, expanding his or her personal world as the character acquires dimension. According to Leigh, ‘Gradually we build up a whole world through discussion and research and improvisation and we arrive at a three-dimensional world, implicit in which are the dynamics for the potential film’ (Walsh 2008). For Leigh, who understands and acknowledges the complexity of acting, it is unproductive to try to ‘be’ a person without proper preparation. Actor Jim Broadbent describes the discussion-research-improvisation undertaken for his character in Another Year this way: In the case of Tom, (we) decided he was from Derbyshire, that he had an elder brother . . . and a childhood friend . . . and that he went to university in Manchester where he studied geology and met Gerri. (We) went up to Derby and researched where they would have lived, where they went to school, what they’d experienced, and I traveled to South Wales and to Kent, meeting geologists and seeing how they worked. I went to Manchester, to university. (Broadbent 2011)

Leigh and his collaborators begin building character by starting at a here-andnow in the present moment of the character’s life – in other words at an adult age-range corresponding roughly to the actor’s own age.17 In effect, there is an exploration of the adult character – very often acknowledging that some attributes have been ‘imported’ from the base character – followed by retrospective analysis to determine how and why the character is manifesting itself as the person he or she is now. Much of this early work is done on a one-to-one basis between Leigh and an actor. Improvisational exercises when Leigh watches the actor go into character alone to explore very small moments have been well-documented: there is a valuable example in the BBC Arena documentary Making Plays. Leigh works this way because, as he says himself, ‘The kind of work where the actor does the person by himself or herself in a room somewhere just to discover the

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character without the pressure of something else happening is very important’ (BBC 1982). At this point in the process as initial character attributes are selected, unacknowledged or unexamined presumptions about identity studied in the fields of neuroscience, psychology, and sociology are already affecting decisions. For example, through the laboratory work at the start of my process, I discovered that the apparent logic of starting the improvisations with an adult persona raised questions about identity formation that seemed to be answered from a neuroscientific perspective. As becomes manifest during the casting phase of the process, the genetic component in an actor effectively predetermines a significant number of aspects of their character’s physicality. If the actor has, say, big feet and long ear-lobes it becomes an unassailable physical factor of the character also.18 However, early discussions after improvisations also focus on aspects of the character that might not be obviously ‘physical’ – yet which nevertheless might have a genetic component to them. For example, it might be agreed that a character is innately pessimistic. Recent research in neuroscience has demonstrated that predispositions in personality can be related to specific variations in individual DNA strands (Humphrey, Damasio, Nettle and others). This may predispose a person towards, say, melancholia or gregariousness. Behavioural scientist Daniel Nettle believes people have ‘enduring personality dispositions’ which is the result of the particular way their physiology is constructed and in consequence has an impact on their behaviour (Nettle 2007, 8). My own experience is that these first improvisations lead to discussions about the character’s basic attributes and characteristics  – those things that become part of the database of the character, biographical ‘facts’, in effect – as though they had genetic origins. For instance, consideration is given to the character’s parents: what they were like, what kind of work they did, what their economic and social circumstances were, what kind of environment the character grew up in. At this early stage of development the director’s focus is more on aspects of character that have a genetic basis so that specific personality traits can be quickly established. Just as a real person has a clinically identifiable genetic composition, and a history from birth from which can be extrapolated behavioural traits, so the invented character can be justified in having similar characteristics, attributes and other defining elements implanted, as though they had been acquired the same way. The director can short-cut what might otherwise be a lengthy procedure and assert to the actor that the nascent character has certain in-built dispositions: they exist within the character as a given. I stress that this in no

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way diminishes the creative contribution of either party, nor does it necessarily restrict the character’s further development, since there is still an environmental aspect to take into consideration. As the character acquires more definition, Leigh goes back to birth and early childhood to examine formative influences: ‘Gradually we build up the characters’ lives, progressing chronologically through the years. Sometimes they are in character; a lot of the time they are talking about the character objectively; and sometimes I get them to work in ways that are halfway between the two’ (Raphael 2008, 26). CBI practitioners working through this phase of the process (I include myself) tend to be unaware that while they are building up characters’ lives they are actually astride the ‘nature versus nurture’ divide more precisely studied by those interested in the formation of identity. Mulcaster’s dictum ‘By nature implanted, for nurture to enlarge’ (quoted in Norman) is apposite – because although foundational characteristics may be established using a genetic framework, thereafter there is a tendency to ascribe the character’s susceptibility to alteration and development to environmental factors alone. The work of behaviourists like Watson (1913) and Skinner (1938) might never be invoked by name, but the notion that all behaviour can be explained in such terms is tempting to director and actor alike: it provides a simplified causality (stimulus-response) which can be justified in pursuit of dramatic ends. ‘Every event of a man’s mental life is written indelibly in the brain’s archives, to be counted for or against him’ (Thorndike 1905, 330). When director and actor engage in creating a history for the character, a family tree and other ‘facts’ concerning his or her early life, there is an implicit presumption that such ‘facts’ will have consequences and lead to experiences which in turn impinge on behaviour. I acknowledge that both actor and director are drawing from a tradition of acting theory steeped in psychology, first mooted in the late nineteenth century by Stanislavski (himself influenced by French psychologist Ribot). He believed that there was a psychological component to every physical action (Stanislavski in Carnicke, 19). For the CBI practitioner, notions of psychological affect may be (unconsciously) informing decisions as a result of exposure to them through actor training or theatre rehearsal techniques.19 I have found that the director’s use of psychology  – or more exactly, psychological terms  – can elide deeper implications. For example, Freudian theories about the unconscious, the idea that identity, sexuality and desire are formed from psychic and symbolic processes, may well be invoked (using

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layman’s terms) in discussions. This infers that a form of unconsciousness is being constructed as part of the fictional character: psychic and symbolic processes are effectively being embedded (even if director and actor fail to acknowledge them or express them in unsound theoretical terms), creating a dynamic system that influences the actions and behaviour of the fictional character without the fictional character’s conscious awareness of this process. The film-maker in me might be tempted to embrace this suggestion: it would attest to character creation reaching unscaled heights. My observation from the laboratory phase is that when the actor is ‘in character’ he or she may incorporate behaviour which reflects the notion that unconscious processes are affecting the character.20 As one practicing psychologist describes it, the unconscious ‘comprises (the) emotional and mental processes that are beyond our attention . . . our subliminal mind. It consists in a fund of feelings, ideas, responses and memories etc. upon which we can draw at any time without thinking over them’ (Priddy 1999). In CBI process, director and actor tend to see the character’s unconscious as having a more proactive value in character creation: The unconscious was a repository for socially unacceptable ideas, wishes or desires, traumatic memories, and painful emotions put out of mind by the mechanism of psychological repression. However, the contents did not necessarily have to be solely negative. In the psychoanalytic view, the unconscious is a force that can only be recognized by its effects – it expresses itself in the symptom. (Karr 2010)21

CBI practitioners might well chorus ‘Precisely!’ to this, as it would accord with their received ideas about unconscious (psychoanalytical) stimuli and their effects on performance choices. As a practitioner, had I been quizzed at the time the work was in progress, I would have made a bold assertion in respect of the use of the unconscious in the construction of character. Director and actor presume to know what unconscious processes are affecting the character and in what way – and because this is a fictional character being constructed under controlled parameters, with acting followed by debriefing, and with both actor and director reflecting on the implications of unconscious processes, these can be altered. However, there is a risk that the artist here is being carried away by the buzz of creative process. Sober reflection suggests that the reality is more prosaic: for instance, actors relaying their experiences of being ‘in character’ in a debriefing session after an improvisation may well describe the character’s thoughts as though the mental processes were identical to their own. The immediacy and

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intensity of the ‘in character’ experience, the (by now) long-established practice of going into character, pretending to be someone else, the long duration (even by orthodox rehearsal practices) that they are ‘in character’ for – all these things can have a cumulative effect, leading to the illusion that the character has an independent unconscious, supplanting their own unconscious processes or (at times) existing side-by-side with the actor’s own unconscious as he or she is acting during the improvisation.22 The director is likely to be complicit in this: it would be potentially destructive to tell the actor their character doesn’t have an unconscious, to point out the objective illogic of the proposition. For the actor to believe that their character has an unconscious is testament to a high degree of immersion in their work; the artist in question is giving full expression to their creative potential, in effect. Unconscious processes are taking place, but it is the actor’s mind that is doing all the work. The ‘as if ’ factor of actor and director behaving as though the character was an independent, separated entity with feelings and an unconscious in its own right is not new in terms of drama practice, but the absence of a script to remind all of the essential artifice of their endeavour, together with the unstructured quality of the improvisations, which seemingly allow the character freedom of thought and movement, encourages the illusion further. This phenomenon of seemingly granting the character an independent unconscious is characteristic of a tendency to collapse life and art within the CBI process. As one delves deeper into the theory that sits behind CBI practice, it becomes impossible to ignore the fact that some aspects of Leigh’s process are not well documented. His practice, despite interviews spanning 30-plus years, remains elliptic.23 Kenneth Turan believes there is a form of intuition guiding Leigh’s practice drawn from instincts that are ‘too basic and fluid to stand articulation’ (Turan and Leigh 1996, 96). Leigh himself has said more bluntly “work of all kinds goes on which I am not necessarily disposed to talk about” (Gordon and Leigh 1994, 94). Nonetheless, Clements observes that for Leigh social class is a foundational component: ‘(it) is the implicit condition of the character’s lives, informing and shaping their culture, language, behaviour, attitudes, relationships and sense of self ’ (Clements 1983, 30). The evidence that Leigh’s character-building must include a sociological aspect is provided by the characterizations we see in his films which demonstrate by their fidelity to social and cultural aspects of British life that the forces at work on real human identity (that we might associate with sociological theory rather than psychology or neuroscience) are visible in the fictive ones as well.

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When I analyse my own practice, I find that the ongoing discourse with the actor about the character tacitly recognizes that any concept of identity includes the character’s own subjective interpretation of himself or herself and the placing of their character in a wider context.24 The work done by actor and director includes constructing that part of the character’s identity which is shaped by social pressures, expectations and hierarchy; it examines the regional, class and tribal influences on the character which might put pressure on his or her identity conforming with, or reacting against, societal expectations. The actor engages in research, among other things visiting places that might have relevance to the character like establishing the character’s parents’ home or perhaps a first school. The research leads to discussions that will include inferentially how the character inter-reacts with his or her space. In effect, the character’s habitus is under consideration, both literally – the character’s reaction to the environment – and metaphorically – the character’s absorption of cultural values from the groups or societies associated with this particular environment.25 That the character’s identity is informed by his or her habitus is itself taken for granted: it is another example of actor and director assumptions drawn from popular-cultural conventions. Another unexamined aspect of process is the way performative elements of behaviour may be built into the character. A graphic example of this is provided in the BBC Arena documentary, where the actor Sam Kelly is seen to evolve through a succession of improvisations towards a character that exhibits performative tendencies (BBC 1982). Staged performances, behaviour in certain social situations that include a performance component (as in, say, a wedding in which a Marriage Celebrant has a particular ‘role’ to play) and the role-play and identities of everyday life are, for Richard Schechner, a continuum (Schechner 2002, 143). From my own experience of character construction in CBI process, I recognize that some individuals, if the director chooses to accentuate it, can be more performative than others. By way of example, with one particular actor in The Identity Project we constructed a character afflicted (the actor’s own term for it) with deformation professionnel: the character behaved like a junior executive all the time, not just at work. Sociologist Erving Goffman has identified the way an individual differentiates their ‘front’ (in front of others, professional) and ‘backstage’ (alone and/or social) personas. He sees an individual’s performance when using their ‘front’ personas as seeking to project desired standards of behaviour (Goffman 1959, 110). Through the accretion of experiences in improvisations, this particular character came to ‘perform’ its identity  – and

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reassert its definition through performative behaviour every time it came into contact with another (fictional) person. Again, as I encouraged the actor to explore this aspect of her character I could not at the time have quoted Judith Butler’s dictum, that gender identity is performative, built up through repeated, ritualistic behaviour until it becomes normalized, though that was the effect I was seeking to achieve (Butler 2004, 94). Here, as elsewhere, my own research after the fact has revealed theory that informs my creative practice. It would seem, even if some of the detail as to how Leigh works is fragmented or missing, that his process intuitively encompasses aspects of the theoretical positions I have outlined. He may disclaim being an intellectual film-maker – in his interview with Movshovitz he says, ‘Primarily my films are a response to the way people are, the way things are as I see them’ (Movshovitz 2000, 46). However, that statement underplays the inherent curiosity that, for Trostle-Jones, characterizes intelligence, and which seem characteristic of all his films (Trostle-Jones 2004, 1).

Improvisations: Practitioner observations Leigh’s improvisations begin by investigating very small scale, often mundane moments in a character’s life. Leigh tells his actors to begin by just being the person, not trying to act anything or rush into any emotional state: ‘Don’t make anything happen. It’s not a scene, it’s just this person there in the room in real time’ (Leigh 2004). It then progresses in increments to more complex constructs. Overall, improvisations can be categorized as foundational (creating the character), relational (contact and exchange with other characters), and cathartic (dramatic development).26 At a certain point – varying from project to project  – the improvisations begin to explore the particular circumstances that might lead to the material in the film.27 A process of distillation also occurs, so that the work moves from improvisations to scene-building and rehearsals.28 So far, so good: this linear description of process might well be known to many Leigh aficionados. From a practitioner perspective, there are two elements I wish to highlight. The first has to do with what I call dramatic stability. Improvisations are generally agreed to be platforms for exploring uncharted dramatic possibilities; there is an inherently unstable and unpredictable quality to them – precisely the conditions that attract CBI film-makers. A desired outcome of all the foundation work, on

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the other hand, is to make the character consistent in behaviour – even if he or she is capricious, inconstant, impulsive, or unreliable: the character can be consistent in its inconsistency, as long as its behaviour is comprehensible to the director, and, by implication, can be ‘read’ also by an audience. To have one element – the character’s general demeanour – calculable provides a form of foundation, and the journey that Leigh has undertaken with the actor thus far means that he understands the character as completely as the actor. My own discovery through the practice is that having the director understand the character and his or her motivations means that this quantifiable element becomes a dramatic mechanism: The character – stable in the terms just described – can now be placed into a situation by the director, and the character’s reaction provides outcomes that are then exploited dramatically, providing plot. Using this mechanism, the characters are developed first, then relationships and finally narrative. The second element is an adjunct to the first. Theoretically, the character could continue to develop infinitely with each successive improvisation. Leigh appears to deal with this by (among other things) differentiating between past times – where the character is still potentially in development – and the present day, which by implication is the territory from which the film will be carved. ‘You deal with characters really living through years and years of their lives, moving towards what will eventually be the time present, the “Now” of the actual film’ (Leigh 2004). Actor Phillip Davis (Vera Drake’s husband in Vera Drake) commented: ‘the thing with Mike is you do a great big welt of experience before you drop anchor in the present’ (Davis 2007). The term ‘drop anchor’ has been used by Leigh in a number of interviews over the years, suggesting it is an established part of his process; it alerts the actor to the fact that all work from this point forward may have relevance to the film. The ‘Pre-rehearsal’ period is over, and ‘Structuring’ has begun. I speculate that within Leigh’s process it is an indicator for the actor to no longer let the character evolve. My own experience from the laboratory work appears to be at the level of a simple, practical problem that any director might face: the director can generally sense that the moment is looming where character development needs to plateau  – yet sometimes one character reaches the desired level of development ahead of another. To take one example from the laboratory phase, the very fruitful work with one particular actor led to a character that exhibited hostile and defensive behaviour. It became clear to me through the progression of later improvisations (for the benefit of another actor) that this character was beginning to acquire some self-reflection: he was maturing, becoming progressively more understanding

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and accommodating  – thereby losing characteristics that I had (privately) identified as valuable for the drama. Ironically the apparatus that encourages complexity of character needed to be disabled. Dealing with this practical problem made me reflect further on process: put simply, improvisations are devised by the director. There is a briefing session for each actor separately before the improvisation in which something akin to Stanislavski’s ‘given circumstances’ for the character will be established (Stanislavski 1989, 51). Events unfold within an improvisation in a ‘spontaneous’ manner; there is a high degree of unpredictability to them – and no matter how much the director might privately have predicted outcomes, there are surprises and discoveries. Leigh: ‘I may have a clear notion that “x” should happen. But then “y” happens in an improvisation. Sometimes I think “Great. That’s much more interesting/makes more sense – let’s go for it.” Or I might reject it because I know it should be “x”. Or, as a result of being confronted by “y” it should be “z”’ (Raphael 2008, 19). The discoveries aid creative development  – though the mechanism itself remains consistent: the character is put in a situation and there is some form of stimulus requiring a response. It draws, once again, from our understanding of lived reality. Human beings in their daily lives find themselves reacting to the unexpected – in effect, some small component of their identity is created through reaction. What these mechanical aspects of CBI process demonstrate, I feel, is the way fictive identity is shaped and controlled for dramatic purposes – all the while aping the characteristics of ‘true’ identity spaces in real life. From workshops I have conducted for actors over the years (in conditions different from the laboratory work undertaken for this study) I have observed a disposition for actors to ‘merge’ themselves with their characters, sometimes because of the nature of their previous training. Leigh insists that actors separate themselves from the characters and do not talk about them in the first person. He is concerned with the actors maintaining an awareness that they are acting, that they are inventing and playing a fictional person (Veltman 2009). I can attest that inviting the actor to talk about the character as though it is someone who has just left the room helps maintain the separation. It also assists the actor in keeping perspective over the character, in analysing and reflecting on the performance. Nevertheless, this technical separation of actor and character does not diminish the conflating of real life with the world of the characters, of using all the conventions of ‘life as we know it’ as conventions in the fictional world. There is an assumption that actor and director get their raw materials from lived reality, and then apply them within a fictive realm. Lived reality in all

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its manifestations becomes creative ‘clay’, as it were, the moulding of which is a creative invention within a cultural practice. Yet conventions of communication between the director and actor suspend this knowledge and proceed using a language that would be applied to real people. The process seeks to replicate the manifestations of real life, and yet allow actor and director to invent – and to analyse and comment on the invention – as they work.

Conclusion Leigh regards art as distinctively different than real life: it is organized, controlled, aping naturalism for dramatic ends  – and what appears to be happenstance is the result of manipulation by the director (Movshovitz 2000, 53). From my examination of Leigh’s practice, I conclude that his understanding of the processes behind manifestations of ‘real life’, and the application of it in the making of his films, is beyond question. His process, insofar as it can be documented, uses techniques which, on the way to creating a feature film, construct fictive identities. These are predicated on assumptions about identity formation in the so-called real world. From my research into other practitioners of the CBI and from my own laboratory experiment examining and testing key aspects of this process, including creating a film, I found that fictive identities as constructed through CBI process are foundational to the practice; that reality is a tool in the service of the CBI practitioner; and that the distinction between reality as a resource and representations of reality for a dramatic outcome can become conflated. Furthermore, for CBI practitioners (other than Leigh) the process itself may be built on unexamined assumptions and received ideas about identity from across a number of disciplines. From my testing of various stages within the process, I conclude that transference has significance in the casting process; that there is unacknowledged tension between nature and nurture as the fictional characters begin to be constructed; and that sociological positions (intermixed with the genetic and psychological) are used to construct the ‘world’ around the character. Finally, I observe that, from a practitioner perspective, there is a mechanism within process, using character reactions within improvisations, that further define the character’s identity and draw from the way human beings relate to one another in ‘real life’.

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Notes 1 Leigh himself says he aspires for his films to have a documentary-like quality (Miller 1996). 2 ‘The Identity Project’ a surreal feature film, 102 mins, Flinders University Drama Centre. 3 My research included Australians Michael Joy (Men’s Group), Kate Gorman (Five Moments of Infidelity) Ian Dixon (Crushed), Louise Alston (Jucy) and Danish film-maker Annette Olesen (Minor Mishaps, In Your Hands). There is a second group of film-makers who use forms of improvisation with focus on character (but not necessarily CBI process), including Britons Dominic Savage (Out of Control, Love+Hate), Debbie Isitt (Confetti), Shane Meadows (This Is England), Pawel Pawlikowski (Summer of Love) and Australians Bill Bennett (Kiss or Kill), Kriv Stenders (Blacktown, Boxing Day) and Tom Cowan (Orange Love Story). 4 I think it is instructive that Clements description of Leigh’s process from 1983 – what might be described as a still-frame of a process in endless evolution – is recognizably how contemporary CBI practitioners (allowing for individual variations) continue to operate today. 5 I acknowledge Leigh’s films also display a degree of artifice and construction with characters sometimes in a heightened realist mode. He has said the vaudeville quality sometimes seen in his films is as important to him as the social realist (Leigh in Walsh 2008). 6 I have been encouraged by Leigh’s belief that although people think they know what his process is, there is no real knowledge unless they do it themselves (Turan and Leigh 1996, 9). 7 I separate the process into three broad phases: creating the characters, creating relationships and creating the drama. I am omitting these other phases as outside the remit of this chapter. 8 The experimental research conducted as part of my project used the CBI process conventionally (as practiced by Leigh and others) to create characters, relationships and an encompassing world – but then moved the characters into a surreal environment: the characters found themselves at an anonymous government institution which defied categorization. The resultant film The Identity Project is within the genre of surreal film, a genre exemplified by (among others) Bunuel’s ‘The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie’. 9 I am omitting examples of Leigh’s ‘watermark’ here because although there is agreement that Leigh’s film’s demonstrate that he most certainly has one, no two descriptions seem to agree.

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10 An industry-standard appellation that differentiates this kind of actor from the ‘star’ or personality actor, who tend always to play a version of the same screen persona. 11 I am drawing on an informal survey I conducted for a seminar during the Australian Directors Guild Conference in 2004. 12 An often repeated Hollywood expression, used metaphorically, ‘Are we on the same page?’ seems apposite here. 13 Transference is also known as Projective Identification (a term introduced by Klein) by the Object Relations school of psychoanalytical thought. 14 I have observed a reluctance by most directors to discuss with their actors the kind of personal psychological history that might illuminate any transference taking place in their casting sessions. It is possible some further transference was taking place between these directors and myself to elicit this response. 15 There was nothing surreal about the way the characters or their world was constructed through the early stages of process: a surreal world was introduced only at the ‘dropping the anchor’ stage. 16 I have experimented with the alternative: using no base character at all and constructing every aspect of the character from scratch through discussions with the actor. My findings are that it is extremely time-consuming and unproductive. 17 A CBI practitioner might consider beginning at the character’s birth and working forward, but there are difficulties associated with this that impede character development. I experimented with this approach with one actor as a test of process, and quickly found problems on a practical level (if not to say philosophical as well): obviously the actor cannot physically regress to babyhood – and in any case the volume of discussion required meant that any improvising of a given moment was not only limited but became about investigating an abstracted mental state. (The process does figuratively examine these stages in due course using rehearsal-room techniques.) 18 This may not of itself have significance for the drama at the end of the process: I hazard a guess that, for instance, the actors’ physique for All or Nothing not only may have influenced the casting choices of Alison Garland and James Corden to play daughter and son to Timothy Spall’s character, but also contributed the possibility of the health problems that provide dramatic development later in the film. 19 Carney’s critique of a psychological approach to the characters in Leigh’s films is instructive: I agree that the reading of his characters in these terms ‘reveals the fallacy of motivational essentialism’ (Carney 2000, 170), but I would argue that the construction of the character in the first place cannot avoid utilizing psychological/ psychoanalytical precepts, recognizing that this is one component in many.

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20 Here I wish to distinguish between unconscious as used in psychoanalytic theory and non-conscious, the cognitive term. I do not mean the kind of reflexive activity – like driving a car – which one associates with unconscious (non-conscious) processes. 21 It is illustrative of my argument about film-makers’ unscientific use of (in this case) psychoanalytic terms that this quotation, used by me anecdotally for many years on the understanding that it was indirectly quoting Freud, proves on examination to be untraceable back to the imagined source. 22 It is not uncommon for a CBI process improvisation to continue for several hours. 23 Leigh has said he will describe some of his processes but others he will not because ‘they’re a trade secret’, particularly as they ‘involve elusive things like inspiration, intuition and telepathy’ (Raphael 2008, 21). 24 I should add that this essentially sociological orientation might well be carelessly intermixed with the neuro-scientific and psychological throughout this phase of the process. 25 Bourdieu describes the individual as reacting to encounters with objective social structures by transforming them into subjective, mental experiences (Bordieu in Hillier 2005, 285). 26 The taxonomy is mine; the distinctions are not made explicit to the actor. 27 Some commentators of Leigh’s work (Clements 1983; Smith and Dean 1997) separate these two phases into ‘Pre-rehearsal’ and ‘Structuring’. 28 My unscientific appellation of this is ‘bottling spontaneity’.

Works cited BBC. Making Plays Mike Leigh. London: BBC, 1982. Billington, Michael. In Praise of Mike Leigh. London: The Guardian Newspaper, 2011. Web, accessed 7 August 2011, www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/apr/18/ in-praise-of-mike-leigh. Broadbent, Jim and Dany Margolies. Jim Broadbent Interview for ‘Another Year’. Backstage, 2011. Butler, Judith and Sara Salih. The Judith Butler Reader. New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2004. Carney, Ray and Leonard Quart. The Films of Mike Leigh. London: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Carnicke, Sharon. ‘Stanislavsky’s System: Pathways for the Actor’, in A. Hodge (ed.), Twentieth Century Actor Training. London and New York: Routledge, 2000, 11–36. Clements, Paul. The Improvised Play: The Work of Mike Leigh. London: Methuen, 1983.

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Conner, Michael G. Transference: Are You a Biological Time Machine? Portland, OR, 2009. Web, accessed 3 January 2010, www.crisiscounseling.com/articles/ transference.htm. Coveney, Michael. The World According to Mike Leigh. London: Harper Collins, 1997. Damasio, Antonio. Descartes’ Error. London: Penguin, 2005. Davis, Phillip and Robert Marchand. Personal interview, 3 July 2007. Freud, Sigmund. ‘An Autobiographical Study’, Vol. 20, in Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. James Strachey. New York: Norton. Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. London: Penguin, 1959. Gordon, Bette and Mike Leigh. ‘“Naked” the Mike Leigh Interview Bomb Magazine’, Bomb Magazine 46 (Winter) (1994). Hillier, Jean and Emma Rooksby. Habitus, a Sense of Place. Farnham, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2005. Humphrey, Nicholas. A History of the Mind: Evolution and the Birth of Consciousness. New York: Copernicus, 1999. Jung, Carl Gustav. The Psychology of the Transference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1946. Karr, K. Keith. ‘Thought: Psychoanalysis’, in Key Thoughts Encyclopedia. Fredericksburg, 2010. Web, accessed 11 September 2009, www.keythoughts.com/thought/ encyclopedia.htm. Leigh, Mike. ‘Berlin Masterclass with Mike Leigh’, Berlinale Talent Campus. Berlin, 2004. Web, accessed 25 November 2010, www.berlinaletalentcampus.de/ story/90/1590.html. Medhurst, Andy. A National Joke: Popular Comedy and English Cultural Identities. London: Routledge, 2007. Miller, Laura. ‘Listening to the World – An Interview with Mike Leigh’, Salon Online Magazine (1996) Web, accessed 25 September 2006, www.salon.com/weekly/ interview960916.html. Movshovitz, Howie and M. Leigh. Mike Leigh: Interviews (Conversations with Filmmakers), ed. Howie Movshovitz. Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 2000. Nettle, Daniel. Personality, What Makes You the Way You Are. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Norman, Gill. Genes, Experience and What Makes Us Human. Newcastle on Tyne: Newcastle Science Festival Review, 2003. Priddy, Robert C. The Human Whole. Oslo: Robert C. Priddy, 1999. Web, accessed 5 April 2009, http://robertpriddy.com/P/index.html. Raphael, Amy and Mike Leigh. Mike Leigh on Mike Leigh. London: Faber & Faber, 2008. Sarup, Madan. Identity, Culture & the Postmodern World. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1996. Schechner, Richard. Performance Studies, an Introduction. New York: Routledge, 2002.

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Smith, Hazel and R. T. Dean. Improvisation, Hypermedia and the Arts since 1945. London: Routledge, 1997. Stanislavski, Constantin. An Actor Prepares. Virginia City: Taylor & Francis, 1989. Thorndike, Edward Lee. The Elements of Psychology. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin, 1905. Trostle-Jones, Edward. All or Nothing – The Cinema of Mike Leigh. New York: Peter Lang, 2004. Turan, Kenneth and Mike Leigh. ‘The Case for Mike Leigh – Kenneth Turan Profile’, The Los Angeles Times, 22 September 1996. Veltman, Chloe and Mike Leigh. ‘I Have To Get Out of Bed Every Day to Make Something Happen’. The Believer (March/April 2009). Web, accessed 29 June 2010, www.believermag.com/issues/200903/?read=interview leigh. Walsh, David and Mike Leigh. ‘An Interview with British Filmmaker Mike Leigh’. World Socialist Web Site (2008). Web, accessed 14 November 2009, www.wsws.org/ articles/2008/dec2008/leig-d05.shtml.

3

Every Performance Is a Contrivance: Art and Truth in Topsy-Turvy Andrew Crowther

Introduction There is a moment in Mike Leigh’s Topsy-Turvy that, though fleeting and easily missed, opens a door on one of the film’s central themes. Sullivan (Allan Corduner) is telling Gilbert (Jim Broadbent) why he is unable to set to music the comic opera plot that Gilbert has proposed. The plot concerns a magic potion that transforms the characters into what they are pretending to be, and it is described by Sullivan with some distaste as ‘an artificial and implausible situation’. What he longs to set is ‘a situation of tender, human and dramatic interest’. Sullivan tells Gilbert that he finds the new plot ‘utterly contrived’. Gilbert, apparently missing the point of Sullivan’s objections, replies: ‘Every theatrical performance is a contrivance, by its very nature’ (Leigh 1999, 54). The discussion lays bare the contrast between the two men: Sullivan, warm-hearted and wishing to express sincere emotion in his music; and Gilbert, cold and intellectual, writing cerebral and ironic dramas, ‘contrivances’ apparently lacking in emotional heart. The two men were, in some ways, opposites. Sullivan, affable, sociable and considerate, unmarried but with a discreet mistress and fond of trips to Parisian houses of pleasure, contrasts starkly with Gilbert, spiky, easy offended, married and a strong upholder of Victorian values on sexual morality. It is a cliché to say that each provided what the other lacked; but it was perhaps true. Naturally, Sullivan is the more sympathetic figure, and his frustration at not being given the chance to let his music speak in its natural emotional element is most understandable. It is easy to miss the pertinence of Gilbert’s reply. The argument suggests Sullivan as an apostle of emotional truth in art, and Gilbert

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as the supporter of its opposite – artifice and, by inference, unreality. But the fact remains: all art is a contrivance; all art takes the raw material of life and shapes it into unreal structures. This exchange between Gilbert and Sullivan reflects not only the nature of the art they themselves create; it also reflects aspects of the film in which they appear. Critics have tended to associate Mike Leigh’s films with that most changeable of artistic terms, realism. The films seem to reflect the truth of life. They reject the overly neat structures and contrivances of more mainstream drama and cinema. And yet they are shaped. Because Topsy-Turvy is based on real people and real events, it offers us a unique opportunity to see this shaping process. We are able to compare the historical evidence with the version that appears in the film: we can see how even Mike Leigh’s apparent ‘realism’ is affected by artistic requirements. I aim in this essay to reflect upon various aspects of the relationship between art and life. This will involve some fairly detailed comparison of the historical background to Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado with its portrayal in Topsy-Turvy. First, however, I wish to consider some of the factors that led to Mike Leigh’s decision to make a film about Gilbert and Sullivan.

Leigh and Gilbert and Sullivan: Old-fashioned values and radical anarchy Shortly before the UK release of Topsy-Turvy, Matthew Sweet wrote in his article ‘The Very Model’ in The Independent on Sunday (30 January 2000): ‘When rumours began to circulate that Mike Leigh was planning to recruit a cast of nearly a hundred actors and singers for a costume drama about the life of Gilbert and Sullivan, the general conclusion was that he’d gone completely bonkers.’ The widespread reaction was indeed one of surprise, even bewilderment. There seemed to be no connection between the well-known ‘bleakness’ of Leigh’s work and the anti-realistic confections of Gilbert and Sullivan. Moreover, in the United Kingdom at least, Gilbert and Sullivan opera is considered to be a peculiarly old-fashioned middle-class totem of respectability – the kind of thing that one might expect to be the object of ridicule in a Mike Leigh film (like Demis Roussos) rather than a sympathetically treated subject.

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In fact, this was a long-cherished project of Leigh’s, with deep roots in his own cultural background. Leigh has described his childhood in Salford as being steeped in a certain kind of Victorian-inflected experience: his schoolteachers had been born in the 1880s and 1890s and were, like his parents, Gilbert and Sullivan enthusiasts; when he and his school friends went on trips to concerts they were taken to old halls where you ‘could smell the old Victorian world in the grime’; he avidly read the Victorian writers like Dickens and Lear and Carroll. The whole mid-Victorian world felt indefinably familiar to him (Raphael 2008, 292–3). The D’Oyly Carte Opera Company, the company which had originally produced the Gilbert and Sullivan operas in the 1870s onwards, was still a thriving business. It was proud of its unbroken tradition of performance which extended back to Gilbert and Sullivan themselves: the unwritten details of how to point a movement or inflect a word, passed down from performer to performer. It spent much of its existence touring the country, and frequently visited the big ‘provincial’ cities such as Manchester, where the young Mike Leigh would go to see them. Leigh was enthralled by the operas, and his description of his younger self implies some of the reasons why this might be so: ‘I was a complicated and possibly bizarre combination of wholesome old-fashioned values and a radical, anarchic reaction to life’ (Raphael 2008, 293). The operas share that same mixture of attitudes. As Leigh has written elsewhere, ‘for all [Gilbert’s] appearance as the very model of conservative respectability, his merciless lampooning of the heartless constraints of laws and etiquette reveal him, underneath it all, to have been a genuine free spirit and a true anarchist’ (Leigh 2006, viii). Throughout Gilbert’s work there is an ever-present distrust of authority and established values. To take just one example, in The Pirates of Penzance the Pirate King says, ‘I don’t think much of our profession [of piracy], but, contrasted with respectability, it is comparatively honest’ (Gilbert 1962, 130). Leigh was enthralled by the operas. However, discovering that the cultural elite regarded them with a snobbish disdain, he kept quiet on the subject for a long time. Nevertheless, sometime in the 1980s, he had the idea of creating a film about Gilbert and Sullivan ‘that would subvert the snobbery by dealing with them in a realistic way, by looking at the tension between reality and artifice’ (Raphael 2008, 295). The theme, therefore, is at the very core of the film’s intention. From the first, Leigh planned to set the artifice of artistic creation alongside the reality of life outside. The film is not only an examination of the creative process, but it is also

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a private act of homage to Gilbert and Sullivan, and an exploration of the streak of Victorianism in Leigh’s makeup which is usually disguised in his choice of contemporaneous subjects for his dramas. It is not only a celebration but also a criticism; and that too creates a tension in the finished product. There is another important factor in the film’s biographical background that should be mentioned here. Leigh was given Leslie Baily’s The Gilbert and Sullivan Book (1952) on his ninth birthday. He has described the book as his Gilbert and Sullivan ‘bible’ and ‘the genesis of Topsy-Turvy’ (Raphael 2008, 294). This history of the partnership, considered definitive in its day, is, it is now clear, full of persuasive mythologizing; the facts are frequently adjusted to fit the stories that Baily wanted to tell. It is, in that sense, indeed a bible. And though as Topsy-Turvy was developed there was an extensive process of using the most up-to-date historical research, the shadow of Leslie Baily’s myth did not fade, and, as we shall see, it left an important impress on the film’s narrative structure.

What life is, and what it ought to be William Schwenck Gilbert was the foremost dramatist of his time. His first plays, in the mid- to late-1860s, had been rhymed burlesques, but he had quickly outgrown the limited possibilities of the form, and between 1869 and 1875 he made a name for himself as a writer of daringly original dramas of all sorts – verse comedies and tragedies, prose comedies of modern life, historical dramas, farces and fantastic extravaganzas. He was not only much praised but also much criticized. In January 1875, the magazine London Society published an article on Gilbert written by Peyton Wrey as part of its series of ‘Notes on Popular Dramatists’. Helpfully, it summarized the perceived rise and fall of Gilbert’s career: It is but a very short time since Mr. Gilbert promised to take a position second to no dramatist of the day. His plays were to be seen in all directions; managers clamoured for more; and the first representations of his works were attended by the recognised leaders of literature and art. The public applauded and the newspapers praised, for Mr. Gilbert’s wit was facile and fluent, his humour trenchant and keen; and when each new play was announced his admirers hoped that his acute faults would have been overcome, and his weaknesses strengthened. His

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admirers have been disappointed. The faults seemed to have become chronic; interest in his plays diminished; the critics, disinclined to keep on for ever hiding blame and encouragingly giving praise, spoke freely, and acknowledged that Mr. Gilbert had not done what was expected. . . . Mr. Gilbert at the present moment cannot be regarded as a successful writer. . . . A play, to be effective, must win the sympathies of an audience, and it is here that, as a general rule, Mr. Gilbert completely fails. . . . Mr. Gilbert’s creations are generally cynical, and sometimes brutal, in their behaviour. They are constantly out of harmony with the spectator. . . . (Wrey 1875, 13–14)

Only two months later, on 25 March 1875, Trial by Jury was premiered, the first successful collaboration of Gilbert with the composer Arthur Sullivan. (They had previously worked on the burlesque opera Thespis in 1871, but this was an ephemeral piece, never revived, which neither Gilbert nor Sullivan held in high esteem.) Under the management of Richard D’Oyly Carte, Gilbert and Sullivan were encouraged to work together on a settled basis. The international success of H.M.S. Pinafore in 1878 confirmed the arrangement, and by 1885, the year of The Mikado, W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan had written eight operas together. Gilbert occasionally attempted to return to the serious stage; but every experiment in this direction proved to be a critical and commercial failure. By writing the operas, Gilbert became more successful – that is to say, richer – than ever before. But success came at the expense of artistic expression. In an interview which appeared in The Daily News on 21 January 1885 Gilbert said: You and I and a few more are happy in our domestic and other relations; but is this true of all English people? What the contemporary playwright is asked to represent is not what life is, but what it ought to be. . . . Hence, except in the case of Shakespeare or of French adaptations, English dramatists are driven within the narrow limits of bourgeois thought imposed by the survival of Puritanical prejudice. The English dramatist dances his hornpipe in fetters.

Though Gilbert externalized his comments to apply them to English dramatists in general, it is clear that he was really talking about himself. He regarded his libretti for Sullivan as trivial and unambitious works, and he considered their success was evidence of ‘the folly of the British Public’ (Alec-Tweedie 1916, 35). They were written with the frank intention of appealing to a popular audience. They depicted life not as it was, but as it ought to be.

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Addressing the Dramatic and Musical Sick Fund the following month, Gilbert returned to the theme from a different angle, as was reported in The Era on 21 February 1885: In the middle of the front row of the dress circle on the rare occasion of the first performance of an original English play sits a young lady of fifteen. She is a very charming girl  – gentle, modest, sensitive,  – carefully educated and delicately nurtured – very easily flurried and perhaps a little too apt to take alarm when no occasion for alarm exists – but, nevertheless, an excellent specimen of a well-bred young English gentlewoman; and it is with reference to its suitability to the eyes and ears of this young lady that the moral fitness of every original English play is gauged on the occasion of its production. It must contain no allusions that cannot be fully and satisfactorily explained to this young lady; it must contain no incident, no dialogue, that can, by any chance, summon a blush to this young lady’s innocent face. Well, gentlemen, I have no objection to this young lady. I think, on the contrary, that the presence of this young lady has exercised a most wholesome restrictive influence on the character of our few original plays. . . . I look upon her presence at my own ‘first nights’ as a direct and most gratifying personal compliment. . . . But when a comparison is instituted between our original English drama, such as it is, and the drama of France, such as that is, I think that the restrictive influence exercised – and most properly and wholesomely exercised – by this admirable girl should be fully, freely and frankly admitted.

These comments must be decoded to be understood. The first evident fact is that Gilbert deliberately wrote his libretti to suit an ‘easily flurried’ well brought up girl of 15. The second is that he felt this to be a restriction, though he was anxious to show that he considered it a benign restriction. The conflict in his attitude to social censorship is clear, and even painful. Gilbert was a great champion of propriety and respectability in the theatre. In a speech given towards the end of his life, he recalled that he had deliberately resolved that the dialogue of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas should be ‘void of offence’, in contrast with the adaptations of French operettas which had previously held the stage, which he described as either ‘“bowdlerized” out of intelligibility . . . [or] frankly improper’ (Dark and Grey 1923, 194). He was also extremely protective of the reputations of the performers at the Savoy. As Jessie Bond wrote in her autobiography: ‘Gilbert would suffer no loose word or gesture either behind the stage or on it, and watched over us young women like a dragon’ (Bond 1930, 93). When, in October 1882, an officer in the Hussars boasted to a friend that he had slept with May Fortescue of the Savoy company, Gilbert

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tracked him down and forced him to sign a retraction in the presence of a solicitor (Pearson 1957, 124). In the early Victorian period theatres were viewed as immoral places, the haunts of prostitutes, and it was his settled intention to alter this perception. But at the same time he wished to write plays which would express his attitude to the world, and in doing so he ran up against the ridiculous shockability of the age. His blank-verse comedy The Wicked World (1873) was denounced in an article in the Pall Mall Gazette (23 January 1873) as a coarse and indecent work: the article even declared that ‘one line . . . is unfit to be spoken in a theatre at all’ (The line in question reads: ‘I go to that good world/Where women are not devils till they die!’). Gilbert, outraged, sued the Pall Mall Gazette for libel. Other plays from this first phase of his dramatic career were regularly criticized by the press for their lack of taste or moral tone. It is often suggested that Gilbert’s plays and libretti were in perfect congruence with their age: the historian David Cannadine, for instance, has characterized the operas as ‘a paean of praise to national pride and to the established order’ (Cannadine 2003, 212). The truth is not so simple. Gilbert’s natural artistic inclination was to use drama to challenge received ideas, and to show life as it is rather than as it ought to be. Faced with consistent opposition from critics and audiences alike, who resented being given drama that challenged their ideas, he then made a deliberate decision in the Savoy Operas to cut his cloth to suit his audience. Indeed, he did not hesitate to tell his audience as much. At the beginning of his article ‘The Story of a Stage Play’ (New-York Daily Tribune, 9 August 1885), he declared: ‘the chief secret of practical success [as a writer of drama] is to keep well within the understanding of the least intelligent section of the audience’, adding that he aimed to provide the artistic equivalent of rump steak and oyster sauce – ‘the dish that will be acceptable to the largest number of every class’. But Gilbert was, in spite of himself, an artist. He could not help but express his view of life. Shadows of his cynicism remained, and some spectators were appalled. One reviewer of Iolanthe (in Bell’s Life in London and Sporting Chronicle, 2 December 1882) wrote: ‘It seems to me that he starts primarily with the object of bringing Truth and Love and Friendship into contempt; just as we are taught the devil does. . . . Mr Gilbert tries to prove that there is no such thing as virtue, but that we are all lying, selfish, vain, and unworthy. . . . If it be true that mothers more often than not value their children’s welfare before their own; that fathers toil patiently to place their sons beyond the reach of poverty; and that some wives are angels in

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There are moments in The Mikado when Gilbert reminds his audience frankly that they are watching a dream of life as it ought to be. A chorus of Japanese schoolgirls asks questions about the world: Is it but a world of trouble – Sadness set to song? Is its beauty but a bubble Bound to break ere long? Are its palaces and pleasures Fantasies that fade? And the glory of its treasures Shadow of a shade? Gilbert 1963, 17

Later the Mikado states with brutal honesty, ‘it’s an unjust world, and virtue is triumphant only in theatrical performances’ (Gilbert 1963, 55). It may be argued, then, that Gilbert’s artistic values are closer to Mike Leigh’s than we might normally assume. Like Leigh, he wished to portray life as it is, though unlike Leigh he was hampered and partially defeated by the morality and conventionalities of his time. ‘The narrow limits of bourgeois thought’ that his age displayed frustrated and angered him, even though, being a product of the age, he seems at some level to have shared its values. In Topsy-Turvy, only the slightest hint of Gilbert’s internal creative conflict is glimpsed. The centre of the drama lies elsewhere. Still, it can be seen, for instance at the end of the scene in which he is shown reading one of his own lyrics to his wife. KITTY: Highly amusing, Willie. GILBERT: Fatuous. Leigh 1999, 68

Facts and stories Mike Leigh is justly proud of the historical research that went into the making of Topsy-Turvy: in the DVD’s director’s commentary he describes it, with only

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slight hyperbole, as ‘the best researched film in the world’. This is not to say that the film does not contain departures from the historical evidence. The interesting point is to consider why these departures from the evidence were made. It is perhaps necessary to emphasize how much of the material in the film is factually true or a justifiable extrapolation of the facts: Gilbert’s attitude to Sullivan; Sullivan’s attitude to Gilbert; their attitude to Carte and his to them; the dispute over Gilbert’s plot about the magic lozenge; Sullivan’s determination not to write for the Savoy; the telephone; the toothache; ‘Miss Sixpence-Please’; the cutting of the Mikado’s song and the chorus’s insistence on its reinstatement; even (on balance of probabilities) Grossmith’s opium addiction and Jessie Bond’s varicose vein. All, alongside many other details, are in accordance with the evidence. In comparison with other biopics, the attention to factual accuracy is extraordinary. The film’s researcher, Rosie Chambers, went to great lengths to ensure that details, not only of Gilbert and Sullivan history but also of clothing, decor, behaviour and language, were strictly in period. Let us take one sequence in the film, from the scene in Carte’s office starting on page 50 of the Faber script, through to Gilbert’s late-night scene in his study on page 62. But first, a quick recap of the actual facts leading up to it. Princess Ida, the Gilbert and Sullivan opera that preceded The Mikado, opened at the Savoy Theatre on 5 January 1884. Some of the reviews were grudging. One of them grumbled: ‘To me, music and words alike reveal symptoms of fatigue in their respective composer and author’ – a line quoted in Topsy-Turvy, though it was in fact The Theatre, not The Times as the film suggests, which made that pronouncement. This key sentence is quoted in Leslie Baily’s Gilbert and Sullivan Book; and, clearly, that was where Leigh found it (Baily 1952, 228). Sullivan left London for Monte Carlo on 4 February 1884. On 22 March Carte wrote to him, giving notice that he and Gilbert should start work on a new opera. On 28 March Sullivan wrote back from Brussels stating that ‘it is impossible for me to do another piece of the character of those already written by Gilbert and myself ’ (Jacobs 1984, 188). A flurry of letters between Gilbert, Sullivan and Carte ensued, with Sullivan continuing a slow journey back to London all the time. These letters include arguments and phrases which are turned into face-toface conversation in Topsy-Turvy, as seen in this letter from Gilbert to Sullivan, dated 4 April 1884: ‘When you tell me that your desire is that I shall write a libretto in which the humorous words will come in a humorous situation, and in which a tender or

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dramatic situation will be treated tenderly and dramatically, you teach me the ABC of my profession’ (Jacobs 1984, 190; see also Leigh 1999, 37). On 9 April Sullivan returned to London, and the dispute was able to develop without inconvenient delay. In the weeks that followed, Gilbert and Sullivan met repeatedly and tried to find a middle course which would allow them to collaborate. Gilbert liked the idea of a story based on a magic potion or talisman that would turn people into what they were pretending to be. Sullivan found the idea mechanical and emotionally arid. Gilbert responded by attempting to graft emotional subplots into the piece. Sullivan agreed to look at these, but was never able to build up any enthusiasm for them. It was effectively a deadlock. It is unclear whether a four-way meeting between Carte, Lenoir, Gilbert and Sullivan did take place at this point. The scene in Topsy-Turvy (pages 50–5) is, on the whole, a magnificent distillation of their attitudes and antagonisms – though the timing of this whole sequence has been changed from spring to high summer during a heatwave, presumably to allow Leigh to show the failure of Princess Ida in simple, visual terms. Leigh himself has identified in the four-way office scene what he calls ‘the film’s only howler – of which I am deeply ashamed’ (Leigh 2009, 169). Gilbert, wishing to wound Sullivan, growls, ‘If you wish to write a grand opera about a prostitute dying of consumption in a garret, I suggest you contact Mr Ibsen in Oslo. I am sure he will be able to furnish you with something suitably dull’ (Leigh 1999, 54). But the town of Kristiana was only renamed Oslo in 1924. Oddly, there is a deeper inaccuracy in the speech that Leigh seems not to have noticed. There is no reason to think Gilbert would have known anything about Ibsen at this early date, well before the first concerted attempts to introduce his work to the London stage, in 1889. As we have seen, Gilbert himself considered the extreme examples of immorality in the theatre to derive from, not Oslo or even Kristiana, but Paris. It is actually the next scene, set in Gilbert’s study, which contains the film’s one major inaccuracy. Gilbert’s wife Kitty is shown telling Gilbert about a Japanese exhibition at Humphrey’s Hall in Knightsbridge, and after some defensive growling he is persuaded to attend. It is, of course, this experience that – in the film  – leads to Gilbert’s moment of inspiration, resulting in The Mikado. But the inconvenient fact is that the Japanese exhibition at Humphrey’s Hall did not open until January 1885, eight months later, when The Mikado was mostly written and was entering the rehearsal process.

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The reasons for this rearrangement of reality are not hard to find. To begin with, it is a brilliantly visual way of introducing the Japanese theme to the film, the idea of Japanese and English cultures meeting. Gilbert is seen making a genuine effort, in his stiff, patrician way, to understand and absorb this utterly alien culture. He asks a scribe what he is writing, and gets a reply that he cannot understand. He greedily devours a performance of kabuki. The material soaks in, and in the dead of night, as he paces his study, a Japanese sword which he has bought at the exhibition and has had hung on the wall falls to the floor, and inspiration strikes. It makes complete, compelling narrative sense. The fact that it is an almost complete pack of lies is incidental. In fact, Gilbert did have such a sword. It is mentioned in at least one interview at this time, and when, just after the premiere of The Mikado, Gilbert wrote his article ‘The Story of a Stage Play’ describing the process of writing it and bringing it to the stage, he explained: ‘A Japanese executioner’s sword hanging on the wall of my library – the very sword carried by Mr. Grossmith at his entrance in the first act – suggested the broad idea upon which the libretto is based.’ But he did not buy it at the exhibition, because the exhibition did not exist when the opera’s ‘broad idea’ struck him. And the sword did not, it seems, fall from the wall, though a long-standing myth suggests that it did. Gilbert explained more than once how he came to write the piece, but never mentioned that the sword fell. That picturesque little tale first appeared in print in 1914, three years after Gilbert’s death (Cellier and Bridgeman 1914, 186), and was recounted with variations in the decades afterwards. It is in fact a vivid example of the creation of a Gilbert and Sullivan myth – a myth that has since been brilliantly deconstructed by Brian Jones (1985, 22–5). This myth achieved its most vivid, and, it must be added, its most fictional, expression in Baily’s Gilbert and Sullivan Book of 1952: Gilbert was striding up and down his library in the new house at Harrington Gardens, fuming at the impasse, when a huge Japanese sword decorating the wall fell with a clatter to the floor. Gilbert picked it up. His perambulations stopped. ‘It suggested the broad idea,’ as he said later. His journalistic mind, always quick to seize on topicalities, turned to a Japanese Exhibition which had recently been opened in the neighbourhood. Gilbert had seen the little Japanese men and women from the Exhibition shuffling in their exotic robes through the streets of Knightsbridge. Now he sat at his writing desk and picked up a quill pen. . . . For several hours he scribbled down the pictures that were forming in

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We may imagine this key scene of inspiration remaining lodged in Leigh’s mind from the date he first read it at the age of 9 right up to the moment he found the opportunity to recreate it in Topsy-Turvy. The incident is almost certainly untrue in all its significant details; and Leigh was made aware of this during the research process. But there are stronger reasons than literal truth for such scenes to exist. As we have seen, Topsy-Turvy is a film about the tension between reality and artifice. It is appropriate that in this case artifice should have proved the stronger of the two elements. A myth is repeated because it is something we wish to be true, especially when it is not. Therein lies the myth’s strength. This is why the scene is necessary at this point in Topsy-Turvy. Elsewhere, there is a seemingly deliberate turning away from neat narrative structure. But this sequence is a crux in the film, and Leigh upholds the narrative conventions rather than subverting them, knowing that here, if nowhere else, the audience must be grabbed and kept. After conflict, argument and deadlock, with one neat stroke the sword falls, and the Gordian knot is cut. In fact, the film plays with audience expectation from start to finish, denying it and then fulfilling it, teasing and rewarding. This is not ‘realism’, whatever that means, and it was never intended as such. Leigh explains the core of the matter clearly enough: A substantial proportion of this material [in Topsy-Turvy] is total invention, albeit suggested by and drawn from painstaking research. The commitment was to create an accurate, if subjective, picture of Gilbert and Sullivan’s world. For it is subjective – unapologetically so. It is a highly personal, fact-based poetic piece. . . . (Leigh 2009, 157)

It is vital to remember this. Topsy-Turvy is a poetic piece. That is to say, its relation to reality is not simple and literal, but metaphorical and oblique. The difficulty for an audience is that film, especially when used in Leigh’s representational manner, gives an overwhelming illusion of reality. What we see may not be true, and we may know it is not true, but the evidence of our eyes suggests that it is, and in spite of everything we tend to believe our eyes. To take a simple example, I know perfectly well that Gilbert did not really look like Jim Broadbent, and

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Sullivan certainly did not look like Allan Corduner; but now, in my mind, the actors and the parts they played in the film overlap and converge. I wish to take two examples of the way in which the characters of real people were altered in the process of creating Topsy-Turvy: Gilbert’s father William Gilbert, and his wife Lucy (known as Kitty). Charles Simon’s portrayal of William Gilbert is highly controversial. In the film he is shown as not only waspish and eccentric (which the historical William Gilbert undoubtedly was) but also prone to episodes of hallucination and terror: DRGILBERT: Wh-wh-what are these walls? (Whatever ‘these walls’ are, they apparently close in on DR GILBERT, gradually at first, then rapidly. He is very frightened and disturbed. He moans and groans and shrieks, and, finally, screams with terror, shielding his eyes from the awful spectre. . . .) (Leigh 1999, 30)

Born in 1804, William Gilbert took up professional writing in the late 1850s, taking for his subjects social issues such as poverty, drunkenness, religion and forms of insanity. He separated from his wife in 1876 and had a strong and individual character, but there appears to be no real evidence for the mental instability with which he is invested in Topsy-Turvy. The scholar Gilbert Murray, an Australian cousin of the Gilberts, knew William Gilbert in the late 1870s and early 1880s, and described him in his memoirs: Old Mr William Gilbert, tall, handsome, white-bearded and highly formidable to grown-ups, was a delightful companion to a child, especially a rather bookish and ‘high-brow’ child like me. He talked to me about Egypt and other wonderful places where he had been, about the sins of Bismarck, and peculiar forms of insanity. (Murray 1960, 79)

This brief sketch of William Gilbert as he was differs almost completely from the portrayal in Topsy-Turvy, both physically and in character. So what, then, triggered Charles Simon’s interpretation? The writer David Eden has suggested that William Gilbert spent some time as a patient at an asylum. This theory is set out in the course of his 2003 book W.S. Gilbert: Appearance and Reality. This work post-dates the release of Topsy-Turvy, but it is relevant to us because David Eden was consulted in the research for the

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film. It is clear that his theory informed Charles Simon’s characterization before he chose to set it down in the book. Eden takes William Gilbert’s novel The Memoirs of a Cynic and treats it as a broadly factual narrative of William Gilbert’s own life. Eden writes: ‘What we have in the above passage amounts to a statement by William Gilbert that he suffered from depression . . . he does not directly admit entering a mental asylum, but says he stayed close to one in order to consult the doctor in charge. In Shirley Hall Asylum (1863) and Dr Austin’s Guests (1866) [two other novels by William Gilbert], both of which are studies of patients in mental institutions, Gilbert includes himself among them, ironically claiming to be sane. These are strong prima facie reasons for supposing he may have spent a period in an asylum’. (Eden 2003, 59)

It is true that The Memoirs of a Cynic draws upon episodes in its author’s life (as do many novels), but this is far from being a reason, prima facie or otherwise, to suppose William Gilbert was mentally unstable or attended an asylum. All three novels cited by David Eden are intended as fiction, each having an ‘I’ narrator who is not William Gilbert. A few pages later Eden quotes from an article by William Gilbert entitled ‘Experiences of a Dipsomaniac’, in which the symptoms of delirium tremens are described. Eden suggests as a possibility that William Gilbert also experienced these symptoms (Eden 2003, 64–5). This idea seems to have strongly affected Charles Simon’s performance. It is clear, then, that this performance is not a guess at the most probable interpretation of the available evidence, but an individual extrapolation from a maverick theory. I do not intend my remarks to be taken an adverse criticism of Charles Simon’s performance, which is compelling and extraordinary. It is however important to recognize that it relates more to the artistic world of Topsy-Turvy than to historical reality. This interpretation was chosen because it connects to Mike Leigh’s wish to portray Gilbert’s family as dysfunctional and off-centre. The relationship of W. S. Gilbert with his wife Lucy (Kitty) is shrouded in some mystery. They had no children, though they did hold parties for the offspring of their friends and clearly felt an emotional longing for children. It is often suggested that Gilbert dominated or bullied Lucy, though there is also evidence to suggest that she was very much able to stand up for herself when required. Mike Leigh and the cast fill in the blanks, naturally. There is very little doubt that Gilbert found it extremely difficult to express his love and affection; and that is a

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keynote in Jim Broadbent’s magnificent performance of the role. In the film, this forms a possible explanation for the childlessness: Gilbert, emotionally sealed from the world, is in his behaviour apparently sexless. Kitty, seeking his love, tries and fails to break the seal in an extraordinary outburst near the end of the film, in which she improvises a comic opera to express her emotional anguish: ‘. . . you should have a young and beautiful heroine. . . . Who grows old and plain. And as she gradually becomes older and older, the ladies’ chorus becomes younger and younger. . . . And she climbs up the stairs, and there, on the sands, are hundreds of nannies, all pushing empty perambulators about! . . . And every time she tries to be born . . . he strangles her with her umbilical cord’ (Leigh 1999, 132–3). As far as Gilbert and Sullivan enthusiasts are concerned, this is probably the film’s most controversial scene. It reaches the furthest point away from the known facts and from what Gilbert and Sullivan fans wish to hear. And yet the film itself appears to show reality, the way it happened in London in 1885. Kitty’s monologue can be seen as a deliberately offensive breaking of that illusion: it takes the drama to a new, more expressionistic level. We can say of most of the scenes in Topsy-Turvy that they approximate what might have happened. But we may confidently assume that Kitty never spoke to Gilbert as she speaks to him in this scene. However, that is not the point. Topsy-Turvy is not reality. It is a contrivance. It is a poetic response to the facts. It is a work of art.

Conclusion It has been noticed many times that ‘realism’ in art is itself a construct. Whenever a work of art is hailed as unusually ‘realistic’, what has usually happened is that within a framework that is more or less conventional – that is, imitated from other works of art – there is some element of dialogue or a theme or a setting which breaks the convention because it has been observed directly from life and reproduced more or less faithfully. This rogue element produces a shocking and exhilarating effect on its audience. In the 1860s the plays of Tom Robertson, produced at the Prince of Wales Theatre in London, were considered unusually ‘realistic’ because the items of decor – the chairs and tables and door handles – were real, and because the characters spoke not in melodramatic bombast but in ordinary workaday small talk. In the 1890s Ibsen was shockingly ‘realistic’ because of his emphasis on taboo sexual themes. Other plays of the same period

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were ‘realistic’ in dismantling the clockwork construction of the ‘well made play’. Yet in all these works, and in thousands of others, the elements are arranged according to artistic principles that deny life’s messiness. The structure of Topsy-Turvy can be summarized to make it appear relatively conventional. An artistic partnership, in the creative doldrums, becomes reinvigorated and storms to success. Stated so baldly, it sounds like a typical, even stereotypical, showbiz story. But the actual feel of the narrative as it emerges is quite different. The edges are rough, the story is not a narrative but a sequence of scenes in which people are revealed and moments are explored. I have, in this essay, concentrated on just one of the many different threads that run through the film: Gilbert’s. Let me return to it for one last time. In an early scene – almost explicitly a ‘plot’ scene – Gilbert reads from the Times review of Princess Ida (Leigh 1999, 11). The threat of failure hovers over the partnership, and it is only exorcised finally with the triumphant reception of The Mikado on its first night. The natural inevitable conclusion to this narrative would surely have been to cap the triumph with a quotation from The Times’s review of The Mikado. (In fact, this review was far from a rave, but Leigh could have found a way round that.) Gilbert, Sullivan and D’Oyly Carte are together again. All is well. What we have instead is a dying fall. The first night is over. Gilbert, sitting on his wife’s bed, tells her: ‘There’s something inherently disappointing about success’ (Leigh 1999, 131). The film ends in a mood of elegiac melancholy, with Leonora Braham (Shirley Henderson), the flawed soprano with the fondness for drink, alone on stage and singing: I mean to rule the earth As he the sky – We really know our worth, The sun and I! Leigh 1999, 136

As Richard Temple says: ‘Laughter. Tears. Curtain’ (Leigh 1999, 114). The film’s structure subverts the expectations of the audience by showing, instead of a conventional climax of laughter, cheers and exhilaration, a deliberate and beautiful anticlimax. And that, too, is art.

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Works cited Alec-Tweedie, Mrs. My Table-Cloths: A Few Reminiscences. New York: George H. Doran Company, 1916. Baily, Leslie. The Gilbert and Sullivan Book. London: Cassell & Company, 1952. Bond, Jessie. The Life and Reminiscences of Jessie Bond, The Old Savoyard. London: John Lane, The Bodley Head, 1930. Cannadine, David. In Churchill’s Shadow. London: Penguin, 2003. Cellier, Francois and Cunningham Bridgeman. Gilbert, Sullivan and D’Oyly Carte: Reminiscences of the Savoy and the Savoyards. London: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, Ltd, 1914. Dark, Sidney and Rowland Grey. W.S. Gilbert: His Life and Letters. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd, 1923. Eden, David. W.S. Gilbert: Appearance and Reality. London: Sir Arthur Sullivan Society, 2003. Gilbert, W. S. The Savoy Operas I. London: Oxford University Press, 1962. —. The Savoy Operas II. London: Oxford University Press, 1963. Jacobs, Arthur. Arthur Sullivan: A Victorian Musician. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984. Jones, Brian. ‘The Sword that Never Fell’, W.S. Gilbert Society Journal 1:1 (1985): 22–5. Leigh, Mike. Topsy-Turvy. London: Faber and Faber, 1999. —. ‘Introduction’, in The Complete Gilbert and Sullivan, ed. Ed Glinert. London: Penguin Books, 2006, vii–xiv. —. ‘Topsy-Turvy: A Personal Journey’, in The Cambridge Companion to Gilbert and Sullivan, ed. David Eden and Meinhard Saremba. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009, 153–76. Murray, Gilbert. An Unfinished Autobiography. London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd, 1960. Pearson, Hesketh. Gilbert: His Life and Strife. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd, 1957. Raphael, Amy, ed. Mike Leigh on Mike Leigh. London: Faber and Faber, 2008. Topsy-Turvy. DVD. Directed by Mike Leigh. London: Pathé, 1999. Wrey, Peyton. Mr. W.S. Gilbert. London Society, January 1875.

4

Costuming Choices: Stylization and Leigh’s Selective Realism Brenda Wentworth, Christopher Jordan and Sharon E. Cogdill

Nearly everything written about Mike Leigh’s films addresses their realism in one way or another, and much that has been written categorizes them as documentary-like using such terms as ‘kitchen sink’ realism, ‘social’ realism, ‘council estate’ realism and so on.1 Indeed, Leigh’s films make use of and are built around the conventions of realism – and even the extreme forms of documentary realism – yet they are not simply realist films, and in important conceptual, narrative, thematic and technical ways, they inhabit a much broader world of realist style and anti-realist stylization. Like realist works, the finales of his films are often open-ended, leaving character problems or needs unresolved and leaving us simultaneously empathizing with and distant from the characters.2 Like realist film-makers, further, Leigh strives for photographic realism by subordinating aspects of style to the goal of faithfully rendering the mundane and everyday visual details of life. Similarly, for his films set in the past Leigh and his collaborative team – his designers and cast – research and construct the everyday world of the past with an obvious interest in historical accuracy and believability. It is also true, however, that Leigh’s films are flamboyantly stylized. Leigh stylizes the reality in life by utilizing the artificiality of film as a medium to construct a sense of realism.3 In the context of many of the conventions of realist films and film making, Leigh’s artistic choices often take precedence over realistic presentation in the service, it seems to us, of meaning; that is, he manipulates his construction of ‘the real world’ semiotically. Unlike realist film-makers, for example, who may cast non-actors in roles that draw upon their lived experiences, Leigh instead picks seasoned actors who completely invent

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characters through intense collaboration with the director over many months of long workdays. The organic nature of this method gives rise to very stylistic films, Leigh contends, because the goal of capturing life realistically through artistic collaboration breaks down distinctions between truth and reality and style.4 For Leigh, then, ‘truth and reality’ are not opposed to stylization. Many seem to believe that Leigh’s films somehow distil reality with minimal artistic intervention. His artistic choices can be subtle, perhaps so subtle that audiences overlook the stylization in his work. On the other hand, there are also instances of amazingly overt stylization, where Leigh and his team of technical specialists and actors make choices that lead us to construct meaning from what would otherwise just be something in the background. While un- or anti-realistic stylization sometimes offers Leigh an opportunity to investigate ideas in ways that let him get at the ‘whole thing’ – the entire film – in direct and overt ways, sometimes the stylization is so subtle that it works, as he puts it, ‘subliminally’.5 Of all the visual elements that make up the mise-en-scène in films, perhaps the least analysed and least published focus is costumes. Audiences rarely take notice of the contributions costumes make to the film’s characters, performances, other visual elements or to directorial choices, especially if the film is contemporary. Audiences do notice and often comment on period clothing with no real knowledge of what clothing looked like in the period shown on film. It is rare to find a clothing scholar describing film costumes theoretically, much less using the costumes to illustrate the ways realism is stylized in the artistic choices made by the director and designer. Not only are the costumes essential in realism made semiotically meaningful, they also reveal character. Viewers usually do not think about what the actors are wearing unless the film is set in a past period of history, and they do not notice it then, as long as the clothing meets their expectations about that past period. Elements of a film that seem to be merely reconstructions of reality, however, are never just that; even the most historically accurate visual elements are stylized to support the aesthetic of the film being designed and to contribute to the intelligibility of the film, for example, as they reveal or hide character traits. In his Hollywood and History: Costume Design in Film, Edward Maeder describes how costume designers use paintings as inspiration for creating clothing from another era.6 Designers must not be limited by the technological and artistic standards of the time when using a period source, though they may wish to recreate the appearance or ‘feel’ of those standards. Further, besides complementing the design and aesthetics of the film designers stylize an era so that the garments produced employ aesthetics

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contemporary to the audience; that is, the stylization must use a vocabulary contemporary to the audience and not to the era represented. According to Maeder, actually recreating period clothing would prevent the audience from understanding the look of a film, undermining the role costume design has in the film’s interpretability. But actors’ clothing does much more than indicate a particular historical period. Garments can reveal the character’s age, economic situation, occupation, status in society and relationships with other characters. Costumes help to tell viewers where the action is set, who the story will be about, what time of day it is and what has happened before the plot begins. Costumes can also reveal personality traits, both overt and hidden, as well as mood, attitude and approach to life. Typically viewers do not absorb all of this information consciously. It is usually up to the costume designer to select or build the clothing that will relate the kinds of information above to the audience.

A word about historical costumes Mike Leigh rarely sets his films in a past historical period. One notable exception is Topsy-Turvy. In this Gilbert and Sullivan piece, Leigh is really trying to create two historically interpreted worlds: the real 1885 London and the illusionary nineteenth-century theatre techniques and technology. Both the real nineteenth-century London and nineteenth-century theatre techniques and technology are carefully researched and reproduced by the company. Some historical artefacts, especially technology of 1880s London, that make up the visual elements of the film still exist today; for example, Leigh was able to film some scenes in the Savoy Theatre, now a historical landmark (although the stage and the interior are not original any longer).7 Most of the visual elements of the mise-en-scène, however, had to be selected and reproduced on the basis of detailed production design and painstaking historical research. The historical research yielded information about what Leigh calls the ‘industrial process’ of theatrical production, including lighting, music, acting style, makeup and the design of mise-en-scène. In particular, costumes had to be built for each of the actors. Fabrics from the nineteenth century were no longer produced in the twentieth century: most nineteenth-century fabrics were made from natural materials (silk, wool, cotton and linen), and most twentieth-century fabrics are blends of natural and

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synthetic materials not available in the nineteenth century. Men’s collars and cuffs are not treated similarly: the celluloid (a kind of early thermoplastic) used in them is no longer even made; also collars and cuffs are sewn to shirts today and are no longer detachable. While the line and drape of nineteenth-century clothing can be approximated using blended fabrics, contemporary fabrics are treated with various chemicals to resist wrinkles, while natural-fibre fabrics such as cotton, silk and linen wrinkle quickly and noticeably. As late as the middle of the twentieth century, movie actors were given padded boards to lean against when they were off set so that the wrinkles produced when they sat in chairs would not occur; even with 100 per cent silk or wool fabrics, current wrinkle-resisting treatments cause the fabrics to drape differently on the body. Another example of twentieth-century technology used to reproduce the appearance of the nineteenth-century line is in the construction of corsets. In the nineteenth century, the structural elements, called stays or whalebones, were not actually bones of whales: they came from a cartilaginous-like substance known as baleen, from the hard palate of some whales’ mouths. When treated with heat and dried, baleen was flexible and strong, but, because it is an animal product, it eventually deteriorated, cracking and breaking. It is these stays that creaked when the women moved. For many reasons, only steel boning is available for reproducing period corsets. Compromises as obvious were made in hair treatments: hairdressers used hairspray on the wigs and natural hair of the actors. Leigh and company made these choices to satisfy audience expectations (Figure 4.1). Period costumes are rarely mere reproductions of the past because of technology and audience; few viewers even notice the modifications, and fewer care. Almost no one has ever seen this clothing close enough to imagine how it would wrinkle or move. Stylizing the costumes in Topsy-Turvy for the appearance of historical accuracy reinforces the verisimilitude of Victorian theatre Leigh strives to maintain in Topsy-Turvy and keeps the actors and their costumes well kempt, well groomed and beautiful. In this case, part of the aesthetic of this film has to do with the lighting, music, acting style, makeup and the design of mise-enscène of the Victorian theatre, and the costumes, hair and make-up are stylized to support its intelligibility and interpretability. Leigh also strives in movies set in more recent times to focus on costume styles that convey a consistent aesthetic vision. The following sections focus on films set more contemporarily to us and concern how Leigh and the costume designers stylize current fashion to convey his aesthetic vision.

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Figure 4.1  Madame Leon (Alison Steadman) and Leonora Braham (Shirley Henderson) consider the use of a sash in place of a corset in costumes for the production of The Mikado in Topsy-Turvy (1999)

Yes, 1950 is a historical period Although many people who lived through World War II would not see 1950 as a past period, of course it is. Leigh set his abortion film, Vera Drake, in 1950. The sense of historical accuracy for Vera Drake takes a different form than a film set farther in the past, such as Topsy-Turvy, but the problem of creating the sense of pastness is the same. Leigh uses many of the same camera and editing techniques in both films, such as filming through doorways and using parallel editing to compare events taking place simultaneously. Setting a story in a past period is one way to distance an audience from the characters and the emotional issues that dominate people’s lives. Leigh looks at abortion and the people who need and perform abortions from a vantage point of 50 years later and a different cultural context, clarifying the issue without oversimplifying it. To make the issues surrounding abortions ‘real’ for contemporary audiences, Leigh made the characters and situations (using the visual elements as well as the writing) as realistic as possible. Much of Vera Drake was shot in a decommissioned hospital with few exterior shots because the 1950 setting led Leigh to want to avoid any references to contemporary life. According to Leigh, the mise-en-scène in Vera Drake creates a heightened realism; for example, its dark-flowered wallpaper distils the essence

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of the time without appearing nostalgic. As a tightly knit but stoic family, the Drakes are about ‘getting on with it’ by making the most of a limited set of choices.8 This attitude is rooted in the cultural ambiance of the early post-World War II era in England. As Robert Murphy observes, the peak for illegal abortions in England was probably between 1945, when a wartime culture of scarcity imposed the reassertion of traditional values, and 1960, when contraception became more readily available and the moral climate began to change.9 In the relatively few exterior shots, Leigh constructs the mise-en-scène from dark stairways and alleyways, which parallels his use of tight shots in interior settings to explore the relationships among the Drake family members. The diegetic context for the action of the film is a post-World War II working-class world in which utilitarian rationing represents an attempt to preserve human compassion while the prevalence of greens and greys suggests a uniformity and a scarcity of resources. Vera’s practice of performing illegal abortions for desperate and impoverished women springs from her attempts to provide human compassion in a scarcity of social resources.10 An observant camera captures subtleties in the family’s domestic rituals that reveal how their love for each other conquers all else. Living in a humble flat seemingly transported from a bygone era, Stan (Philip Davis) cheerfully addresses his wife Vera (Imelda Staunton) with an offhanded ‘hello Mum’ upon arriving home from work before donning his slippers, conveying the quiet and tight-knit ordinariness of the Drake family as the camera captures these rhythms of family life from behind a door frame and characters walk in and out of the shot.11 These examples reveal a consistent aesthetic for the film’s style. All of these examples illustrate the film-maker’s artistic choice that stylizes and focuses the film on the auteur’s viewpoint. Leigh contrasts the domestic working-class settings of the homes in which Vera conducts her homemade abortions with the professional clinic in which Susan Wells (Sally Hawkins) receives her abortion. A young upper-class woman made pregnant when her boyfriend rapes her, Susan has the 100 guineas necessary to have her abortion performed in a medicalized room staffed by nurses. The abortions Vera performs are conducted in sparely furnished rooms with domestic equipment stored in a biscuit tin in a cupboard in her bedroom.12 The use of a mirror that reflects the image of the young immigrant who gets an abortion from Vera captures both of the women in the same shot, dwarfing the helpless patient in relation to the larger image of the well-intentioned but hapless Vera.

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While framing the family in tight shots and within doorways symbolizes the limited opportunities accorded them by their economic standing, the use of a medium shot to frame Vera in the doorway of her employer’s living room suggests Vera’s confinement in a large space. As Vera dusts a table in a long shot, the use of a wide doorway to frame the cavernous space of the formal dining room suggests that the space both dwarfs and confines her small frame. A medium shot of a large, ornate brass fireplace that Vera dusts is later reprised in a shot of a modest, tarnished fireplace in the home of one of the young women whom Vera visits, suggesting that the economic divide created by class bias literally determines the quality of each occupant’s domestic comfort and happiness. The clothes the characters wear reinforce the class divide. Vera’s clients are poorly or cheaply dressed. The clothing worn by the mother of seven (Tilly Vosburgh) and the Jamaican girl (Vinette Robinson) is the most worn and shabby; their sweaters are threadbare, their stockings are either falling or missing entirely and their hair appears uncombed. The married mother of seven wears a faded house dress and jumper apron similar to Vera’s, and the similarity of their dress recalls Vera’s first abortion (her own) when she was a young girl. It is a subtle clothing choice on the part of costume designer Jacqueline Durran to make comparisons between Vera’s current circumstances and what her life could have been without abortion. Another subtle choice Durran makes is in the selection of Vera’s two aprons. The apron Vera wears when performing abortions is a flower-printed jumper apron that is mostly blue with bright red printed flowers. She wears a different jumper apron at home and in the homes of the people for whom she acts as housekeeper, one that has a tiny flower print in yellow, brown and blue. It is significant that she is wearing her ‘abortion’ apron in the Wells’ home when Susan passes her on the stairs the morning after Susan’s weekend abortion, the only time the audience sees the ‘abortion apron’ when Vera is not performing an abortion. The blue checked prison uniform is the same shade of blue as the ‘abortion apron’. The apron foreshadows the cool-coloured blue prison uniform Vera wears in her final scene. Neither Lily (Vera’s friend, played by Ruth Sheen, who sets up the abortions) nor Joyce (Phil’s wife, played by Heather Craney) is ever seen in aprons. This kind of subtle choice on Durran’s part functions both as realism, in that the aprons are historically appropriate, and as part of the interpretability of the characters (Figures 4.2 and 4.3).

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Figure 4.2  Vera Drake (Imelda Staunton) manages her own home and the houses where she works as a domestic while wearing a flower print in yellow, brown and blue in Vera Drake (2004)

Figure 4.3  Importantly, the only place Vera (Imelda Staunton) wears this blue and red flower print apron when not performing an abortion is when she is working in the Wells’ home the morning after Susan’s weekend visit to the abortion clinic in Vera Drake (2004)

Both Joyce and Lily wear more formal clothing. Joyce would like to rise above her working-class status and be a part of the urban middle class. While her husband Frank (Adrian Scarborough) owns the garage where his brother Stan works, they struggle to buy the middle-class appliances Joyce craves. Her middle-class values are evident in her clothing. The holiday sweater sets, the

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cloth leopard coat for which she sewed in the red lining, the new suit and the jewel hues of most of her garments show that she is reaching for a glamour that she has only seen in Hollywood movies. Lily also dresses more formally than the working-class women to whom she peddles her ‘black market’ luxury food items. Her clothing lacks the flash and style of Joyce’s. Both her appearance and her actions reveal a pretentiousness that distances the viewer. We have little sympathy for Lily. She mercilessly extracts money from the helpless women seeking abortions, even when she knows they cannot afford to pay her. Her dishonesty and hardness compared to Joyce’s selfishness and whining lead viewers to give all their sympathy to Vera. Indeed, after World War II, social climbing appeared to be more possible. Everything appeared to be more possible when Britain turned up on the winning side. Another example of stylistic choice in costume occurs when Durran apparently distressed the workingmen’s shirts by tinting them grey and tan. There was a shortage of white shirts for men during World War II, when white was the most popular colour for shirts. Tinting the shirts aged them, suggesting not history but poverty. (This effect is so subtle that it is doubtful a viewer who was not looking for such a costuming technique would see it.) Sid (Daniel Mays) often wears a blue shirt with his blue suit, suggesting not only that his shirt is new but reinforcing the shortage of white shirts – even Sid, a clothing salesman, cannot get one. In spite of his several pretensions to poshness, Sid does not work in a clothing store for upper-class men: his measuring of the clearly working-class customer is not extensive enough and there will be no fittings before the suit is ready as would have been essential in a Savile Row tailoring shop. As to her choice to keep Sid (almost exclusively) in the blue suit, perhaps Durran wanted to link him in our minds with Vera’s arrest and imprisonment. Sid wants to distinguish himself from his family, especially their class. His suit is new but the colour and the shine of the fabric as well as the fit imply that the suit is not high quality. The single colour in his shirt, tie and suit suggests a simple or one-dimensional character as much as it suggests any sense of style; Stan reinforces this impression of Sid when he says that everything with Sid is ‘black or white’. The dark red sweater vest that Sid wears in the scene when he discusses Reg’s (Eddie Marsan) slow courtship of his sister Ethel (Alex Kelly) might show that there is hope for Sid (he is also wearing a dark green sweater vest in the scene that Reg and Ethel announce their engagement to her family): a part of him is like his sweater-vest-wearing father. Perhaps he can overcome his bourgeois values and forgive his mother.

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Durran’s colour palette  – the post-World War II dark greens, greys and browns with some greyed blues  – reflects the characters’ poverty and the restricted range of their choices. The wealthy people for whom Vera works have better quality clothes but in general they remain in the dark-hued colour palette of post-World War II. Unlike the shirts of the working-class men, for example, Susan’s white blouse is very white with no tint or shading. The jewel hues of Vera’s sister-in-law Joyce’s clothing emphasize her materialism and her more dramatic or flamboyant style. Leigh uses bright, even, high-key lighting and sombre, shadowy low-key lighting to dramatize the differing circumstances of the classes in London. When Vera passes Reg in their tenement hallway, his face is shrouded in darkness as he volunteers that he has been surviving on bread and bacon drippings. Conversely, the high-key lighting that illuminates the home of the wealthy family for whom Vera works conveys the privilege provided by their class. Not only does Leigh use parallel editing to contrast Vera’s illegal abortions with Susan’s legal abortion, he also uses it to illustrate Vera’s perception of her role as an abortion provider and the consequences of the single abortion that goes badly. After that procedure, Vera returns home and retires to her couch, sewing a cross-stitch. As she hums contentedly, parallel editing reveals that her last client writhes in terrible agony before being taken to the hospital. The party to celebrate Ethel’s engagement is juxtaposed through parallel editing against the police procedure of investigating the crime of abortion and tracking Vera to her home. The final two scenes provide the final contrast. Vera is shown in prison – everything about the open-space, largely empty prison is visually cold: fluorescent lighting, the light-blue uniforms with grey sweaters the prisoners wear, the universal cement colour of the walls and floor of the prison. Contrasting with the vastness of the prison, the last scene is moved to Vera’s home, where her family is crowded around the dining table. The room is close with soft, golden lighting. The final spoken line of the film occurs in the next-to-last scene, the one that shows Vera in prison. A guard warns Vera, ‘Watch out, Drake’, a harsh reminder of the impersonal world she lives in now, although we also have the sense that she may come to accommodate the harshness and see more nuance in this world, like the other home-abortionists in prison with her, who remind her, and us, about how dangerous illegal abortions were and how little damage Vera actually did. The last image in the film that we see is Vera’s family silently waiting, stressing the importance of the family, no one moving or speaking as if their lives are at a standstill until Vera returns.

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Because Vera Drake is set in the past, many of the choices a director or designer makes consist of balancing the period and aesthetic requirements of the film. Vera Drake focused on the issue of abortion; other issues, like class, arise in that context. Leigh and company researched the period with significant differences in purpose (acting, directing, designing, etc.) but used many of the same techniques to illustrate the purposes. The collaboration and communication between actors, director and designers in their research and implementation may appear to be realism but every artistic choice represents a stylization of the reality of the past.

Happy-Go-Lucky and focus Leigh stylizes the realism of this film by making sure Poppy (Sally Hawkins) is the focus of every scene. Her clothing reinforces the uniqueness of her character. In addition, her extraordinary social abilities, like her surprising sense of humour and gregarious personality, are reinforced visually. One can see right away that her clothing has bizarre combinations. In the first scene of the movie, for example, her crocheted short-sleeved sweater underneath a denim vest represents an unexpected mixture of textures and materials. None of the other characters dresses in such a bizarre fashion. Costume designer Jacqueline Durran appears to make clothing choices for Poppy based on keeping the audience focus on this character. In the scene where she receives a back massage, Poppy’s masseur, Ezra (Nonso Anozie), is a very large man of African descent. Normally the stature of such a large black man would fill the screen and take focus in the scene. Poppy takes focus, however, stripped to her fuscia brassiere, orange panties and opaque, grey-lavender lace tights. Her undergarments actually cause laughter in the audience. It is literally possible to visualize her attitude through her behaviours along with her unique taste and use of colour in her appearance. In her work as a grammar school teacher, she may push the suitability envelope but she never steps over the appropriateness boundary in dress. She understands the difference between professional workplace dress and her personal fashion creativity. Her behaviour mirrors her complete understanding of suitability. Her light-hearted sense of humour never overcomes her mature sense of responsibility. She is equally creative in having fun and ‘getting down to business’.

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Durran’s ability to keep Poppy the focus of the scene is also shown by the party dress she wears to her sister’s birthday celebration. Using the primary colours of red and green, the sundress has huge palm-like leaves and equally large red flowers. In her oversized bright red sweater and equally loud red lace tights, she is visually prominent; she says these are her celebration clothes. Durran also helps Poppy stand out in any crowd scene – note the mega striped, blue and white sweater she wears in the flamenco dance class. Not only is Poppy prominent in every scene, her behaviours mirror her uncommon fashion sense. As she ostentatiously ‘sneaks’ across the dance floor to put her sunglasses with her personal belongings, she clearly demonstrates that her actions are as extravagant as her clothing. Although Poppy appears to be childish at first, she has amazing maturity not hinted at by her fun-loving attitude and her quirky clothing. She reveals herself to be a seasoned teacher when she has her students transform ordinary grocery bags into colourful, ornate bird masks in order to bring to life a lesson about bird migration. When confronted with serious problems, like the bullying child in her class or Scott’s (Eddie Marsan) raging and violent temper tantrum, her prudent behaviour reveals a competent and mature adult. The creativity in her clothing adds another facet to the complexity of her character. Her clothing suggests an unconventional and highly original woman, independent in many ways of the rigidities in her environment. Her outlandish clothing and her freedom in expressing her happiness describe a kind of maturity most of us would not recognize. The car in which she excitedly learns to drive, her classroom, and a theme park through which she strolls, all bursting with the same vibrant colours as her clothing, symbolize the youthful culture in which she still revels, even though she is a 30-year-old thoroughly prepared for marriage and family life. Scott, the driving teacher, is the other main character in Happy-Go-Lucky. In contrast to Poppy, his personality is more colourful than his clothing. He has a denim jacket as well as a leather jacket and both appear worn. His shirts are bland and he is usually seen in khaki slacks. His clothing may be forgettable, but his temper is not. Scott’s bullying of Poppy is mirrored in Charlie’s (Charlie Duffield) bullying of the other children in his class. Poppy has already shown by her behaviours that she does not tolerate bullying. She is relatively successful at disregarding his bullying behaviour, tries to tease him out of his serious attitude and ultimately takes the car keys away from him to force him to calm down when he launches into a temper tantrum to rival that of a 5-year-old. Scott’s behaviour is consistently rigid and childish while Poppy’s is child-like, perhaps, and free.

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His bland clothing reflects his lack of social skills and creativity and hides his bad temper. Poppy ignores his bad behaviour until he loses control, then she intervenes just as she does with Charlie. Her extravagance and originality are a kind of generosity of spirit, and rather than letting Scott’s bullying define her role in their relationship, she steps back into her nurturing knowledge as a teacher and wonders if Scott’s behaviour hints that he himself was, perhaps, bullied as a child. Because Poppy dresses so flamboyantly, all of the other characters appear somewhat flat. Poppy eventually finds herself in a relationship with the handsome social worker, Tim (Samuel Roukin). He is very conservative in appearance: his pale shirts and slacks make him almost insipid next to Poppy. Once again, Poppy becomes the focus of scenes with the male characters. In the case of Happy-Go-Lucky the costumes serve to highlight the main character, Poppy, in each scene. Her garments both complexify and manifest her personality. Her behaviours are sometimes consistent with her outrageous clothing and sometimes reflect wisdom and rationality. Her sagacity consistently saves her from being seen as pretentious or silly and shows her to be a complex and three-dimensional character. None of the other characters are as fully developed as Poppy. Indeed, Scott may not have any more personality than he exhibits in interactions with Poppy. He is rigid and angry, even when he reveals his personal feelings for Poppy. While he is critical of everything he speaks about, Poppy remains positive and non-judgemental in her interactions with him and the other characters in the film. By making her the centre of attention, the film leads us to focus on the ways Poppy thinks, reacts, and feels, and it gives us the time to understand her.

All or Nothing and big bodies Set in a working-class housing complex, council flats, in London, All or Nothing tells the story of Penny and Phil Bassett and their family, who rediscover and recreate their connections to each other after the teenaged son Rory’s congenital heart defect (to use a semiotic and distinctly unmedical term) nearly causes his death. Phil Bassett (Timothy Spall), Rory (James Corden) and Rachel (Alison Garland) have large bodies, unlike Penny (Lesley Manville), who appears to be small and vulnerable, especially when Rory is verbally abusing her. To Garry Watson the film derives much of its visual power from the striking difference

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between Penny’s relatively petite frame and the much larger, more corpulent bodies of her husband and two children.13 Leigh made a deliberate and artistic choice in casting. He clearly wanted the audience to notice the difference in size among the family members. We cannot help (in our culture) making body size comparisons between Phil, Rachel and Rory with Penny and also with the other families in the film. Leigh’s casting decisions allowed him to introduce the issue of body size among the other issues in the film. Phil believes Penny does not love him anymore because of his size; Rachel tries to hide her body under all her clothing. The audience can only surmise Rachel has body issues because she seldom expresses her feelings. By selecting the Bassett family actors to contrast their size, Leigh has stylized the film. From this choice Durran and Leigh have chosen to hide rather than reveal characters’ traits (Figure 4.4). In the first scene, Leigh opens with a shot of a long, empty, institutional corridor and keeps the camera stationary for almost 2 minutes. From some distance, two figures come into view. In the forefront, Rachel mops the floor, while farther back, an elderly woman inches towards the camera while supporting herself on a handrail and with a cane. As she stops to allow the aging woman to pass, Rachel warns the vulnerable resident about the slippery floor and asks if she needs a hand. Implicit in this gesture, Watson argues, is a reminder of the importance of remaining open and responsive in heart and mind to the needs of others in a world of human misery.14 After setting up this aesthetic, Leigh

Figure 4.4  Rory (James Corden), Rachel (Alison Garland) and Phil (Timothy Spall) surround Penny (Lesley Manville) at the dinner table in All or Nothing (2002)

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introduces the other characters in a series of brief scenes that establishes their family relationships, reveals their home and work environments and begins to disclose conflict and pain within the families. The costumes in the film are actually used to hide the real person inside. For example, actively seeking sexual relationships, Donna (Helen Coker) and Samantha (Sally Hawkins) wear very revealing clothing, short shorts, low necklines and bright colours or black. They heap on jewellery and makeup, style or even dye their hair and often wear high heels. The fabrics are often stretchy and therefore fit very close to their bodies. They act like ‘hard’ characters, without vulnerabilities and with thick, durable defences; the complexity comes from the look these young women present and the vulnerability they show in their interactions. Opposed to the sexualized Donna and Samantha, Rachel Bassett (Penny and Phil’s daughter) who works as a housekeeper in a nursing home, covers her body from chin to toe; only her hands and wrists can be seen. Her dowdy appearance  – shapeless tops with three-quarter length or long sleeves, shapeless skirts (neither A-line nor straight), cheap shoes with thick socks and stringy, oily hair that covers her neck – reinforces our sense of the drabness of her life and suggests that, even though she reads romance novels, she attempts to be unsexualized and unfeminized; she is softened only by the textures of the sweaters she wears. Rachel’s costumes overtly make her look plain. Leigh, Durran and actor Alison Garland chose to reveal her body issues by covering everything but her hands and face. Rachel is clearly uncomfortable with her large body and tries to hide it from view unlike the sexually active Donna and the ‘wannabee’ Samantha. Rachel is one of five important young characters in this film who collectively present five different approaches to the gray, hostile and isolating world in which they live. Rachel’s job, body and clothing contrast with the other two young female characters in All or Nothing whose appearance and clothing choices are age and class appropriate. The young women expose their vulnerabilities, which are belied by their public appearance, in private, painful, revelatory moments. Rachel’s true feelings remain as hidden as her body. Rory’s aggression as well as his vulnerabilities link him to and separate him from the other young males, especially Craig (Ben Crompton), as well as young men and boys with less prominent roles. The only young male character in shorts and a tee shirt, Rory Bassett expresses his feelings freely, especially his frustration, his rage and his sense of being required to do what he does not want to do. His feelings, however, do not make him vulnerable – his lack of clothing does. Rory’s shorts, tee shirt and canvas shoes with no socks do not offer him

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protection from sunburn, scrapes or ultimately from his own aggression. Although Rory may have loose-fitting long knit pants, he rarely wears long sleeved garments. Instead of covering his large body as his sister Rachel does, he flaunts his size. The other young male characters and Craig, in particular, have more protection and protective mechanisms, indicated by Leigh, Durran and the actors’ clothing choices: they wear long pants (of woven fabrics that are stiffer than Rory’s knits) and tee shirts, often with long-sleeved jackets, covering their aggression until Rory attacks Craig and Craig fights back. Craig’s clothing also covers his self-inflicted injuries. Craig hangs out in the shadows of darkness in the darkest-coloured jeans and jacket. Leigh’s decision to cast Ben Crompton in the role of Craig further emphasizes the size difference between the two young men. Crompton is barely as tall as Sally Hawkins (Samantha), who is 5 feet, 5 inches tall (in 2-inch heels she might be 5 feet, 7). Crompton’s small stature heightens the contrast and belligerence of the two young men. Leigh also compares Rory’s violence with Jason’s (Daniel Mays) abuse of his pregnant girlfriend Donna. Rory may swear at his mother and bully the other boys (not necessarily without cause), but Jason actually hits Donna. While his clothes are predominantly white, he wears black underwear. As he removes his clothing, as his body is more exposed, his violence against Donna increases and he is less rather than more vulnerable; that is, although we would expect his sex appeal to increase as his body appears clothed only in black briefs, in fact we are increasingly alienated from him. In the same way that Jason’s, Donna’s and Samantha’s costumes belie their true characters, the clothing of the mothers, Penny Bassett, Maureen (Ruth Sheen) and Carol (Marion Bailey), hides more than reveals their personalities. Ironically, and rich in this context, Maureen, Donna’s mother, is a part-time laundress. She is shown ironing other people’s clothes but this is her second job because she also works with Penny as a cashier. It is also ironic that Maureen, the single parent, communicates well and is not critical but sympathetic to her daughter’s youthful angst. Her clothing, white blouses and dark skirts, is so unremarkable and plain that it would be easy to overlook or underestimate this character. Leigh, Durran and actor Ruth Sheen made the choice to give her a bland appearance that causes her to fade into the background, covering her outstanding parenting skills, her compassion and her ability to take charge of emergency situations. Sheen’s insipid costumes, like the younger women’s costumes, hide her character. Carol, Samantha’s mother, seems to be drunk throughout the film. Her mismatched tops and bottoms, her dishabille appearance (she appears in her bathrobe in

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one evening scene), reinforces our sense of her inability to focus or pull herself together. Indeed, when the crisis comes (Rory’s heart attack), she cannot even dial the telephone for emergency service. Apparently, she cannot think of what to say to a dispatcher and sits frozen until her daughter Samantha takes charge and telephones for emergency services. Carol goes immediately to her only crutch – alcohol. She is so dysfunctional that she is almost catatonic. It would appear that Leigh and Durran ask us to understand the true spirit of these characters as it is revealed through narrative and action rather than basing our evaluation of them on appearances. Penny Bassett works as a cashier in a grocery store, where she covers her simple skirts or slacks and blouses with a striped smock. Her plaid or printed blouses are fitted and her plain skirts are simple A-line while her slacks are shapeless. The line of her clothing emphasizes her slimness: everything fits but there’s no fullness in the cut. The simplicity and plainness of her wardrobe belie the complexity of Penny’s distinctive personality. At the point in their lives in which the film takes place, Penny is very self-contained, perhaps self-absorbed and seems unable to help her family. Like her son, she is angry in part because she is his victim and in part because she and Phil have drifted into a non-communicative relationship; she can nag but like him she does not seem to know how to reach her family members. Everything she says is taken as criticism, although she denies that she’s being critical. She may not intend to be harsh but the Bassett family has lost the ability to communicate with each other. They can nag and snap and curse at each other, but unlike Maureen and Donna who also nag, snap and curse, the Bassetts cannot hear one another. Leigh uses the size of his actors to illustrate their differences. Unlike the petite Penny, Phil is a large man and appears to be self-conscious about his weight. He is first seen in a leather jacket with a long-sleeved pin-striped shirt. His shirt cuffs are unbuttoned and he wears no tie. His hair is parted but uncombed; it hangs below his ears, straight and stringy. It appears to be oily and not very clean. His overall appearance is rather sloppy. Although careless about his appearance, Phil deeply cares about his family. He is kind to the drunken, drugged and dysfunctional people he carries in his taxi, even when they cannot pay the fare. His depression is apparent in his lack of interest, his lack of reaction to the people and events in his life. To escape he sleeps – sleeps late at home and sleeps in his cab. He also stares past the camera, silently suffering and avoiding picking up customers. It appears that he wants to escape his life. Unaware that Rory is in danger, Phil turns off his cell phone and paging device and drives out

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of town. His trip seems to be going on forever, leading the viewer to wonder if he is leaving his family behind. He returns to his family to try communicating with his wife one last time, however, only to find that a crisis has occurred. The trauma of Rory’s heart attack enables Phil and Penny to hear each other and begin the necessary communication to connect the family. The hopelessness of the Bassett family is actually alleviated by Rory’s illness. In the final scenes, the viewer is treated to a rejuvenation of Phil and Penny. He shaves, cleans up and wears less ragged clothing. Penny puts on lipstick and both glows and smiles. The theme of hope and redemption that runs beneath the story of human suffering is implicit in the final scene. Following the use of a fade-to-black to create a transition between the previous scene in which Phil and Penny have rediscovered their love for each other in the wake of Rory’s heart attack, the final scene bathes Rory’s hospital room in golden, redemptive sunlight after he has been moved from a darker room. While Phil and Penny sat on opposite sides of Rory’s bed the night before, they now sit together, while Rachel sits on the other side with Rory between them, connecting them all. The final shot reprises the opening long shot of Rachel doting on the elderly lady as Leigh cuts to a long shot from the other end of the ward. While the shot implies that the family has disappeared into a single, isolated room in a labyrinthine hallway of the hospital, we overhear a reference to the greeting card Rory has just received from a relative, recalling the simple gesture of compassion offered by Rachel in the opening scene. Rory is clearly receiving a different kind of attention from his family, and the gesture symbolizes the formation of a real family.15 The last completely distinguishable line in the film is said by Penny to Rory, ‘You wanna be careful, you’. Her care, indeed, her love for him is most apparent as the film ends. Unlike many of Leigh’s films, the final scene actually provides the answer to the problems and situations in which the Bassets find themselves. All you need is love (and communication).

Secrets & Lies will out In Secrets & Lies some costumes reveal character and some complexify by contradicting the nature of the character. Cynthia (Brenda Blethyn) is clearly scattered, out of control and lacking what most of us would consider taste. Her appearance is unkempt: her hair is half-bleached, unstyled and stringy; her clothes are too young for her; and her pants and tops are mismatched with too

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many textures, patterns and hues. Her clothing reveals her personality as sloppy, careless and unrestrained. She has been unable to control much in her life. Her lack of restraint is evident in her two illegitimate children, her inability to get her daughter to cooperate in anything and her failure to keep secret her relationship to Hortense (Marianne Jean-Baptiste). The audience can tell by Cynthia’s behaviours and need for attention that she will publicly reveal Hortense’s parentage no matter how often she asks Hortense to keep it secret. Roxanne (Claire Rushbrook), on the other hand, hides her identity with her appearance. She, too, appears to be sloppy and casual about her clothing. Her clothes are denim jeans and loose-fitting shirts. She appears to be casual in her relationships – does not appear to care much about the feelings of her mother, uncle or boyfriend. But when she removes her outer clothing, she is wearing sexy black underwear. In this case the black brassiere and panties reveal a playful and sexually desiring and desirable young woman. It exposes her hidden side – she’s not as casual as she pretends. She may have a dark side but she does care about her boyfriend as she shows in her actions. She wishes to have sex with him and she invites him to the family gathering on her birthday. She is attempting to make him a part of her life and include him in her family. Roxanne’s feelings for her mother (Cynthia) are more complex, as Leigh suggests in the barbecue scene when Cynthia announces to her family that Hortense is her daughter. Leigh follows a static shot of the family at the barbecue with a flurry of intercut closeups to convey the chaos and complexity of the characters’ reactions to Cynthia’s secret. As the characters sit around a garden table after Cynthia and Hortense’s arrival, Leigh uses the static shot to suggest the relative tranquillity that precedes the revelation and the flurry of cuts and close-ups after the characters move indoors to interpret the characters’ reactions for the audience. Amidst the chaos, Roxanne and Paul (Lee Ross) leave in a huff but return to the barbecue soon afterwards. In the final scene, Roxanne has accepted Hortense as a sister and is actually cheerful in their conversation. Hortense initially dresses very conservatively and in very dark (black or navy blue) colours. It suggests that she is in mourning. Her clothes are tailored and cover her body with long sleeves and skirts. She’s either in a dark pants suit or a suit with an ankle length skirt. Her casual clothes are also somewhat close fitting. She is seen mostly in shades of blue, sometimes blue and white stripes. In a way, the dark hues of the close-fitting garments belie her personality. When she is interacting with her friends, she is open and non-judgemental. It is interesting that the only customer we see her with is a child. She works well with the child

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and yet very professionally. Her clothing indicates a much more tight personality than Hortense’s behaviours reveal. She makes herself very vulnerable when she seeks to know her birth mother’s family. Perhaps the tight fitting clothing is a kind of protective armour that shows her strength. Leigh juxtaposes black and white when Cynthia and Hortense meet for the first time. Hortense is black, Cynthia is white; Hortense wears a dark top, Cynthia wears a white top. Leigh then, for the film’s famous very long static shot, places them side-by-side in the restaurant for their first conversation together. The placement emphasizes the black and white contrast. Hortense’s neat, tailored clothing contrasts with Cynthia’s frilly, loose fitting garments. Hortense’s hair is tight against her head and controlled in a bun; Cynthia’s hair is loose and uncontrolled (no hairpins, hairspray or other hair accessories). The visual contrasts reinforce the personality contrasts shown by the actions of the two women. Costumes tell the audience a great deal of information about the characters’ personalities, including Cynthia’s brother. Maurice Purley (Timothy Spall), Cynthia’s brother, is one lovable teddy bear. The roundedness of his body and his short brown beard actually make him look rather like a huggable teddy bear. Maurice wears short-sleeved shirts with his shirttail out; the way he wears his shirts emphasizes the roundness of his chest and belly. He is surrounded by problematic women: his wife and his sister cannot get along, his niece hasn’t smiled in years, Maurice’s wife Monica (Phyllis Logan) suffers from extreme pre-menstrual syndrome, his sister Cynthia is lonely and depressed and his niece Roxanne is angry and petulant. While Maurice can stand up for himself effectively, as he did with the former owner of his photography studio, he cannot negotiate peace between the women he loves until he loses his temper. The women in Maurice’s life have confided all their secrets to him, and he is aware of their lies to themselves that keep them going. Like the teddy bear confidant, he is initially helpless. When Cynthia breaks her silence about Hortense, Maurice is able to break his silence about Monica. He is able to tell his sister why he and Monica have no children. For the first time, the members of this family are being honest with each other (Figure 4.5). In the brief dénouement after the final revelatory scene, the family relationships appear to have improved. Roxanne is actually smiling in the final scene as she and Hortense discuss sisterhood. Cynthia appears to be calmer, although she has not changed her personality drastically or unrealistically. Her clothing choices are no more tasteful or age-appropriate at the end of the film than they were in the beginning. But there is hope that the family will get on better in the future now that the Secrets & Lies have been revealed.

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Figure 4.5  Cynthia Rose Purley (Brenda Blethyn) gives her brother Maurice (Timothy Spall) a hug and quick kiss on the cheek in Secrets & Lies (1996)

Naked and bruised Naked is an entirely different kind of contemporary realism from All or Nothing or Secrets & Lies. It is perhaps the most visually stylized of Leigh’s films. From its narrow colour palette to the bleached visual texture made by the processing of the film, this movie stands out among his other films. The blue tint of the film and the almost exclusive use of blues and blacks in the actors’ clothing remind the viewer of a bruise.16 The greys, blacks, grey blues and browns that provide the visual texture of Naked, deepened and muddied by a bleach bypassing process, dramatize the oppressiveness of Thatcherism. Most of the characters are oppressed or bruised in some way, both before and during the story. Some characters are both victims and predators at different points. Johnny’s (David Thewlis) costume romanticizes him as the sexually desirable outlaw. He is dressed in black  – black tee shirt, black jeans, black accessories and most important is his black raincoat or trench coat. It swirls around his knees and billows behind him almost like a cape. He swoops from one victim to the next in the role of romantic villain. His violent sex and his verbal slashes make him an outlaw, and there is little to admire about his personality, but his clothing reinforces and romanticizes him as anti-hero – although Johnny’s name suggests that in his anti-heroism he is nearly anonymous, perhaps a user of women. Many scenes show Johnny striding down the street with an apparent

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destination, his cape-like coat flowing behind him, the ‘bad boy’ that women desire, the intellectual whose relentless stream of analysis is often exactly right, the wandering poet at war with others’ expectations. But he is also a victim. Johnny’s romanticized costume might help some viewers listen to what he is saying. And, semiotically speaking, there’s something wrong with his head: he suffers debilitating headaches and it is difficult to tell what is crazier, Johnny or the world he lives in. In part, our identification with Johnny’s point of view, which is the result of the camera’s following him, distinguishes him clearly (even when he is sexually violent) from Jeremy (Greg Cruttwell), the sneering and predatory landlord. Although Johnny’s personality can be difficult to admire, the contrast between him and Jeremy delineates the difference between Johnny and true villainy. Jeremy is never romantic, and his physical abuse, echoing Johnny’s assaultive sex in the opening of the film, connects Jeremy and Johnny at the same time that it reminds us how much of Johnny’s aggression is verbal and analytical. Jeremy seems most threatening and powerful when he is undressed, nearly naked. It is our sense that he spends more time undressed than dressed in the film: he actually appears in his underwear more often than not. A lack of clothing usually shows a character’s vulnerability, but as with Jason in All or Nothing, the opposite is true for Jeremy, because he uses his body to dominate. Showing more of his body increases his dominance. Furthermore, the actor shows no self-consciousness about his lack of clothing (a remarkable acting feat). The use of the body unclothed in this unusual way is an artistic choice presumably made collaboratively by the director, costume designer and actor (Figure 4.6). Jeremy is so powerful that it takes Louise (Lesley Sharp), Sophie (Katrin Cartlidge) and Johnny together to evict him from the apartment, one he owns. The film stresses the tension between Jeremy’s body and Johnny’s brain and his language, Jeremy’s strategically deployed power and Johnny’s powerlessness and sporadic attempts at domination. Together they share one characteristic essential to the exploration of misogyny the film offers: they both find and exploit the weakest points in the women they use. Johnny’s most affirmative relationship occurs when Brian, a night watchman (Peter Wight), invites him into an empty office building, providing Johnny with temporary shelter from the hostile street and voicing a longing to escape from his thankless job of minding an empty office building (which Johnny describes as a ‘post-modern gas chamber’). The limited palette of the film’s colours (blues, greys, blacks and purples) becomes apparent as Johnny tours the deserted office building with Brian. The guard’s uniform is dark blue and the predominant colour

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Figure 4.6  Jeremy G. Smart (Greg Cruttwell) makes himself at home in the apartment he rents to Sandra, Louise and Sophie in Naked (1993)

in the office building is a grey-blue. Brian shares with Johnny his dull, lifeless world, an instance of the sterility of the society Johnny rails against. Johnny orchestrates his confrontation with Brian away from the empty, grey environment that overwhelms his voice: his verbal attack on Brian occurs outside the building. Ultimately, the food and companionship Brian shares with Johnny are as empty as the building and as unsatisfying as the society in which they live. The bruise palette is consistent throughout the film. Almost all of the other characters are dressed in shades of blue. Louise wears shades of blue in her skirts and blouses; she also wears a purple open weave (crochet or knit) top over some of her blouses. Sophie (Katrin Cartlidge) dresses almost exclusively in black – even her underwear is black. The café girl (Gina McKee) has a blue print blouse and blue skirt; her bathrobe is also blue. The older woman (Deborah MacLaren) with whom Johnny refuses to have sex is dressed exclusively (underwear, too) in purple. Her whole scene is like a walking bruise – Johnny hits on her, then insults and rejects her. He strikes at her most vulnerable liability – age – then hangs around to watch her suffer. The only character not in black and blue is nurse Sandra (Claire Skinner), who wears clothing in earthy hues – browns and tans, creams and whites – and her clothes are loose and look comfortable, distinguishing her sharply from the other characters. This visual difference reflects her distance from the women Johnny victimizes. She, too, has been bruised in the misogynistic world the film presents. Perhaps as a nurse, she is able to heal or hide her bruising better

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than the other women, but she also has more resources than her working-class colleagues, the kinds of resources that would pay for a trip to Africa. Her bruises are not apparent in her costumes but in her language. She might be Johnny’s counterpart, but in the context of his substantive rants, her tirades seem petty and histrionic. She is able to soak away her bruises in her middle-class bathtub, after having dispelled the disorder in her flat caused by Jeremy and Johnny, while the injured Johnny is once again ejected onto the streets. The last words in Naked occur between Sandra and Johnny. As he is trying to talk Sandra into having sex with him, she indicates how overwhelmed she is: SANDRA: Enough! I’ve had enough. It comes at me from all angles . . . you, all of you just – it’s the tin lid! When . . . how will the world ever – JOHNNY: . . . end? SANDRA: YES!

But Sandra isn’t really interested in the world ending; she just wants Johnny to stop bombarding her with questions. She wants her ‘hot milk, hot water bottle, and hot bath’. After her exit, there are five more shots before the end of the film. With the focus on his head, Johnny looks directly at the camera for a brief moment. Sandra is shown relaxing in her bath, with her hair wet but styled. Johnny puts on his shoes, steals the money and slowly makes his limping get-away. The final two shots imply Leigh’s ambivalence in Naked towards what his previous films had focused on  – domesticity. While All or Nothing ends with the precarious reestablishment of familial and social ties, reminiscent, really, of classical theatre, Naked offers no such assurances. Naked is just as theatrical, however, although its referent might be John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger, Johnny’s Jimmy Porter-like misery and anger echoed in the limited colour palette and bleached film process. Naked stands alone as the most stylized of Leigh’s films. Openly political, the film captures an ‘angry young man’s’ displacement in a materialistic society.

Conclusions: Uttering the obvious Costumes support both the characters and the aesthetic choices made by Leigh’s creative team. The visual elements for Vera Drake required thorough research and meticulously detailed accuracy. Beyond the period requirements, artistic

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choices always have to be made about what materials and fabrics to use, the colour palette, what can be substituted for what and what must be eliminated. Historical accuracy sometimes must give way to the aesthetics or style of the film. These choices were among the subtlest in the films discussed here. Even Topsy-Turvy was a stylized re-creation of nineteenth-century clothing and theatre technology. Every period film stylizes the period in which it is set. Watch a film made in 1952 and watch Vera Drake that is set in 1952. The aesthetics are quite different. The acting, the camera techniques, the mise-en-scène appear to be much more sophisticated than the earlier film. The subtlety of the lighting and the strong sense of mood in the contemporary film strengthen the complexity of the story being told. All of these visual elements are artistic choices made by designers and directors, and often actors. And every choice selects a reality, defines it and stylizes it. It is in the stylization that artistry in film resides. Mike Leigh in particular produces artistic films: his ‘realism’ is highly selective. Leigh and company are also selective about what events to film to tell the story. For example in Vera Drake, they chose to show the events that clarified and illuminated the contrasts in the film – Vera’s compassionate abortions with her home life. Paralleling Vera’s illegal abortions with Susan’s legal abortion formulates abortion in class terms. Vera’s clinically cold arrest and trial contrast with the warmth and safety of her home life. Finally, Vera’s attitude about performing abortions is contrasted with the state’s attitude about the illegal abortionists. The final spoken line (‘Watch out, Drake’) is a warning. How does Vera feel about performing abortions now? Will she continue to ‘help young girls out’ when she is released from prison? She does not seem to react to her encounter with the other two women serving sentences for the same crime. Leigh leaves the audience waiting for Vera’s choice just as her family is waiting for her return. Since most viewers probably believe that there is not much design to a contemporary movie, assuming that only movies set in a past period require research and design, most of the films analysed here are set in times contemporary to our lives. Contemporary settings and costumes, however, also require thoughtful planning and design. Each visual element is potentially symbolic or semiotic, revealing something about the characters or situation, serving the aesthetic and making the purpose of the film material or visual. In All or Nothing Leigh and costume designer Durran do not use the costumes to suggest characters’ personalities or natures. Instead, they use

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dialogue and interactions to reveal character relationships and motivations, making the characters’ personalities much more complex and adding depth to each actor’s portrayal. On the other hand, Durran stylized the costuming of Johnny (Naked) possibly to provoke the audience into having more sympathy or at least understanding for this bruising and aggressive character. Perhaps the added romanticism lends credibility to his observations about the English social order in spite of his belligerent way of articulating them. Leigh and Durran’s choice to keep Jeremy mostly undressed was inspired. For Jeremy to remain powerful while naked stresses how much power he is able to employ against those around him. The artistic choices to cover or reveal characters through the symbolic use of costumes enables the director to control what is disclosed and when. These choices drive the film and expose the issues in the way Leigh wants. The remarkable artistic control held by the film auteur is rarely found in commercial films. Leigh’s films are so effective because of the way he and his company work together to make artistic choices. Each choice  – visual or technical, action or event, camera shot or sequence  – contributes to an aesthetic vision of reality. Each choice stylizes the realism of the film. Unlike American television and Hollywood, Leigh rarely offers a solution or glib ending in his films. His range is such that the last scene or line from his films may be optimistic as in All or Nothing or it may be pessimistic as in Naked. Vera Drake ends with the audience waiting for change to occur (somewhat like Waiting for Godot). While the end of the story might be unsatisfactory to some, it lends itself to the realism often discussed in Leigh’s films, even though it is anything but unmediated and unartistic. Leigh’s realism is highly selective, decidedly artistic and greatly stylized. Stylization is artistic choice, a decision to use a colour, hairspray, a palette, and so on, knowing it can and may be interpreted as meaningful. Using film conventions, controlling the visual aspects and guiding the actors’ impersonations, Leigh attaches his audiences to and distances them from characters and focuses on the issues he wishes to explore. Leigh achieves his realisms by exploiting the way film and the images it produces can be manipulated. His films seem so very natural, unmediated, and because of his ‘artificial’, managed and selected choices.

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Notes 1 Some works that deal with realism in the films of Mike Leigh include the following: Geoff Brown, ‘Paradise Found and Lost’, in The British Cinema Book, ed. Robert Murphy. London: BFI Publishing, 2001, 275; Ray Carney and Leonard Quart, The Films of Mike Leigh: Embracing the World. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000, 8–10; Lee Ellickson and Richard Porton, ‘I Find the Tragicomic Things in Life’, Cineaste 20:3 (April 1994): 14; Edward Lawrenson, ‘Backstreet Revisited’, Sight & Sound 15:1 (January 2005): 12; Jim Leach, British Film. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004, 59–61; Robert Murphy, ‘Crime and Passion’, Sight & Sound 15:1 (January 2004): 16; Richard Porton, ‘Entertainment and Empire’, Cineaste 25:2 (2000): 34; Leonard Quart, ‘Raising Questions and Positing Possibilities: An Interview with Mike Leigh’, Cineaste 22:4 (March 1997): 53; David Sterritt, ‘Low Hopes: Mike Leigh Meets Margaret Thatcher’, in Fires Were Started: British Cinema and Thatcherism, 2nd edn, ed. Lester D. Friedman. London: Wallflower Press, 2006, 319; David Sterritt, ‘For Director Mike Leigh, the Personal and the Political are One and the Same’, Chronicle of Higher Education 51:7 (8 October 2004): B15; and Garry Watson, The Cinema of Mike Leigh: A Sense of the Real. New York: Wallflower Press, 2004, 17. 2 Sterritt, ‘Low Hopes: Mike Leigh Meets Margaret Thatcher’, B15. 3 Michael Coveney, The World According to Mike Leigh. New York: Harpercollins, 1997, 14. 4 Bert Cardullo, ‘“Making People Think Is What It’s All About”: An Interview with Mike Leigh’, Cinema Journal 50:1 (Fall 2010): 1. 5 ‘Director’s Commentary’, Topsy-Turvy DVD Commentary. Universal City, CA: Polygram USA Video, 2011. 6 Edward Maeder, ed., Hollywood and History: Costume Design in Film. Los Angeles, CA: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Thames and Hudson, 1987, 13. 7 ‘Savoy Theatre’, in Wikipedia, last modified 31 July 2012, http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Savoy_Theatre. 8 Lawrenson, ‘Backstreet Revisited’, 13. 9 Murphy, ‘Crime and Passion’, 16. 10 Cardullo, ‘Making People Think’, 16. 11 Lawrenson, ‘Backstreet Revisited’, 13. 12 Ibid., 13.

106 13 14 15 16

Devised and Directed by Mike Leigh Watson, The Cinema of Mike Leigh, 182. Ibid., 168. Ibid., 180. Ibid., 15.

Works cited Brown, Geoff. ‘Paradise Found and Lost’, in The British Cinema Book, ed. Robert Murphy. London: BFI Publishing, 2001, 248–55. Cardullo, Bert. ‘“Making People Think Is What It’s All About”: An Interview with Mike Leigh’, Cinema Journal 50:1 (Fall 2010): 1–18. Carney, Ray and Leonard Quart. The Films of Mike Leigh: Embracing the World. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Coveney, Michael. The World According to Mike Leigh. New York: Harpercollins, 1997. Ellickson, Lee and Richard Porton. ‘I Find the Tragicomic Things in Life’, Cineaste 20:3 (April 1994): 10–17. Lawrenson, Edward. ‘Backstreet Revisited’, Sight & Sound 15:1 (January 2005): 12–15. Leach, Jim. British Film. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Leigh, Mike. ‘Director’s Commentary’, Topsy-Turvy DVD. Directed by Mike Leigh. Universal City, CA: Polygram USA Video, 2011. Maeder, Edward, ed. Hollywood and History: Costume Design in Film. Los Angeles, CA: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Thames and Hudson, 1987. Murphy, Robert. ‘Crime and Passion’, Sight & Sound 15:1 (January 2005): 16. Porton, Richard. ‘Entertainment and Empire’, Cineaste 25:2 (2000): 34–7. Quart, Leonard. ‘Raising Questions and Positing Possibilities: An Interview with Mike Leigh’, Cineaste 22:4 (March 1997): 53. Sterritt, David. ‘For Director Mike Leigh, the Personal and the Political Are One and the Same’, Chronicle of Higher Education 51:7 (8 October 2004): B15. —. ‘Low Hopes: Mike Leigh Meets Margaret Thatcher’, in Fires Were Started: British Cinema and Thatcherism, 2nd edn, ed. Lester D. Friedman. London: Wallflower Press, 2006, 315–31. Watson, Garry. The Cinema of Mike Leigh: A Sense of the Real. New York: Wallflower Press, 2004.

5

Cultural Stillbirth: An Examination of Reactions to Vera Drake Bryan Cardinale-Powell

Modestly budgeted feature films like Vera Drake (2004) often rely on the ‘free publicity’ of newspaper reviews and word-of-mouth to bolster audience attendance.1 Conventional wisdom suggests that one way to generate this kind of buzz is to highlight a movie’s thematic focus on a controversial subject, which is exactly the kind of tactic director Mike Leigh and his distributors say they had in mind when planning the release of Vera Drake, a film which tells the story of an unlikely but dedicated abortionist. According to Leigh, ‘When we decided to make the film, a few years ago, we calculated that it would be ready to be screened in the States just before [the] presidential election.’2 With any luck, Vera Drake would catch fire as part of the culture wars so central to American politics. On the face of it, Vera Drake’s depiction of a 1950s English housewife who performs illegal abortions did look like the kind of film that could fan the flames of the abortion controversy. If audiences took the bait and decided to debate the representation of abortion depicted in the film, then the film’s run might mark an important cultural event in the American political timeline. Vera Drake, its producers hoped, would demonstrate the potentially significant role a mainstream film can play in the larger cultural discourse by presenting a thoughtful story about a politically divisive issue – and profit accordingly. Vera Drake was marketed, at least, as what might be called a ‘symptomatic text’, a movie that provides fuel for commentators to explore and deliberate important cultural anxieties, assumptions and ideology.3 Vera Drake’s backers were understandably optimistic as the movie’s US premiere at the New York Film Festival in October approached. After all, earlier

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2004 releases like Fahrenheit 9/11 and The Passion of the Christ successfully capitalized on their apparent ability to plug into the consciousness of a divided American populace. Vera Drake also brought to New York the Golden Lion prize from the Venice Film festival, and with it the cachet of ‘artistic merit’.4 With presidential candidate John Kerry answering televised debate questions about his political stand on abortion, the stage seemed set for Vera Drake to encourage further cultural deliberation and do well at the American box office.5 As it turns out, despite reviews headlined and filled with references to the central importance of abortion in the film, the cultural skirmish anticipated by the film’s director and distributors never fully materialized. While it may be tempting to explain such a let-down with off-hand remarks about the boorish, unsophisticated taste of the American audience, the disconnect between the virtually universal critical praise Vera Drake received in the popular press and among industry insiders (the movie was nominated for three Academy Awards, including Best Picture) and the film’s failure to attract a engaged  – let alone enraged – audience warrants closer examination. One way to shed light on why Vera Drake failed to achieve the widespread ‘symptomatic’ status the film’s distributors aimed for is to consider the range of material related to the film that was published. What exactly did critics write about the film? How did published reviews explain the relationship of the film to the issue of abortion? How did American reactions to the film when it was released in the fall of 2004 compare with reactions to the English premiere in January 2005? What about faith-based publications – were there prominent differences of opinion printed in newspapers sponsored by religious organizations? It’s my contention that looking for answers to these questions is an appropriate first step to trying to understand why Vera Drake didn’t attract the attention producers thought it deserved. After an impressive opening week in New York when the movie grossed nearly $59,000 on only two screens, public interest in the film appeared to fall off quickly.6 Reviews in mainstream American newspapers generally concentrated on the performance of the film’s lead actress rather than the politically charged abortion theme.7 The more provocative commentary surrounding Vera Drake positioned the film as what Guardian columnist Mary Riddell called ‘an eerily apt fable for today’s America’.8 In her column published a week after the movie opened, Riddell pointed out that the winner of the upcoming US election would likely have the opportunity to impact the standing of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision

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legalizing abortion. Vera Drake’s story, Riddell argued, ‘is less a snapshot of an ancient world than a glimpse of how tomorrow’s America may look. If George W. Bush wins, he will be able to replace four retiring Supreme Court justices with candidates who share his beliefs, thus opening the way to state bans on abortion and a God-driven social creed’. Riddell’s column clearly viewed the film as an important reminder to audiences of the potential for political backsliding to the days of desperate women relying on dangerous methods to secure abortions. Planned Parenthood representative Mary-Jane Wagle put it this way: ‘It’s a cautionary tale . . . [that] also shows that desperate women will find ways to get the services they need.’9 Gloria Steinem echoed these remarks in a column written for Variety as the Academy Award season heated up in January of that year. According to Steinem, Vera Drake demonstrated realistically what consequences would result from ‘. . . turning back the clock on women’s rights to the days of the 1940s and ’50s’. They were the dark ages for women – a time when most women choosing abortion were required to do so furtively, in the shadows, lacking even the most basic medical safeguards.10 For both of these women, Vera Drake was an important film because, by telling the story of a time before legalized abortion, it could serve as a corrective reminder to contemporary audiences who might not realize the potential dangers involved in re-criminalizing abortion. Steinem also called on her own personal experience to defend the verisimilitude of Vera Drake. According to Steinem’s column, her story is not dissimilar from the middle-class woman in the film who is able to secure a ‘safe’ abortion after submitting to a mental health examination and making a hefty payment to a dubious doctor. Vera Drake is especially poignant for me, because in a way, I lived it. In the 1950s I was working as a waitress in London and became pregnant.. . . After what seemed like an eternity of confusion and fear, I finally found a doctor who was willing to help me and do what was required – sign a statement that to continue with my pregnancy would be dangerous to my health.11

Steinem’s is a stark class divide. Steinem remembers the days before legalized abortion as ones where poor women were particularly at risk. ‘Are we truly ready, as a nation, to return our daughters to the time of Vera Drake? This is a question I hoped I would never have to ask’, Steinem wrote in her column’s conclusion. ‘Now, the question is being asked of all of us, and how we answer it will say much about America as a nation.’12

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For pro-choice commentators then, Vera Drake arrived on the scene in a moment of great anxiety. Faced with the prospect of a conservative government dismantling the Roe v. Wade decision, they argued that Vera Drake’s realistic style clearly represented the ways in which the re-criminalization of abortion would signify a series of setbacks in the lives of women. Such pro-choice views of the film were likely to stoke the fires of controversy, just as the film’s backers hoped. Instead, the argument fizzled when anti-abortion writers also praised the realistic style of the film. In a review that applauded the film’s ability to ‘[tackle] the difficult abortion theme with objectivity’, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) found Vera Drake practically as praiseworthy as pro-choice advocates: As for the abortion theme, the procedure isn’t glorified in any way. The women involved are almost all desperate, and even though Vera’s methods seem relatively benign, the women’s fear and sorrow at what they are doing is achingly evident. Leigh goes to pains not to make Vera a heroine. Nor, to my mind, does the film proselytize for abortion. The director leaves conclusions to the viewer, many of whom are likely to note that there is retribution on every level – personal and public – for Vera’s well-intentioned, if misguided, actions.13

The film’s potentially offensive preoccupation with abortion, at least according to this review, was ameliorated by a script that had ‘. . . all the subtle nuances of “real” people reacting to a domestic crisis’.14 In other words, the admittedly depressing, realistic style of Vera Drake insulated the film from censure as a pro-choice polemic. Father Peter Malone, a Catholic priest whose movie reviews are distributed by the Catholic News Service, also found Vera Drake less overtly controversial than expected. Like the USCCB review, Malone’s review pointed to the realistic style of the film in order to account for the lack of controversy surrounding the picture. According to Malone, [Leigh] provides the equivalent of a case study (something like what seminarians explored in the past during their moral theology course).. . . [W]hile we bring our own agenda to the story, we are invited to consider a wider range of perspectives. It [the film] is not simply, or simplistically, moral judgment by unnuanced application of moral principles.15

While the film may be troubling and difficult to watch due to the intensity of the story and the questions raised, the movie falls short of pro-choice didacticism and was therefore unworthy of outright condemnation.

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The complicated moral ambiguities of the film were further underlined in a Christianity Today review that noted that the film’s main character serves a wide range of women ‘in need’, including an overwhelmed mother of 7, a rape victim, and an unfaithful wife.16 The review published by National Catholic Reporter reminded viewers that ‘Vera Drake will make you feel compassion for its heroine, but it can no more show that abortion is right than a play by John Paul II could prove that it is wrong’.17 In other words, mainstream, religious-oriented movie reviews appeared content to approve of what they saw as a realistically complicated representation of the issue of abortion. So much for a new front in the culture wars. How can one explain this uncomfortable agreement between feminists like Gloria Steinem and the US Conference of Catholic Bishops regarding the value of a film like Vera Drake? An answer, which begins to explain why Vera Drake never fully achieved ‘symptomatic’ status in the abortion debate, takes shape when one considers the common appeal to realism made in mainstream pro-choice and anti-abortion publications. What both sides of the debate revealed when they referred the Vera Drake as an admirably ‘realistic’ movie was that both sides share a similar perspective on the relationship of film and culture. Both sides of the abortion debate share the commonsense view that movies may be judged according to how satisfactorily a film like Vera Drake reflects a reviewer’s commonsense understanding of the authenticity of the filmed representation. Since neither side declared a loss of faith in the verisimilitude of the film – in other words, reviewers from both sides of the abortion debate found no reason to criticize the movie for not reflecting the reality of abortion – there was nothing to argue about. Of course, Mike Leigh and the producers of the film should have seen this coming. After all, they claimed at the outset to be making a film that reflected the various facets of the abortion controversy in order to provide audience members with something to think about regarding the issue. The result was a mainstream film that writers could not argue about because the movie worked so well as an ‘accurate’ portrait of individuals struggling with the tortuous issue of abortion. Had the movie not appeared as simply a mirror held up to the general understanding of life in 1950s England, then there would have been something to argue about. In fact, there were a handful of responses to the film that challenged Vera Drake’s version of ‘reality’, though these challenges never ignited widespread debate over the film. During the first weekend of Vera Drake’s British release

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in January 2005, Jennifer Worth, a former midwife, wrote a column for the Guardian that claimed the movie was ‘medically inaccurate’.18 Worth agreed with the dramatic setup of the film, that women in the 1950s often took drastic chances to rid themselves of unwanted pregnancies prior to the 1968 legalization of abortion. However, she didn’t buy for a second the method the movie’s main character used to induce miscarriage: Mike Leigh is a writer and a film-maker, and can be excused for not knowing, but his medical advisor should certainly have known that Vera’s method of procuring an abortion – flushing out the uterus with soap and water – was invariably fatal. One of the most severe pains a human being can endure is the sudden distension of a hollow organ. Inflating the uterus with liquid will induce primary obstetric shock, a dramatic fall in blood pressure, and heart failure. Thousands of women have died instantly from this abortion method.19

Worth backed up her assessment with personal experience. She was a midwife during the fifties and ‘never saw a survivor of that method’.20 Worth’s column caught the attention of several Guardian readers who responded with letters to the editor defending the film. Each of the letters challenged Worth’s ‘expert’ opinion by offering, for the most part, personal anecdotes about women they knew who survived abortions performed like those in Vera Drake.21 Within a week, however, the dust settled and once again the film played in theatres without disturbance. Conservative columnist Meghan Cox Gurdon expressed concern that Vera Drake’s ‘reality’ committed serious sins of omission, but that such a film was par for the course. She complained in a Wall Street Journal editorial that a film like Vera Drake fit too snugly into the culturally insensitive, homogeneous, left-leaning Hollywood machine: ‘. . . there is really only one kind of abortion drama that post-Roe v. Wade Hollywood permits, and that is one that ultimately endorses use of the procedure’.22 Gurdon went on to critique Hollywood films like Vera Drake and Alfie for failing to acknowledge the existence of the aborted foetus: What is striking, but not surprising, about films that do tackle abortion is how the ‘products of conception’ end up having no claim on the audience’s sympathy. They’re like so many extraneous scenes left on the cutting room floor. Perhaps expanding screen time on what  – or who  – might have been would clog the narrative, and anyway, what a drag.23

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Gurdon then linked this lack of attention paid to the aborted fetus to the particularly ‘euphemistic, post-Roe’ attitude of Vera Drake: Kindly Vera ‘helps young girls in trouble’ in a way that will cause them ‘pain down below,’ some days after which ‘it all comes away.’ At one point an anguished young woman asks what Vera means by this last phrase. Vera smiles brightly; she will not elaborate. It seems that she does not let herself think beyond her merciful acts to their grisly conclusion, rather as terms such as ‘pro-choice’ cast abortion as something positive.24

Rather than seeing the film as a realistic depiction of women in trouble and oppressed by the insensitive state, or as a case study in ethics, Gurdon considered the film an exercise in deception. Gurdon’s critique is one of only a few that moved beyond the old-fashioned metaphor of reflection as a model of the relationship between a film and culture. By pointing out that something was ‘left out’ of the film, Gurdon reminded audience members that films don’t merely reflect commonsense reality, they play a role in creating it. From Gurdon’s perspective, Vera Drake was an argument in the abortion debate, not merely a story meant to spark controversy. In fact, this is the point that preoccupied William Murchison, senior editor of The Human Life Review, in his essay on the movie. Murchison expressed grave concern that the naturalistic style of Vera Drake masked a process of ‘normalization’ of abortion or what he called ‘. . . the adoption of abortion into the great family of everyday pursuits’.25 As he wrote in his essay on the film: No piece of fiery propaganda is Vera Drake, despite its attitude toward the destruction of unborn life. An invitation is what you might call it – an invitation to think of ‘helping young girls,’ in Vera’s special manner, as normal and merciful and, when you get to thinking about it, just what decency compels.26

The movie’s matter-of-fact realism, Murchison concluded, was alluring but sinister. In agreement with the premise but coming to the opposite conclusion of Catholic reviews mentioned earlier, Murchison wrote that ‘The real art in Vera Drake may be its muffling of moral clarities. Ordinary lady, usual dilemma, quiet response: nothing here to remind us of what really happens on those ordinary, usual, quiet occasions when off come the knickers and out comes the syringe.’27 Murchison’s point was that a film like Vera Drake, that appeals so strongly to commonsense images of ‘reality’, must be evaluated not according to how authentic the film appears, but rather examined to determine how the film is working to construct a particular version of reality, not merely reflect it.

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However, mainstream commentators never abandoned the reflective model of the film and culture relationship. The result was a film that was marketed as controversial but received with almost universal critical praise rather than cultural clamour. Where a film like Fahrenheit 9/11 drew attention to itself as a movie whose version of reality could be contested easily, Vera Drake’s attention to period detail and the emotional authenticity of actors’ performances left commentators with little to complain about – unless they took a moment to look behind the curtain. If the curtain had been raised, the film might have been the centre of a firestorm. Instead, Vera Drake turned out to be an exercise in aesthetic realism, the kind of exercise that brings audiences pleasure but is less likely to stoke political fires.

Notes 1 According to Variety, the estimated production budget for Vera Drake was a frugal $8.5 million. Anthony Kaufman, ‘Mike Leigh’, Variety, 16 December (2004), www. variety.com/index.asp?l=story&a=VR1117915107&c=1 810. 2 ‘Good Enough for the Vatican’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 27 January (2005), www.smh.com.au/articles/2005/01/26/1106415657975.htm l?oneclick=true. 3 Suzanna D Walters, Material Girls: Making Sense of Feminist Cultural Theory. Berkeley, CA: University of California, 1995, 4–11. 4 ‘Leigh’s Abortion Film Triumphs in Venice’, The Guardian, 13 September (2004), www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1303051,00.html. 5 ‘Transcript: Third Presidential Debate’, The Washington Post, 13 October (2004), www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/debatereferee/debate_1013.html. 6 ‘Vera Drake Box Office Chart’, Variety, www.variety.com/index.asp?layout=film_ weekly&dept=Fi lm&releaseID=21746&film=VERA%20DRAKE&movieID=21509. 7 ‘Vera Drake Focuses on Character, Not Politics’, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 22 October (2004); ‘Abortion’s a Backdrop to Poignant Family Portrait’, Chicago Sun-Times, 22 October (2004); ‘Imelda Staunton: In a Tremendous Performance, she Inhabits Vera Drake’, Boston Globe, 22 October (2004); ‘Suffering in Silence: Imelda Staunton Is Quietly Powerful in Vera Drake’, Washington Post, 22 October (2004). 8 ‘Thank God, He Has No Vote’, The Guardian Century, 24 October (2004), http:// observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1334751,00. html; Cardinale-Powell, 17. 9 David Mermelstein, ‘The Issue that Dares Not Speak its Name’, Variety, 2 January (2005), www.variety.com/story.asp?l=story&a=VR1117915641&c=1 803. 10 Gloria Steinem, ‘Bigscreen Abortion Contortions’, Variety, 4 January (2005), www. variety.com/story.asp?l=story&a=VR117915765&c=9. 11 Ibid.

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12 Ibid. 13 ‘Vera Drake’, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Reviews, www.usccb. org/movies/v/veradrake.htm. 14 Ibid. 15 Peter Malone, ‘Vera Drake Touches on Social Issues’, The Catholic Weekly, 13 March (2005), http://catholicweekly.com.au/print.php?articleID=629&class= Features&subclass=Movie%20Reviews. 16 Stefan Ulstein, ‘Vera Drake’, Christianity Today, 22 October (2004), www. christianitytoday.com/global/printer/html?/movie s/reviews.veradrake.html. 17 Joseph Cunneen, ‘The Unbearable Perils of Being’, National Catholic Reporter, 29 October (2004), http://natcath.org/NCR_Online/archives2/2004d/102904/102904 q.php. 18 ‘A Deadly Trade’, The Guardian, 6 January (2005), www.guardian.co.uk/g2/ story/0,,1384004,00.html. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid. 21 ‘My Own Vera Drake’, The Guardian, 7 January (2005), www.guardian.co.uk/ letters/story/0,,1384919,00.html; ‘Grim Days of Abortion Ban’, The Guardian, 8 January (2005), www.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,,1385694,00.html; ‘Cost of Unsafe Abortion’, The Guardian, 15 January (2005), www.guardian.co.uk/letters/ story/0,,1390961,00.html. 22 ‘What it’s All about: Hollywood Now Handles Abortion with Breezy Self-righteousness. It didn’t Use to’, Wall Street Journal, 12 November (2004), www.opinionjournal.com/forms/printThis.html?id=11000 5887. 23 Ibid. 24 Ibid. 25 William Murchison, ‘The World of Vera Drake’, The Human Life Review (Fall 2004), www.humanlifereview.com/2004_fall/world.php. 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid.

Works cited ‘Abortion’s a Backdrop to Poignant Family Portrait’, Chicago Sun-Times, 22 October 22 (2004). ‘Cost of Unsafe Abortion’, The Guardian, 15 January (2005), www.guardian.co.uk/ letters/story/0,,1390961,00.html. Cunneen, Joseph. ‘The Unbearable Perils of Being’, National Catholic Reporter, 29 October (2004), http://natcath.org/NCR_Online/archives2/2004d/102904/102904 q.php. ‘A Deadly Trade’, The Guardian, 6 January (2005), www.guardian.co.uk/g2/ story/0,,1384004,00.html.

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‘Good Enough for the Vatican’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 27 January (2005), www. smh.com.au/articles/2005/01/26/1106415657975.htm l?oneclick=true. ‘Grim Days of Abortion Ban’, The Guardian, 8 January (2005), www.guardian.co.uk/ letters/story/0,,1385694,00.html. ‘Imelda Staunton: In a Tremendous Performance, she Inhabits Vera Drake’, Boston Globe, 22 October (2004). Kaufman, Anthony. ‘Mike Leigh’, Variety, 16 December (2004), www.variety.com/index. asp?l=story&a=VR1117915107&c=1 810. ‘Leigh’s Abortion Film Triumphs in Venice’, The Guardian, 13 September (2004), www. guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1303051,00.html. Malone, Peter. ‘Vera Drake Touches on Social Issues’, The Catholic Weekly, 13 March (2005), http://catholicweekly.com.au/print.php?articleID=629&class= Features&subclass=Movie%20Reviews. Mermelstein, David. ‘The Issue that Dares Not Speak its Name’, Variety, 2 January (2005), www.variety.com/story.asp?l=story&a=VR1117915641&c=1 803. Murchison, William. ‘The World of Vera Drake’, The Human Life Review (Fall 2004), www.humanlifereview.com/2004_fall/world.php. ‘My Own Vera Drake’, The Guardian, 7 January (2005), www.guardian.co.uk/letters/ story/0,,1384919,00.html. Steinem, Gloria. ‘Big Screen Abortion Contortions’, Variety, 4 January (2005), www.variety. com/story.asp?l=story&a=VR117915765&c=9. ‘Suffering in Silence: Imelda Staunton Is Quietly Powerful in Vera Drake’, Washington Post, 22 October (2004). ‘Thank God, He Has No vote’, The Guardian Century, 24 October (2004), http://observer. guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1334751,00. html. ‘Transcript: Third Presidential Debate’, The Washington Post, 13 October (2004), www. washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/debatereferee/debate_1013.html. Ulstein, Stefan. ‘Vera Drake’, Christianity Today, 22 October (2004), www. christianitytoday.com/global/printer/html?/movie s/reviews.veradrake.html. ‘Vera Drake’, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Reviews, www.usccb.org/ movies/v/veradrake.htm. ‘Vera Drake Box Office Chart’, Variety, www.variety.com/index.asp?layout=film_ weekly&dept=Fi lm&releaseID=21746&film=VERA%20DRAKE&movieID=21509. ‘Vera Drake Focuses on Character, Not Politics’, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 22 October (2004). Walters, Suzanna D. Material Girls: Making Sense of Feminist Cultural Theory. Berkeley, CA: University of California, 1995. ‘What it’s All about: Hollywood Now Handles Abortion with Breezy Self-righteousness. It didn’t Use to’, Wall Street Journal, 12 November (2004), www.opinionjournal.com/ forms/printThis.html?id=11000 5887.

Part Two

It’s an Ordinary Life

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The Uniqueness of Ordinary Lives: Home Sweet Home and Grown-Ups Leonard Quart

Before Mike Leigh directed films for widespread release and critical recognition like Naked and Secrets & Lies, he spent years directing striking, low-budget films for the BBC. The subtlety and uniqueness of these films have never been given their due. Since the television films were small in scale and most often dealt with daily domestic life and relationships, they have rarely been treated to the same critical consideration as the films distributed in movie theatres. In fact, the category television film is problematic, since much of Britain’s film output is either made directly for television or subsidized by Channel Four and the BBC. As a result, some of Britain’s best directors, Stephen Frears, Ken Loach, Peter Greenaway, Alan Clarke, and Richard Eyre among them, have made a significant portion of their films for television. Their works, often confusingly categorized as drama on film were starkly different from the formulaic American made for television films. The British films were often personal works dealing with national themes, like Clarke’s biting Made in Britain (1983). The film centres around an intelligent, volcanic, racist skinhead (Tim Roth) in Thatcher’s Britain, who is inexorably trapped by his own rage and nihilism. Almost none of these films adhered to the conventions of the American disease or social problem of the week genre or that other staple  – tabloid re-creations of true stories of child abuse, wife battering and murder. It’s not that British television doesn’t have its soporific sitcoms and Australian soaps, and carry a wide variety of American dross, but it remains a medium where a unique, original writer like Dennis Potter was given enough television time and freedom to produce a multi-layered, self-reflexive, formally and intellectually complex work like The Singing Detective. Leigh never saw his television films, except for their budget

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constraints, as any less singular and inspired than theatrical features like High Hopes (1988). Though he is aware that budgetary pressures set limits on what can be done: The truth is that . . . there are problems with BBC films. They’re all shot on 16 mm and they’re shot very quickly. The cameramen are very good, but the crews are often out shooting documentaries. You can’t devote the time to the films and have the same photographic standards that you get with feature films. (Ellickson and Porton 1994, 15)

None of those limitations prevented Leigh from making striking television films like Grown-Ups (1980), the first film made for television accepted by the London Film Festival, and Home Sweet Home (1982). Both centre around working-class characters and their daily activities – work, alienated or abrasive conversations between husbands and wives, visits from other people and meals. Ordinary lives are given dimension and complexity, because Leigh has a gift for using the close-up, speech patterns and silence of his characters to go beyond the surface behaviour and capture their essence. He has always asked his actors to get to their characters’ inner core  – giving his ordinary characters a richly detailed individuality (an entire back-story or past and psychological depth) that mainstream films usually fail to project. Leigh sets Grown-Ups on a quiet street in Canterbury, while Home Sweet Home is set in Hitchin, Hertfordshire. In neither film does the external world nor location play a role. As in almost all of Leigh’s films the action centres on character and behaviour, and the interaction between character and setting is rarely significant. In Grown-Ups Leigh confines the film’s action almost entirely to two neighbouring houses, one a shoddily built council house, the other a more substantial, semi-detached, comfortable, private one. A badly educated, young working-class couple, Dick (the brilliantly chameleon-like Philip Davis) and his wife Mandy (Lesley Manville) live in the council house. The other is inhabited by an unhappy, alienated middle-class couple – their former high school teachers, Ralph (Sam Kelly) and Christine (Lindsay Duncan) – deferentially and uneasily addressed as Mr. and Mrs. Butcher by Dick and Mandy. For the surly, slack-jawed, inarticulate Dick and the pleasant-looking but excessively mascaraed and slightly beaten-down Mandy the council house is a step up in life. It’s the first home they have ever called their own, but they are barely sufficiently grown up enough to know how to go about fixing it up. The scrubby front yard has bits of garbage strewn about; Dick’s solution (he is both hapless and unwilling to really do

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anything around the house) for the chaos of their garden, which contains broken glass from a smashed-up greenhouse, is to cement it over. Mandy, in turn, talks constantly of redecorating the house. All her good intentions, however, seem to go nowhere, as the house remains almost as bare at the end of the film as it does when they first moved in. Dick and Mandy’s lives are drab and routine, but they aren’t conscious that anything is missing. They have a healthy, mutually satisfying sex life, but their talk is restricted to little but petty bickering and snarling. They argue a great deal about having a child – Dick is opposed and says he wants a dog instead. When Dick’s not working at a deadening job washing up in a hospital kitchen, he spends most of his time lying unshaven on the couch watching the telly and eating his meals in front of it. The rest of his time off is limited to drinking beer and playing pool with his mates at the pub. Mandy’s life is no richer: she works behind a counter in a coffee bar, and seems interested in little but buying clothes and cleaning the house (Figure 6.1). Their social life seems just as cramped. Nobody comes to see Dick, but Mandy has a friend, Sharon (Janine Duvitski), who visits – a glum, hypercritical woman who works behind a sweet counter in Debenham’s department store. Sharon is a woman with a sour, hangdog look who takes little pleasure in anything – criticizing her dates and finding Dick and Mandy’s house ‘filthy’ and the ‘carpet too small’.

Figure 6.1  Dick (Phil Davis) and Mandy (Lesley Manville) consider having children in Grown-Ups (1980)

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Dick and Sharon bait each other in adolescent fashion (‘good riddance to bad rubbish’), just as they must have behaved towards each other as classmates back in their high school years. There is one affecting scene where Mandy, Dick and Sharon – all three of them are the kind of students who treated school as an ordeal and left early without taking their O- or A-level exams – talk nostalgically about their teachers (recalling their nicknames) and high school experiences. Despite their penchant for insulting each other, the brief scene makes one understand how much they share and what binds them together. Leigh directs the scene without contempt, sentimentality or turning these barely articulate characters into the kind of sitcom characters who, though behaving like dullards, have the inexplicable quick wit to exchange snappy one-liners about their shared past. Leigh, as always, knows just how to remain within his characters’ language and consciousness without interpolating artificial and strained talk into the scene. Home Sweet Home, a darker film, focuses on the hopeless domestic lives of three isolated postmen who work together but barely know each other: silly, mild-mannered Harold (Tim Barker); fat, loutish, insensitive Gordon (Timothy Spall); and Stan (Eric Richard), a detached, depressed loner. Stan is the film’s central figure, though Leigh grants the other postmen and their wives a fair amount of screen time. Leigh’s films often have characters that are more central than others, but there is usually a gallery of characters that are given some size and are not just faceless people on the periphery of the action. Stan’s wife has run off with another man, and he has placed his troubled 14-year-old daughter in a government-run home. Hawk-nosed Stan’s hero is Frank Sinatra, whose music he spends his afternoons listening to alone on his stereo headphones. In Sinatra-like fashion Stan does it ‘my way’, having casual passionless affairs with Harold’s and Gordon’s alienated, enraged wives. Stan, whom Leigh depicts without a touch of satire or stylization, is a monosyllabic and ungiving lover. He is a sullen, very neat man who only sexually starved and needy women married to men even more hopeless than Stan could find appealing. In one stunning sequence, Leigh captures the absolute bleakness of the film’s sexual relationships. The camera views Stan through the window of a Laundromat sitting on a bench waiting for his wash to be done, paying little attention to the only other person there – a worn, seedy-looking woman (Sheila Kelly), who tensely picks her nails and compulsively rubs her hands together. In the next scene they’re morosely sitting in a pub, while she sadly chatters on defensively about drinking nothing else but beer and going to Laundromats just for a chat. The film then cuts to Stan’s bedroom, where she is awkwardly getting

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dressed – putting on her threadbare cardigan after they’ve gone to bed together. Stan barely responds to her strained talk, while lying in bed smoking and watching her without pleasure, clearly impatient to see her leave. She broadly hints that she would like a watch or a meal – some kind of token of affection or even payment for the sex they’ve had. In response Stan offers little but silence, and it’s only as she walks off – bent, hobbling, a sad, nervous tic of a smile – that he even asks and discovers her name: Janice. The scene may be risible, as well as painful, but the humour is dark and mordant. In the space of a couple of minutes  – using two-shots, shot-reaction-shots, minimal dialogue and gestures and the bare decor of Stan’s flat – Leigh sparingly captures both the most joyless of assignations and the essence of Janice’s life. (Leigh’s gift for compressing personality into a few gestures and movements is at its most striking here.) Janice is one of Leigh’s solitary, lost people, who possibly has had a breakdown in the past, and whose life is suffused with personal rejection and economic failure. Another director would either parody or sentimentalize her, or provide Janice with a traumatic history to explain her behaviour and build audience sympathy. But Leigh just has the camera capture her pathos, and makes no judgements. After fumbling with her keys, Janice finally leaves Stan’s house for, one assumes, some barren, damp bed-sit heated by a gas fire; or for another pub or Laundromat for some crumb of human contact. Appearing just for a few minutes, she has made her distinctive mark on the film, but like the dim, childish Wayne in High Hopes, she never again returns to the narrative. Yet for Leigh Janice is not a loose end neatly tied to narrative, as she would be for a conventional director, but a succinctly fleshed-out character who trenchantly reveals to the audience the nature of Stan’s relationships with women. Leigh wants his audiences to believe his characters and their worlds really exist, but he has no interest in supplying us with a Loach-like documentary realist version of the way the world looks. What he tries to do is to evoke ‘the poetry that lies underneath the texture of the real world’ (Quart 1997). In his films everything that occurs is usually constructed to be either a touch more humorous and emotionally extreme – the daily turned a bit askew. He heightens his characters’ behaviour so every personal tic and twitch becomes more intense and every silence more ponderous and painful. His characters are much more realistic than almost anybody who appears in a Hollywood film, but they are not quite people, in Leigh’s words, who can ‘walk off the screen into the street’ (Quart, unpublished interview). They are indelibly Leigh’s creations, though some are more exaggerated than others.

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In Grown-Ups the one outsized character is Mandy’s older sister Gloria (Brenda Blethyn of Secrets & Lies), an office worker unhappily living with their mother on a council estate. Gloria is pathetically needy, lonely, and utterly intrusive, and is played by Blethyn with a prattling, fluttering intensity. She keeps ‘popping in’, but stays all evening, talking in her grating voice without stop, until Dick has to walk her to the bus station. She also puts the kettle on, hands out cigarettes, brings useful gifts like a second-hand vacuum cleaner and generally busies herself around the house. Her behaviour is both motivated by a genuine desire to be helpful, but also aimed at making them feel hard-hearted if they ask her to leave. Nevertheless, Dick and Mandy become increasingly exasperated, hinting to Gloria that she’s coming too often. Gloria, however, who has had a lifetime’s experience fending off and repressing rebuffs, just continues on. What Gloria is hungrily looking for is just some warmth and a place to belong. Gloria is no sit-com stereotype – the impossibly irritating and garish relative who won’t ever go home no matter how direct the hints – but a desperately pathetic, vulnerable and impossible woman. Leigh neither really explains away her behaviour (a harsh, rejecting mother), nor allows us to treat her as an emotional cripple. She’s pitiable, but is somebody who would swallow one’s life up if she sensed that you felt some compassion for her. In one emotionally powerful scene she tags along to a pub with Dick and Mandy, and when they repeatedly tell her that she must get home, she begins to break down and poignantly cry in exasperation over a life of rejection. In this situation both Mandy and Dick behave empathetically – Mandy tries hard to console her, while Dick in his gruff, crude but caring way responds by telling Gloria ‘You wanna pull yourself together, gel.’ In the film’s most exaggerated, brilliantly choreographed sequence, Leigh moves from the daily into a more emotionally intense, disordered and hyper-realist realm. It’s a scene that Andy Medhurst in a Sight and Sound article sees as ‘perhaps the one piece of Leigh you’d want to put in a time capsule to sum up exactly what he did best’. After too many visits from Gloria, Dick explodes and she is finally locked out of their house. She then frantically races over to the Butchers’ next door. What follows is emotionally painful, hysterical and comically absurd – Gloria runs up their stairs and locks herself in the Butcher bathroom. Everybody tries to cajole her out of there. Once she comes downstairs there is a great deal of farcical shouting, wrestling and rolling up and down the stairs to get her to go home. It’s the slapstick of the Three Stooges fused with an evocation of authentic emotional rage and anguish (Figure 6.2).

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Figure 6.2  Mr. Butcher (Sam Kelly) and Christine (Lindsay Duncan) try to keep Mandy (Lesley Manville) under control in Grown-Ups (1980)

It’s Christine who takes charge, exhibiting more will and energy than anyone would have expected. In a saccharine, condescending way she appeals to and comforts Gloria, as if she is an obstinate child (‘cross my heart and hope to die’). We may be turned off by Christine’s cloying manner, but it succeeds with Gloria. She wins Gloria’s confidence, finally calming her down. While another director would have had somebody succeed in quieting Gloria by some expression of serene, therapeutic wisdom, Leigh understands that in real life people respond to and are helped by the most soporific of entreaties and advice. It’s what distinguishes Leigh from more formulaic directors  – the capacity to observe closely and project the way people truly interact rather than portray too neatly shaped or cinematically derived forms of human behaviour. In Home Sweet Home all of Stan’s melancholy relationships come to a head in a similar cacophonous scene: his detached affair with Harold’s wife June (Sue Elliot) – a chain-smoking, romance novel-reading, sexually frustrated, abrasive housewife; his flirtation with Gordon’s brassy, house-proud wife Hazel (Kay Stonham); and his detached relationship with his 14-year-old daughter Tina (Lorraine Brunning), whom he’s only visited at the government home four times in the past year. Hazel cooks Sunday dinner for Stan and Tina at their house, and chaos and lunacy slowly take over. During dinner strident Hazel constantly puts down Gordon, and he responds in kind. All four of them take a walk in the park, but Gordon soon trails behind, gasping for breath, barely able to climb a

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small hill. Stan and Hazel then go into the kitchen to wash the dishes where they embrace, taking little care to hide themselves from being seen by an enraged Gordon and the silently watchful Tina. The scene builds to its messy close, when June, making an unannounced visit to the house to finally straighten out her affair with Stan, accidentally catches a glance of Hazel and Stan in the kitchen. It all then turns into desperate farce – evoking much more anguish than laughter. Hazel looks warily at June, surmising she’s been having an affair with Stan. Hazel displaces her jealous rage by turning into a hairdresser, harshly brushing Tina’s hair, while, at the same time, having a screaming argument with Gordon. Leigh uses close-ups of Tina to capture her depression as all this agitation and lunacy erupt around her. None of the adults show an iota of concern about what effect their behaviour may have on Tina – treating her as if she doesn’t exist. The scene then shifts to the street where Harold, returning from work, innocently blunders into the group. He takes June home with Hazel stridently warning him to ‘keep his bleeding eyes on her’. The whole turbulent scene ends with a long take of an enraged Hazel and Gordon cursing and swinging at each other on the sidewalk. It looks like a comic variation on Strindberg’s dark vision of marriage in The Father or Dance of Death, where constant warfare between husband and wife is the norm. Leigh then abruptly cuts to Stan driving a totally despondent Tina back to the home, the disastrous weekend’s only legacy being the deadly thick silence in the car (Figure 6.3).

Figure 6.3  Stan (Eric Richard) makes a move on June (Su Elliott) who is married to Harold, Stan’s co-worker at the post office in Home Sweet Home (1982)

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In both films Leigh avoids condescending to the working-class characters that critics of his work usually claim he patronizes. Mandy and Dick’s rooms may be covered in flowered wallpaper and filled with vulgar china ornaments of animals, and Mandy wobbles around the house in furry slippers, probably looking just like her mother does – Leigh is not being condescending. He’s merely trying to give the audience a genuine idea of their cultural tastes and preferences. And though Dick and Mandy live limited lives, Leigh never stereotypes or judges them, or treats them with contempt. At the same time, it is clear that their responses to life are not ones he identifies with. Dick and Mandy are ordinary people, close to the bottom of the class ladder, but like all the most fully realized of Leigh’s characters, too complex to be dismissed in one or two descriptive adjectives. They have a much better marriage than the one the more polite, comfortable and educated Butchers next door endure. For beneath Dick and Mandy’s constant quarrelling a genuine connection exists. The Butchers may listen to classical music and have a copy of a Canaletto painting of Venice on their wall, but they have a totally arid, quietly hostile and sexless marriage. They’re trapped with each other, and Leigh depicts with utter even-handedness both the pathos of the middle-class Butchers and the outwardly barren lives of Dick and Mandy. Marital lives are difficult for members of all social classes in Grown-Ups, and no class has a monopoly on marital alienation and conflict. Still with Mandy and Dick what we see, on first view, as a conflict-ridden, drab marriage may be a solid, giving one, and that our perceptions of what occurs between them are clouded by our own class biases. Dick may be sexist and crude, but there is a great deal of unexpressed feeling resting between him and Mandy. And Mandy has different expectations of both Dick and existence itself than an upper-middle-class wife would have. She wants a baby and some sense that he genuinely cares for her, but seemingly doesn’t need a great deal of communication, delicacy, sensitivity or the sharing of household duties to make the marriage work. Mandy and Dick are limited people, but, within their lights, they make a go of their marriage. There is also Stan whom Leigh could have turned into a caricature of the remote, ungiving father. Pressured by a bouncy and pushy social worker, Melody Henderson (Frances Barber), he brings Tina home for the weekend. Stan doesn’t know what to say to her, and solitary, self-hating Tina, head bent, hair covering her eyes, wearing a too-large overcoat which almost drags along the ground, is totally resistant and does not respond  – barely saying anything. Leigh has a special knack for using pauses and silence to convey a person’s emotional

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make-up more tellingly than pages of explicatory dialogue. In one compressed scene Leigh conveys, in a trenchant lengthy take, the nature of Tina and Stan’s relationship. In long shot, the camera observes Tina and Stan as they stand about the dismal, dishevelled back garden of his house. Leigh creates a great deal of alienated space between them, but Stan, in his way, genuinely tries to reach out to Tina, invoking memories of the time she got lost as a child, and trying to whet her interest in going to the movies that night and having dinner the next day. All the while, Tina aimlessly swishes at the garden’s overgrown grass with a plastic wire. Nothing traumatic occurs in this scene, but in Leigh’s undramatic, minimalist observation of Tina and Stan’s interaction, he’s keenly caught the nature of an alienated father–daughter relationship that is neither brutal nor hostile. There is no overt abuse here. In fact, ungiving Stan expresses more feeling for Tina than towards any other person in the film. He even feels despair (which Leigh evokes by focusing on Stan’s face in a brief, powerful medium shot) about being unable to connect to Tina much beyond guiltily handing her some spending money. For all his brusqueness and isolation, Stan is not an inhumane or heartless man. However, the gap between Stan and Tina can’t be bridged (Figure 6.4). Leigh is clearly political  – a man of the Left who viewed the ‘reactionary’ Tory governments as helping to destroy the fabric of English society. Despite his antipathy to the political Right, the focus of his films is never on a social

Figure 6.4  Stan (Eric Richard) tries to talk with his 14-year-old daughter Tina in Home Sweet Home (1982)

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problem or political stance, nor can his characters’ behaviour be usually reduced to their class position. His films exhibit an awareness of how social-cultural environment helps shape and limit his characters’ lives (Dick and Mandy’s limited education and unskilled jobs) but it is never the sole determinent of who they are. Leigh differs from Ken Loach – a director critics often mistakenly lump him with (since both are independent, non-Hollywood film-makers who mainly deal with working-class experience) – because his world is too ambiguous, too rife with contradiction to offer political alternatives or answers. Leigh wants his films, which he often gives a comic and satiric edge, ‘to raise questions and posit possibilities’ (Quart 1997, 53) not provide ringing political or social solutions. His emphasis is on the depiction of interaction and behaviour – the personal – not on the examination of social conditions like homelessness. Loach, in turn, wants to move his audiences to see the nature of social inequity – the political usually taking precedence over the personal in his work. For example, in his reputation-making docudrama, Cathy Comes Home (1966), depicting a young couple descending into homelessness, the emphasis is on urban poverty and the welfare state’s failings, rather than the couple’s psychic lives. While in Leigh’s Naked (1993) his homeless anti-hero’s actions aren’t reduced to a set of political and social variables. The film treats his self-destructive behaviour primarily in existential terms  – an emotionally hobbled, alienated character living in a meaningless universe. Still, Loach’s best work avoids becoming a social document or tract, and is rooted like Kes (1969) and Ladybird, Ladybird (1994) in the struggles of flawed, damaged working-class characters, to shape a life out of oppressive life situations. However, all his work explicitly or implicitly projects a Marxist, class-conscious social perspective  – a belief in collective ownership, and a rough division of the world between those who hold power and those who are social victims. In addition, he provides a critique of English institutions like social service bureaucracies, trade unions and schools and, of course, capitalism. And though he’s pessimistic about what can be politically achieved in the present, he has not given up hope in a future forged by the direct action of a courageous, socially committed working class. Leigh may often savagely skewer and parody his upper-middle and upper-class characters and extend his deepest sympathies to his working-class ones, but he feels that Loach would regard him, ‘as, at best, a lily-livered liberal’ (Ellickson and Porton 1994, 16). For example, Leigh never tries to turn the unemployed family living on the dole on a barren council estate in Meantime (1983) into

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sympathetic social victims, arousing criticism from the extreme Left for making a film without heroes or villains. In fact, many of his working-class characters behave badly, victimize themselves and live pathetic, constricted lives. There are humane, sympathetic working-class characters like High Hope’s Cyril and Shirley, but no proletarian heroes or heroines in his work. Nor does one believe, as in Loach’s films, where institutions rather than character are the prime determinant of an individual’s fate, that life would be that radically different if only the institutions could be transformed. Leigh’s few characters that see themselves as part of the organized Left are jargon-ridden, absurd and alienated. For example, the social worker, Dave (Lloyd Peters), in Home Sweet Home visits Stan to talk about Tina. Wearing round glasses, Dave is a tense, self-styled Marxist who nervously talks about the ‘the peripheral social structure’ and the ‘repressive fascist’ society, claiming he won’t engage in the ‘unacceptable face of social work’. Dave’s talk is a word salad of Marxist jargon and Left slogans (‘United we stand’ and ‘We shall overcome’), and while the deluge of words continues off-screen, humorously underlined with the Internationale on the soundtrack, the camera focuses in tight and tighter close-ups on an utterly nonplussed, and turned off Stan. The scene incisively conveys the gap between self-styled Left intellectuals and the working class they supposedly serve and sometimes fantasize leading to the promised land. Though Dave may show concern about the social as well as environmental causes (‘the contributing infrastructure’) of Tina’s problem, there is nothing in Dave’s self-conscious desire to establish rapport, his commitment to human need and his supposedly advanced political consciousness that interests or touches Stan. In fact, the only question that Stan can think of asking Dave, after he finishes his rap, is why he carries around a tea kettle. Dave initially answers by digressing into politically unfiltered and incorrect anger towards the girl who left him for a merchant banker – ‘she gets on my tits’, and then segues into a Marxist critique of ‘commodity fetishism’. The film concludes with a full shot of a depressed, solitary Tina, the final credits rolling over her image, aimlessly tearing leaves off a branch in the back garden of the government home, while Dave is heard in voice-over pointlessly muttering irrelevant left slogans: ‘create the vanguard’. Leigh knows his Daves  – supposedly intelligent people who work in the helping professions, and see social and individual problems through a lens of Marxist abstraction and radical jargon. (In Britain the Left of the Labour Party garnered a great deal of its support from urban schoolteachers and social

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service workers.) For Leigh, Dave’s commitment to a reflexive, dogmatic politics means that he is totally cut off from the human beings he is trying to reach and supposedly help. Politically Leigh probably most identifies with the motorcycle messenger Cyril (Philip Davis) in High Hopes. He’s a socialist who wants to build a juster world, but utterly confused and self-doubting about how to create social change – a radical and bohemian with many more questions than answers. Using a minimal narrative, long takes, tight close-ups, little cutting, and for most of the films’ footage, a stationary camera Leigh has created poignant drama out of the most undramatic of situations. In Grown-Ups Leigh has given us characters that mix imperfection, unpredictability and humanity. In Home Sweet Home, the harsher film of the two – he evokes barren lives and institutions – marriage, home, social service agencies – that reinforce rather than assuage the characters’ sense of desolation. Leigh has minimally and delicately constructed this disconsolate world, mostly through tight close-ups and some striking long shots of an emotionally wounded, silent Tina, without banging us over the head about its bleakness or giving us hope that his characters will undergo some magical transformation. In both films, he gives us characters whose behaviour surprises us, not in the contrived plot-driven surprise of an O. Henry short story or some banal Hollywood thriller, but in the uniqueness and irreducibility of even the simplest and most ordinary of people. Leigh does this without ever consecrating their commonness – indulging in a Hollywood-style populism that would transform people like Dick, Mandy or Stan into founts of folksy sagacity or submerged delicacy. It’s all so different from a Billy Wilder, Oscar-winning satire like The Apartment (1960) where the characters, played by Jack Lemmon and Shirley Maclaine, move predictably from venal and foolish victims to sensitive, courageous figures – much more sensitive and honest than any of the repellent, manipulative corporate executives that use them. In a Leigh film nothing comes that easy, his characters’ flaws never disappear. They never become some director or scriptwriter’s mechanical notion of what would make them seductive or accessible to the public. As in most of his work, Leigh succeeds in these two films in creating poignant, tragicomic drama out of the most ordinary and undramatic of situations. He achieves this without narrative tension, violence, elaborate locations, or a hint of glamour, but with an eye and ear that keenly observes, individuates and conveys how the most modest characters live out their lives.

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Works cited Ellickson, Lee and Richard Porton. ‘I Find the Tragicomic Things in Life: An Interview with Mike Leigh’, Cineaste 20:3 (1994): xx. Medhurst, Andy. ‘Mike Leigh beyond Embarrassment’, Sight and Sound 3:11 (November 1993): xx. Quart, Leonard. Unpublished interview with Mike Leigh, 23 September (1996), New York. — . ‘Raising Questions and Positing Possibilities: An Interview with Mike Leigh’, Cineaste 22:4 (1997): xx.

7

‘Taking the Temperature’: Masculinities and Male Identities from Bleak Moments to Happy-Go-Lucky Sarah Godfrey

From his earliest television plays to his most recent film, Another Year (2010), Mike Leigh has consistently directed work that is steeped in cultural observation and comment. David Walsh describes the director as someone who ‘has stood out importantly . . . who has attempted to make complicated and sensitive – and socially engaged  – films which have not only ‘registered’ but ‘often critiqued’ social trends (Walsh 2008). In the interview with Walsh, Leigh describes his work as ‘taking the temperature’ of British society over the last 40 years. In films such as High Hopes (1988) and Naked (1993), a cultural agenda concerned with looking ‘at people in terms of human needs, human behaviour, and feelings and emotions, how men and women function, what is is to be a parent and child, how to survive’ is evident (Walsh 2008). Leigh has consistently focused on the minutiae of human relationships and connections in work that has invariably fore-grounded a domestic and familial setting. His narrative technique emphasizes multiple perspectives and is designed to facilitate a range of subject positions to be seen and heard. The period of time in which Leigh has been working has seen some significant shifts in British culture, discourse and practice, not least around gender: Bleak Moments and Hard Labour take place within a very different cultural landscape than Happy-Go-Lucky and Another Year and the respective narratives of these films and television dramas inevitably register these thematic modulations through the central characters. All of these films focus decidedly upon female protagonists and as such evidence the claim that Leigh’s work is generally concerned with narrativizing the lives and experiences of female characters. The

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Observer journalist, Kate Kellaway conducted a series of interviews with some of the women who have formed the cornerstones of Leigh’s cinematic and television output, celebrating the contribution that he (and these women) have made to the representational palette of femininity in recent British cinema.1 However, Leigh’s focus is rarely just on women. Invariably these striking female characters are positioned alongside male characters that are just as nuanced, diverse and engaging, and it is these characters that this chapter takes as its focus. While Kellaway rightly draws attention to the creative collaborations between Leigh and these actors, the article overlooks the fact that Leigh has formed equally long-standing relationships with a number of influential British male actors.2 Despite the fact that Leigh’s films have provided a wealth of complex and compelling male characters which range from the stilted and stifled Peter (Eric Allan) in Bleak Moments through to the alienated and insecure Scott (Eddie Marsan) in Happy-Go-Lucky, it is just one film, Naked, which has been subject to extensive analysis and debate for its representation of masculinity.3 Although Naked is a key film in Leigh’s oeuvre, not least because it was the film for which Leigh was awarded the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival, it is far from being the only one of his films or television dramas to feature male characters worthy of critical investigation and analysis. Leigh’s substantive body of work provides a varied and interesting representational palette of British masculinity across the last 40 years and as such offers a unique perspective on the shifting terrain of British masculinity over this period. Given the relative lack of scholarly attention paid to masculinity within Leigh’s work thus far, this chapter will begin with a broad overview of some of the key themes and issues that have emerged as central to Leigh’s construction of masculinity over the course of his career before going on to a more detailed analysis of All or Nothing (2002), a film which brings many of these themes together to provide a particularly pertinent exploration of masculinity in Leigh’s work.

From lukewarm to simmering rage: An overview of masculinity in Mike Leigh’s films One of the things that makes Leigh’s work so distinctive within recent British culture is the diversity of his male characters who range from gentle (Maurice in Secrets & Lies, Andy in Life is Sweet, Tom in Another Year) to violent and problematic (Jim in Hard Labour, Jason in All or Nothing) and

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from straightforward to complex and ambiguous (as the debates around the misogynistic undercurrents of Naked appear to attest). Leigh’s male characters occupy a range of social and familial positions, and this enables him to consider and mediate a plethora of questions and ideas about male life and experience within Britain over the last four decades. All of his films (not to mention his television and theatrical work) have some connection to this wider question about masculinity and the construction of British male identities. Indeed, while Leigh rightly contends that one of his central modus operandi has been to create films and television dramas which offer ‘female parts that are not just male fantasy’ but offer something more nuanced and intricately constructed, so too it would seem that he could claim a similar position in terms of the diversity of male characters that are found throughout his oeuvre (AFP 2008). Certainly he offers a very different perspective on masculinity and questions of male experience and identity than contemporary British film directors such as Peter Cattaneo, Neil Marshall, Shane Meadows, Guy Ritchie and Nick Love who tend to engage more explicitly with the concomitant notions of masculinity ‘in crisis’ and of white working-class masculinity as a sociopolitical problem.4 Leigh’s refusal to re-position his stylistic and thematic approaches to film-making as questions about masculinity and male identity became increasingly dominant during the nineties provides further evidence of his position as an important and idiosyncratic film-maker within critical debates about contemporary British film-making. The notable exception to the claim that Naked has been the subject of disproportionate attention around the representation of masculinity is Carney and Quart’s chapter, ‘We Are the Hollow Men: Who’s Who’ (2000, 117–29). In this, the authors identify a trilogy of films that they describe as being ‘the hollow man trilogy’ (2000, 117) a body of films into which they place Nuts in May, Abigail’s Party and Who’s Who. The films, they contend, are connected by the ways in which they ‘present a nightmare vision of individuals on the brink of erasure’ (2000, 117). In many ways, their observation can be expanded to a much wider range of male characters in Leigh’s corpus. I would contend that one of the cornerstones – if not the defining feature of masculinity across Leigh’s work – is this focus on men who are in some way outsiders. There are men who either yearn for or are seeking to belong in some way. Maurice (Timothy Spall) in Secrets & Lies, Aubrey (Timothy Spall) in Life is Sweet, Colin (Tim Roth) in Meantime, Wayne (Jason Watkins) in High Hopes or Trevor (David Threlfall) in The Kiss of Death, might all be considered in some way as characters who

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fit into this category. A related category might be those men who appear to be more comfortable with their position as outsiders, most notably the character of Cyril (Philip Davies) in High Hopes, a man who consciously rejects the forms of masculinity represented by the other men in the narrative. Into this category one might also place one of Leigh’s most contentious male characters, Johnny (David Thewlis) in Naked, a character who, like Cyril, rails against a society which he sees as being morally dubious and a life cycle which he sees as futile. While the two characters are very different, Cyril and Johnny are, as I will show shortly, intrinsically connected through the ways in which they understand and articulate the boundaries between belonging and being an outsider, a line of enquiry that perhaps echoes Leigh’s own position as ‘an outsider “auteur,” an intentional misfit’ (1997, 113). When one reviews Leigh’s entire body of film and television work, the frequency with which the dual tropes of outsider/belonging is deployed is striking and clearly ties to the issues of freedom and entrapment that Leigh himself posits as a central theme in his work. In his 2008 interview with Associated Free Press (2008), Leigh states that ‘In all my films, it is not conscious but it comes from my own life, there is a battle, a struggle, a tension between repression and freedom, anarchy and free spirit’. The motif of outsider includes a range of male characters that are emotionally inarticulate and repressed, and Leigh himself identifies this as a key point of interest, telling Mirra Bank that ‘I am drawn, to a considerable extent to explore the world of the inarticulate and indeed the world of the uneducated. Because I find that important and fascinating and compelling’ (1997, 120). Indeed the exploration of communication and articulation is the focus of Bleak Moments, a film that is characterized by the awkwardness of uncomfortable interaction. Eric Allen’s Peter is painful in his reticence and Leigh’s cinematography and editing are used to prolong the awkward silences and strained exchanges between the various characters. The awkward silence that fills the room as the five main characters, Sylvia (Anne Rait), Pat (Joolia Cappleman) Norman (Mike Bradwell), Hilda (Sarah Stephenson) and Peter, are seated together drinking tea is emphasized by the slow-paced, sequential close-up shots which force attention on to the bewildered and socially inept characters. Later on, when Sylvia and Peter return from their dinner date, Sylvia, slightly tipsy and giggling by now, reveals that she was wondering what would happen if Peter were to remove his trousers. Her temerity unnerves the aloof and awkward Peter. Leigh makes use of a particularly long take to prolong the discomfort as the couple almost kiss. Peter’s inaction becomes too much for Sylvia who excuses herself, escaping to

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the kitchen to ‘brew up’. The camera remains focused on Peter who remains standing alone in the living room, drawing attention to his complete inability to respond or react to any kind of interpersonal communication. He shuffles from foot to foot before making his excuses and beating a hasty retreat from the house preferring the predictable and familiar position of ‘loneliness, isolation and non-communication’ over the terrifying potential of romantic fulfilment (Herbert 1988, 10). Leigh’s aptitude for creating discomfort out of emotional impotence is seen once more in the television play Abigail’s Party, one of Leigh’s best known early works. Laurence (Tim Stern) is more vocal than the aloof and contained Peter, espousing his views in a series of increasingly fraught exchanges with this pretentious and aspirational wife, Beverly (Alison Steadman), but he remains ineffectual and metaphorically impotent as she drunkenly flirts and dances with their new neighbour, Tony (John Salthouse). Indeed, Laurence’s demise from a heart attack might be symptomatic of the mortal implications of emotional (and arguably sexual) repression. The opinionated and self-righteous yet emotionally remote is also seen in Nuts in May (1976) in the character of Keith (Roger Sloman) whose relationship with Candice Marie (Alison Steadman) is more that of teacher/student or parent/child than husband and wife. Keith continually lectures Candice Marie on any topic at hand, from matters of nutrition and digestion to music and history. Keith clearly sees himself as Candice Marie’s superior and self-appointed teacher. His self-righteous bumptiousness causes friction among the other people camping at the same site, and when Candice Marie befriends Ray (Arthur O’Donnell), Keith is unable to express his incipient jealousy in anything other than the most petty and sniping of ways. Much like Peter and Laurence, Keith remains uptight and repressed, unable to articulate his feelings or emotions. His emotional conflict becomes displaced onto other targets as his continual attempts at one-upmanship show. Peter, Laurence and Keith are all lower middle-class men and much has been made of the conflicted ways in which Leigh engages with social class; as Darren Rea points out in his review of the film, Keith’s highly regimented sense of structure and his self-righteous preaching make him ‘an easy figure to ridicule’ and I would argue that this is absolutely bound to a certain characterization of British middle-class masculinity as being uptight and emotionally reticent. In many ways Leigh’s earliest male characters are very much a product of their social and historical context (Rea 2003).5

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A more recent example of this kind of emotionally contained masculinity can be seen in the character of Maurice (Timothy Spall) in Secrets & Lies. In this film Spall’s character struggles to navigate a complex web of familial relationships which have been built up over years of misunderstanding and poor communication. Maurice, however, is distinct from Peter, Laurence and Keith in that he is a more reflective and introspective character. The conflation of social class with self-righteousness does not hold true in this instance. Where Leigh has been criticized for class snobbery and for creating crude, two-dimensional caricatures (with Abigail’s Party and High Hopes being most frequently singled out for critique in this way),6 Maurice represents a more rounded character, one that is clearly conflicted by what he wants to say and what he can say. Throughout the scenes where Maurice visits his sister, Cynthia (Brenda Blethyn) Maurice continually checks himself, stopping the words that appear to be pushing for release and continually considering his responses. As in Bleak Moments, Leigh’s use of long, almost ponderous close-up shots forces the viewer’s attention on Maurice’s inner conflict. In particular the close-up on Maurice’s face as he gives his sister a hug focuses on ‘the expression in his eyes . . . [which shows] how terribly uncomfortable and lost this makes him feel’ (Watson 2004, 135). The significance of the unspoken is continually alluded to during this sequence. Indeed the script states that brother and sister ‘share unspoken memories’ (Leigh 1997, 36) but the poignant potential of the unspoken is perhaps rendered most palpable with Maurice’s reaction to Cynthia’s question about when he is ‘gonna make me an auntie?’ (Leigh 1997). In much the same way that Peter retreats to the familiarity of loneliness rather than confronting his fear of intimacy, Maurice retracts from his sister, opting to curtail his visit rather than having to confront the painful reality of Monica’s (Phyllis Logan) infertility. Throughout the film we see the tension between that which Maurice longs to articulate and the interpersonal dynamics that appear to prevent him from speaking. Note an exchange between Maurice and Monica where the couple discuss the shortcomings of his sister: Monica gently but pointedly mocks her husband’s continual forgiveness towards his sister, sarcastically referring to ‘Saint Cynthia!’ Maurice is ‘overcome’, but rather than prolong the conversation or allow it to develop into a conflict between him and Monica, retreats to the sanctuary of ‘the end of the garden’ where, isolated from human connection, he is safe from the threatening spectre of communication and the potential for damaging revelation. In this instance, Maurice’s reluctance to engage in communication is rather differently constructed to that of Keith, Laurence and

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Peter. Where these men are incapable of engaging and articulating, Maurice is presented as more reflective. Maurice appears to choose not to communicate, internalizing his thoughts and emotions for fear of the damages that might be caused by being honest and emotionally open. Maurice, then, segues from Leigh’s earlier characters. The conflict between articulation and retention is continually being played out through this character and his interactions with his family members. It is no coincidence that during the denouement it is Maurice who demands honesty and openness from his family. While Peter, and to a lesser extent Keith and Laurence, are unwilling to even confront their emotional inarticulacy, Maurice comes to understand that the only way in which his family can ever begin the process of healing and coming together is by confronting the uncomfortable truths that have hitherto been silenced. We see Spall reprise this theme in All or Nothing where once more his character has to confront and break the habits of inertia and emotional reticence in order to re-connect with his wife and children. In many ways, Maurice yearns to belong, but like the lives led by Peter, Keith and Laurence, there is a chasm between appearances and reality. All of these men appear to have succeeded professionally, to a greater or lesser extent. Their alienation is personal rather than economic, and for Maurice in particular the urge to create a place where he belongs is the key to his redemption. The themes of alienation and being an outsider become rather differently inflected for those characters that are working class. The claims to alienation for characters such as Colin and Mark in Meantime appear to be inextricable from their economic disempowerment. Consciously positioned as victims of the economic policies of the Thatcher government, Leigh uses this film very deliberately as a piece of social criticism as he explores the impact of emergent neo-liberal economics on young working-class men. Colin and Mark are, in many ways, predecessors of the lads that we see in All or Nothing, lacking purpose and direction and resigned to a life of enforced idleness. For these characters, emotional inarticulacy becomes linked, pointedly at times, to Leigh’s political critique: it is about both a lack of education and also a survival technique for young men who are caught within a seemingly inescapable cycle of poverty and disempowerment which appears to entrap them within a state of perpetual adolescence. In both Meantime and All or Nothing Leigh refracts the question of alienation through the prism of class-based politics whereby the young men are only able to belong to communities that are joined through their shared sense of cultural and economic alienation. Indeed this trope of white working

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class unemployed youth becomes increasingly prominent in British cinema throughout the 1990s with films including TwentyFourSeven, This Is England, My Name Is Joe (Ken Loach, 1997), Riff Raff (Ken Loach, 1991), and Nil By Mouth (Gary Oldman, 1997) among others. Garry Watson sees an obvious connection between Meantime and High Hopes, and certainly these two films are among Leigh’s most explicitly political. Both are obvious responses to the Conservative Thatcher government that held power from the late 1970s through to the early 1990s (2004, 92). High Hopes is, at times, avowedly critical of Thatcherism, and the three central male characters are crucial in creating the political landscape of the film. Cyril represents a version of Leigh’s socialist agenda, coming to represent what John Hill terms an ‘ordinary sense of goodness’ (1999, 196). Cyril’s antithesis is Martin (Phillip Jackson), a selfish, violent, womanizing entrepreneur who routinely humiliates his wife and is physically violent to his mistress. The triad is completed by the yuppie, Rupert Boothe-Braine (David Bamber) who is predictably dislikeable in his heartless dismissal of Mrs Bender (Edna Doré). While High Hopes might share a similar political agenda to Meantime, Cyril is very different from Colin and Mark. The brothers in Meantime are depicted as victims of a political and economic system which insistently disparages them. Cyril, on the other hand, is something of a self-identified outsider, a fact that inevitably accords him a greater degree of social and economic agency than Colin and Mark could hope for. In many ways, Cyril constitutes the gentlest end of Leigh’s angry outsider men; he rails against a society that he believes to be morally wrong. Both Cyril and Martin represent a definite break away from the emotionally inarticulate men that I have looked at thus far. Martin is keen to advise Cyril on business, and Cyril is given to lengthy expositions on his own political opinions although by the end of the film he comes to recognize that ‘moaning’ in and of itself does not constitute action. Throughout the film Cyril is presented as an outsider. He does not belong in the corporate city where he works as a courier, nor does he want to belong to the aspirational middle-class new build dweller community represented by his sister, Valerie (Heather Tobias) and Martin. Indeed, in one of the only scenes where he does seem to belong, playing pool with Shirley in a pub, Cyril pokes fun at Rupert’s assertions regarding social mobility and the importance of ‘knowing one’s own place’. At the other end of the spectrum of angry outsiders are the violent and misogynistic men. While Naked has been extensively critiqued by journalists including Julie Burchill (1993) and Helen Birch (1993) and academics such as Claire Monk (2000, 163) for ‘directorial misogyny’, it is not the first of Leigh’s

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films to either show or suggest sexual or domestic violence. Indeed, Leigh’s very first BBC Play for Today, Hard Labour, has a central male character, Jim Thornley, (Clifford Kernshaw) who is an overbearing, violent patriarch who domineers his long-suffering wife. The suggested sexual violence that caused such opprobrium in Naked was foreshadowed by an equally disturbing rape scene in Hard Labour, 20 years previously. Jim has stormed out of the house, admonishing his wife for a range of perceived misdemeanours. He holds court in his local pub, telling his friend that his domestic rule is unquestioned and that his wife ‘knows her duty’ and will be ‘keeping the bed warm’ for him. The distasteful implications of his speech are soon brought to fruition. The scene cuts to show Mrs Thornley in bed, reciting her prayers, rosary beads clutched firmly in her hand. She settles down in her bed and the camera remains positioned on her still body as Jim walks into the room, gets undressed and clambers noisily into bed. The camera remains static as he forces himself on her, the only hint at what is happening coming from the rough movement of the blankets and his impatient urges to ‘bloody c’mon then woman’. Jim Thornley represents the earliest incarnation of a line that is very much in evidence throughout Leigh’s work, the violent misogynist who abuses women physically, verbally and emotionally. Martin in High Hopes is consistently vicious in his treatment of both Valerie and his un-named mistress. There is an exchange between Angela and Beverly in Abigail’s Party where the discussion turns to the nature of domestic violence in which Angela recounts how her husband told her that ‘he’d like to sellotape my mouth’. This is not to suggest that Leigh is in some way guilty of misogyny. The issue is more complex than a straightforward binary accords, and in many cases it would seem to me that Leigh is critiquing, rather than endorsing, violence. Naked sparked such opprobrium for the fact that Johnny (David Thewlis) was never brought to account for the rape committed at the outset, but the criticism of the gender politics of the film do not take into account the complexity and contradiction that is wrought throughout. I would contend that not only is the opening scene far from pleasurable (and so to provide it as evidence of directorial misogyny becomes rather misleading) but also that Johnny’s character is wilfully contradictory. Both Leigh and Thewlis have, at length, discussed their intentions in creating a character that deliberately confounded a straightforward or stable identification. While this ambiguity is problematic to an extent because it would appear to facilitate Johnny’s immunity to punishment, it would seem that Johnny is more all round misanthrope than a straightforward misogynist. He humiliates male and female alike, berating Brian (Peter Wight) in as derogatory tone as he

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does the various female characters that he comes into contact with. What appears to be more troublesome to me is that Johnny’s behaviour is somehow rendered less problematic than the violently misogynistic Jeremy (Greg Crutwell). In juxtaposing these two characters the film could be read as suggesting that there are ‘degrees of rape’, and in this instance the rape committed by Johnny is inevitably seen as less violent and less cruel than that committed by Jeremy.7 Although many of Leigh’s male characters could be described as being in some way flawed individuals, the lack of resolution and the insistence on ambiguity that marks Naked out from Leigh’s other films is possibly why this film in particular has come under such scrutiny for its representations of masculinity and gendered relations. The construction of unpredictable and complex masculinity is also seen in Happy-Go-Lucky in the character of Scott (Eddie Marsan), the neurotic driving instructor who becomes infatuated with Poppy (Sally Hawkins). Like Peter in Bleak Moments, Scott is unable to articulate his desire. He is alienated and entirely dislocated from any kind of social interaction. Whereas Peter, Maurice and many of Leigh’s other men retreat into the sanctity of isolation, Scott’s alienation is rather more volatile. Scott is an angry, isolated man, another example of one of Leigh’s compelling outsider characters. During Poppy’s driving lessons he embarks on a series of diatribes which reveal a form of alienation fuelled by racist and misogynistic ideas. During the sequences where Poppy is learning to drive, Scott’s anger is continually bubbling beneath the surface. He vacillates from enforced tranquillity (gained in part by continually reciting his en-ra-ha mantra) to explosive bursts of anger which are magnified by the claustrophobic interior of the car and Leigh’s use of tightly framed shots. Scott’s emotional impotence is at the heart of his alienation, and Poppy’s very presence becomes a continual reminder of his inability to connect with other people. Scott’s anger belies his apparent fascination with the sunny school teacher, and when Poppy returns from a family visit to see him watching her flat, she is far from unsettled. In fact she calls out to him, anxious to extend an olive branch of friendship to this isolated and dislocated individual. From this point on, however, Scott’s anger begins to unravel, and he becomes increasingly volatile, launching into a viciously misogynistic tirade that reveals the extent of his psychosocial/psychosexual dysfunction as he berates Poppy for leading him on. In many ways the characters of Scott and Johnny are connected with both men expressing their wider social alienation in explicitly misogynistic terms (Figure 7.1).

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Figure 7.1  In contrast to Poppy, Scott (Eddie Marsan) shows a lack of sociability, a trait consistent with his dark clothing and tense body language in Happy-Go-Lucky (2008)

It would seem then, that the spectre of male anger and alienation is one which has often loomed in the background of Leigh’s films and extends far beyond the films that I have covered thus far. In Career Girls the various men who Hannah (Katrin Cartlidge) and Annie (Lynda Steadman) come into contact with are all ominously close to losing control of their tempers. Aubrey (Timothy Spall) in Life is Sweet is another of Leigh’s male characters who is continually skirting the boundary between benign alienation and violent rage, but it is one of Leigh’s more recent films which brings these three threads of differently manifest alienation and outsider status together: All or Nothing.

Masculinity in All or Nothing Released in 2002, All or Nothing is one of Leigh’s best known and most critically successful films. It was nominated for the Palme D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and won the London Film Critics Circle Award. Writing about the film in his book The Cinema of Mike Leigh: A Sense of the Real, Garry Watson proclaims the film as being ‘of comparable stature to Naked, Secrets & Lies and Topsy Turvy’ (2004, 164) before going on to admit that it is also among the most difficult of his films if for nothing else than the unrelenting focus on ‘human misery’. This misery is further emphasized by a muted colour scheme dominated by greys and browns and expanses of concrete tower blocks and walkways – recognizable yet emotive signifiers of the deprivation which entraps much of inner city Britain.

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The film brings together a number of actors who have worked with Leigh before, including Timothy Spall, Lesley Manville and Ruth Sheen in central roles. The film is set against the bleak backdrop of a run-down high-rise council estate over a long weekend and focuses on a number of people who inhabit them. Central to the story are Phil Basset (Timothy Spall), his common-law wife, Penny (Lesley Manville) and their two children, Rachel (Alison Garland) and Rory (James Corden) but, as is typical of Leigh’s directorial style, there are a range of other characters who are not central but who provide a variety of perspectives and subject positions. These characters include Maureen (Ruth Sheen) and her daughter, Donna (Helen Cocker); Donna’s violent boyfriend, Jason (Daniel Mays); alcoholic Carol (Marion Bailey); her daughter, Samantha (Sally Hawkins); and Craig (Ben Crompton), a local lad who is infatuated with Samantha. This film brings some of the central themes regarding masculinity in Leigh’s work together through some of the key male characters. All of these men are, on some level, outsiders, alienated from the discourses of affluence, aspiration and consumption that have come to dominate the hegemonic ideologies of masculinity in late capitalist culture. Only Neville (Gary McDonald), the owner of the taxi firm that Phil and Ron (Paul Jesson) work for could be described as coming close to the entrepreneurial status emphasized in hegemonies of neo-liberal discourses of masculinity. All or Nothing was, despite critical acclaim, often described as ‘punishing’ (Gilbey 2002) for the unflinching focus on the melancholic and sometimes outright miserable lives of the key characters. In many ways this thematic concern with the daily drudgery of impoverished communities can be seen as part of Leigh’s wider political agenda and is manifest in work such as Hard Labour, High Hopes and Meantime. While Penny is described as taking ‘nagging to the point of unlikeability’ (Trostle-Jones 2004, 166), Phil is a more sympathetic character whose apparent inertia belies his emotional turmoil and melancholic anxiety about the breakdown of his family. Timothy Spall’s performance as Phil holds the film together. As previously noted, the film, Spall’s performance of Phil, and Leigh’s deployment of this character appear to build on some of the central themes of masculinity which were established in Secrets & Lies. The central narrative of the film is driven by Phil’s gradual awareness that the inaction he has used as a mechanism of self-protection is in fact a fundamental cause of the dislocation and dysfunction that is threatening to destroy his family. Our first glimpses of Phil are shot in mid-close-up as he ferries passengers in his cab. The framing of these shots draw

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attention to his unkempt appearance, his unshaven face and lank hair. Further, his expression is one of bewildered curiosity. He watches the people in the back of his cab without ever truly engaging with them. When he tries to instigate a conversation with the second passenger, credited as ‘Nutter’ (Russell Mabey) the violent outburst is juxtaposed in stark contrast to Phil’s calm, ponderous repose. The opening section of the film repeatedly emphasizes this aspect of Phil’s character: when he and Ron are in the pub and Ron is bemoaning the (fictitious) woman who drove into his cab, Phil’s considered response about the ‘fickle finger of fate’ is the first indication that there is more to this character than initial appearances suggest. His observations about the nature of life and death point to a more thoughtful and introspective character underneath the vacant, amiable persona. However, when the topic of conversation turns to his wife’s feelings it soon becomes apparent that he has no real sense of what his wife might think or feel. The disengagement that is hinted at in this scene is reinforced in the following one when Phil returns home. The family parallels are quickly drawn: Phil and Rachel share a resigned, sad but unassuming demeanour while Rory and Penny are much sharper with their tongue and temper. Phil greets Rory, who is lying prone on the shabby, old settee, watching television. The gentleness of his ‘’ello, son’ is quickly rebuked by the aggressive youngster. Penny comes into the living room to intervene and to inform Phil of Rory’s scuffle earlier in the day. Her efforts spark a furious diatribe from Rory who alternately whines and yells at his mother, before telling her to ‘just fuck off!’ In a key moment which sets the tone for the familial drama which is about to unfold, Penny and Phil are framed in a close two shot. Penny turns to Phil for support, but instead of being able to rise to the demands of fathering a young, aggressive and disenfranchised son, Phil simply stares at the youngster before turning away leaving Penny to stare after him. Phil’s actions are deliberately slow paced which emphasizes his lackadaisical character. Having hung his coat in the hallway he stands, head bowed, bewildered and unsure, entirely unable to act or respond to the familial conflicts. Phil’s incapacity to act is, at this stage in the film, key to the breakdown in the familial relationships. In the scene that follows, the family are sitting at the dinner table in near silence, isolated but bound together in their misery. Phil’s attempts to make conversation are met with begrudging acknowledgement at best. The parallels between father and daughter are once more emphasized in this scene. Rachel finds the words that her father struggles for and smiles gently as she engages with him. Throughout this part of the dinner scene, Phil is shot

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in mid-close-up which emphasizes his searching looks as his eyes dart to his daughter, his wife and then look away in awkward discomfort. Both Phil and Penny are characterized by their inability to make eye contact. Man and wife are rendered literally down-cast, their heads bowed, emphasizing their dejection and alienation from one another.8 Rachel, Phil and Penny are sitting around the table but Rory sits, plate on his knee, facing the television rather than his family. Penny, who is in between Rachel and Phil, bristles as she looks between father and son, her disappointment and unspoken anger made obvious to the viewer (if not her family) by the use of close-up shots and tight framing. Rory speaks only to swear at and rebuke his long-suffering mother. Rachel looks on, silent, her thoughts, emotions and hopes unable to find a voice. Her resignation to a life of familial resentment and low-paid, laborious work appears to have quashed any optimism that she once might have had. Phil’s failure to tackle his son’s impropriety is continually admonished by his wife who appears to misread his resignation for apathy. Penny glares at him with the kind of barely concealed hostility which is born out of a long history of disappointment and thwarted hopes. Phil appears, on the surface at least, to have much in common with Leigh’s emotionally impotent male characters. The use of extended close-up shots emphasizes Phil’s discomfort with emotional engagement and draws attention to the turmoil that is going on beneath the apparently calm and detached exterior. What Penny fails to see, until the end of the film, is that Phil is not as disengaged as he appears to be. I would suggest instead that the character has lost the ability to connect with those around him. Much like Peter in Bleak Moments, Phil is hamstrung by emotional and psychological anxiety which renders him literally unable to respond to the emotional needs of others or, indeed, articulate his own thoughts, emotions and feelings. The difference between the two characters is, however, crucial. Where Peter’s retreat from the threat of human connection appears to function as a means by which he is able to return to the safety of isolation, for Phil the emotional detachment from the people he loves is at the heart of his emotional hurt. In many ways the familiarity of seclusion which Peter chooses is not really an option for Phil. Phil must, by necessity, confront his reluctance to engage and communicate in order to restore and repair the damaged and antagonistic familial relationships. Where Phil is characterized by an apologetic melancholia, Rory’s sense of failure and disappointment are manifested rather differently. In many ways

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this character is typical of many working class, unemployed young men found throughout British cinema since the early 1980s: Rory is a direct descendant of Colin and Mark. Like them he is trapped in a never-ending stasis with no hope of change or improvement in economic or social status. Rory’s frustration, somewhat inevitably, is directed towards his family, and he resorts to picking on smaller and younger boys in a vain attempt to garner some kind of social status. Rory is, possibly even more than Phil, trapped, but where his father internalizes his emotional hurt and stifles his anxiety, Rory is, quite literally, a time bomb waiting to explode. When the inevitable happens and Rory collapses with a suspected heart attack it is the trigger for familial reconciliation and Phil’s redemption. In a narrative turn that appears to echo the importance of fathering to men within a cultural context shaped by ideologies of post-feminism, Phil comes to understand the importance of his family.9 Moreover, it could be argued that it is this that facilitates his hitherto stifled emotion and enables Phil to re-connect with both his wife and children and reclaim his position as the benevolent paterfamilias. Before Phil can reclaim his position however, he has to undergo the requisite period of reflection and transformation. Like Peter and Maurice, Phil retreats into seclusion in order to escape the pressures and conflicts of his daily life. Phil immerses himself in physical seclusion, turning off his radio and cell phone before driving through the countryside to the coast, not knowing that Rory has fallen ill. The contemplative silence of these moments is in striking contrast to the awkward silence of the dinner table scenes. Phil’s sojourn is prefaced by his comment about dying alone, and Leigh allows the ambiguity of Phil’s intent to linger while he stands at the edge of the sea, looking out into the distance, his trademark sadness once more emphasized by the lengthy close-up shots. The question of Phil’s fate lingers, unanswered during the next scene at the hospital before contact is finally re-established. Like Maurice, Phil comes to realize what must be done and that open communication and emotional honesty is the only way of repairing his family and regaining the symbolic power of his patriarchal position. However, Phil’s renewed openness is unfathomable to his wife who continues to berate him from their son’s hospital bedside. Phil’s suggestion of a holiday is met with incredulity by Penny who dismisses her husband’s idle fantasy. When the three family members return home, years of pent up anger and disappointment are unleashed before the couple are able to recognize and admit their individual responsibility for the breakdown in their relationship.

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The reconciliatory scene is among the most compelling of the film, a scene which Trostle-Jones describes as being striking for the ways in which the characters come ‘stupendously alive’ (2004, 174). Phil in particular is very much a changed man during the final sequence, refusing to respond to his wife’s criticism but also dispensing with his stoic, apologetic demeanour as he demands an answer to the most central of questions: ‘You don’t love me no more, do you?’ While it is Penny’s answer that seems to be the key around which the resolution of the film hinges, it is Phil’s transformation that is most striking. The emotional impotence that appears central to this character is broken, and Phil becomes free to speak of his feelings and inner anguish. The familial reconciliation is only made possible by Phil’s renewed emotional articulacy, and it is this, in turn, which enables Phil to find the confidence to re-claim the symbolic authority of the benevolent patriarch. Although the film might offer a tentative optimism for the future of this particular family and for this particular man, the outcomes for one of the other central male characters of the film is far less certain. Michael Coveney’s observation that Naked is marked out by ‘eruption[s] of sadistic sexual violence’ (1997, 118), could easily apply to the most volatile male character in All or Nothing and the one to whom I turn my attention now. Jason clearly considers himself to be better than the other boys living in the high rises. He dresses in the casual labels associated with inner city football culture (Hackett T-shirt, Lacoste jacket with collar turned up, white Adidas trainers and gold hoop earring) as he swaggers around the estate with an overbearing confidence. Before we even see Jason we expect a violent, macho man – Maureen refers to him as ‘scarface’ for the long scar that runs from his right eye down his cheek, doubtlessly sustained in a fight. From the moment we first see Jason it is obvious that there is a volatility about the character, his bravado a fragile mask behind which lies an explosive and violent anger. Jason is, in many ways, the antithesis to Phil’s benign inertia, always ready to launch himself at anyone who ‘mugs him off ’. When Jason first arrives to pick Donna up for their date, Samantha is waiting on the walkway for him. They chat briefly, but when Donna opens the door, she has barely said hello to him before he barks at her to ‘c’mon then’ and turns, marching off down the walkway without so much as a proper greeting. The next shot of the couple shows Jason berating Donna before turning his angry attention to Craig who has been watching the argument from the pathway. Jason flies towards the youngster, gesticulating and yelling ‘Don’t look at me. . . . I’ll fucking slice you, you cunt! Fucking Cunt! Wanker!’ Jason is among the most violent of male characters in Leigh’s oeuvre, but while he might provide evidence of the explosive and sadistic nature of sexual violence in

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Leigh’s films there is little ambiguity regarding how his behaviour is intended to be understood. The scenes between Donna and Jason are among the most powerful in the film, and the threat of his violence is ever present. The scene during which Donna reveals her pregnancy begins with Jason’s legs in shot, framed by the edge of the doorway. Donna sits on the bed, knickers showing under her mini skirt. From the very beginning of this scene Jason’s behaviour is abhorrent: he slaps and hits Donna before pushing her to the bed. When she calls a halt to intercourse he becomes increasingly violent and orders her to ‘lay the fuck down!’ From the moment he discovers that Donna is pregnant Jason becomes significantly more hostile. He towers over her as she cowers naked under the duvet, screams at her, accuses her of getting pregnant on purpose and orders her to have an abortion. Where Naked was critiqued for the ambiguity surrounding Johnny’s character, no such claims can be made of All or Nothing. Jason’s violence is clearly signalled as unacceptable. His verbal abuse of Donna is arguably more extreme than Johnny because it is so very personal. Johnny’s acerbic tone is applied to men, women, acquaintances and friends alike, and while it is objectionable one can understand it as being part of a much more generalized misanthropy. Jason is, I would argue, far more perniciously and viciously misogynistic than Johnny, but at the same time this clarity enables Leigh to negotiate the traumatic terrain of sexual violence with cinematic alacrity. In many ways this film, which has been lauded as one of Leigh’s most accomplished works, brings many of the overarching thematic concerns regarding masculinity together. The various men, including those who I have not dealt with here (Ron and Craig in particular) are unequivocally outsiders. They remain alienated and disconnected both from wider social discourses of masculinity and from their immediate family and friends. The ways in which these two men in particular stumble through the narrative of the film without any real sense of purpose or direction appears indicative of the wider thematic concern of the male as outsider which seems so central to the wider construction of masculinity within Leigh’s work.

Notes 1 Kate Kellaway’s article in The Observer, for example, focuses on Mike Leigh’s female characters and the actors who play them, praising the director for his provision of ‘formidable’ female roles. Indeed, Leigh himself has explicitly acknowledged that

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one of his primary objectives as a film-maker is to create films and television dramas with ‘parts that are not just male fantasy’ but offer something more intricate and nuanced. In so doing Leigh has produced a range of thoughtful alternatives to often found paradigms of femininity in British film culture. As David Coveney notes in The World According to Mike Leigh, the range of actors who have worked with Leigh ‘comprises an impressive, almost representative, nucleus of outstanding British acting talent’ (1996, 9). While Leigh’s ongoing collaborations with a range of female actors are invariably lauded it is interesting to note the number of recurrent collaborations with male actors too. Philip Davies is the male actor who Leigh has collaborated with most. He appears in seven of Leigh’s films and television dramas, just one less than Lesley Manville and the same number as Alison Steadman. Other notable collaborators include Timothy Spall (5), Sam Kelly (5) and Jim Broadbent (4). In addition, a range of British talent have appeared in two or three of Leigh films including David Thewlis, Stephen Rea, Eric Allen, Eddie Marsan and Daniel Mays among a number of others. See, for example, Carol Watts (1996), ‘Mike Leigh’s Naked and the Gestic Economy of Cinema’, Claire Monk (2000), ‘Men in the 90s’. Naked is the only Mike Leigh film to be referenced in Andrew Spicer’s historiography of masculinity in British cinema. See Tim Edwards book Cultures of Masculinity (Routledge, 2005) for example. See www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/548293/ for full review. See Julie Burchill ‘Crass Struggle’, The Sunday Times, 7 November (1993), and Dennis Potter’s review of Abigail’s Party, The Sunday Times, 6 November (1977) for two examples of some of the critical debates surrounding the deployment of class within Leigh’s films and the ways in which Leigh’s own class position functions to frame the ways in which his portrayal of British working- and middle-class characters is understood. This is made more apparent because Johnny is the central character and he rapes an anonymous woman. We see Jeremy behave appallingly towards a number of women but crucially he rapes Sophie (Katrin Cartlidge), a character who we have also built up familiarity with. See Sean O’Sullivan (2011, 16–20), Mike Leigh, for detailed deconstruction of Leigh’s use of what he terms ‘side by side’ shots. Hannah Hamad has written extensively on the centrality of fatherhood to contemporary cultural tropes of masculinity. See, for example, ‘Extreme Parenting: Recuperating Fatherhood in Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds’, in Feminism at the Movies: Understanding Gender in Contemporary Popular Cinema, ed. Hilary Radner and Rebecca Stringer. London and New York: Routledge, 2011.

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Works cited Bank, Mirra. ‘Mike Leigh’, Films in Review 48:1/2 (1997): 29–34. Birch, Helen. ‘Dear Mike Leigh’, The Independent, 19 November (1993). Burchill, Julie. ‘Crass Struggle: Cinema’, The Times, 7 November (1993). Carney, Ray and Leonard Quart. The Films of Mike Leigh: Embracing the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Coveney, Michael. ‘In A Class of His Own’, The Observer Magazine, 4 July (1993). Gilbey, Ryan. Accessed 7 July 2012, www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/feature/83. Herbert, Hugh. ‘The Private Hopes of a Prophet of Gloom’, The Weekend Guardian, 17 February (1988). Hill, John. British Cinema in the 1980s. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Kellaway, Kate. ‘Mike Leigh’s Women’, The Observer, 31 October (2010). Leigh, Mike. Naked and Other Screenplays. London: Faber, 1995. —. Secrets & Lies. London: Faber. 1997. —. Interview with Associate Free Press, accessed 31 October 2011, http://afp.google. com/article/ALeqM5i-F374zDjf2_iQSXaX37rtB49yDQ, 21 August (2008). Monk, Claire. ‘Men in the 90s’, in British Cinema of the 90s, ed. Robert Murphy. London: BFI Publishing, 2000, 156–66. O’Sullivan, Sean. Mike Leigh. Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2011. Rea, Darren. Nuts in May, BFI Screenonline, accessed 10 April 2011, www.screenonline. org.uk/tv/id/548293/. Spicer, Andrew. Typical Men: Representations of Masculinity in Popular British Cinema. London: I.B. Tauris, 2003. Trostle-Jones, Edward. All or Nothing: The Cinema of Mike Leigh. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2004. Walsh, David. Accessed 31 August 2011, www.wsws.org/articles/2008/dec2008/leig-d05. shtml. Watson, Garry. The Cinema of Mike Leigh: A Sense of The Real. London: Wallflower Press, 2004. Watts, Carol. ‘Mike Leigh’s Naked and the Gestic Economy of Cinema’, Women: A Cultural Review 7:3 (1996): 271–8.

Films cited Abigail’s Party (Mike Leigh 1977) All or Nothing (Mike Leigh 2002) Another Year (Mike Leigh 2010)

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Bleak Moments (Mike Leigh 1971) Career Girls (Mike Leigh 1997) Hard Labour (Mike Leigh 1973) Happy-Go-Lucky (Mike Leigh 2008) High Hopes (Mike Leigh 1988) Kiss of Death (Mike Leigh 1977) Life Is Sweet (Mike Leigh 1990) Mean Time (Mike Leigh 1983) My Name Is Joe (Ken Loach 1998) Naked (Mike Leigh 1993) Nuts in May (Mike Leigh 1976) Riff-Raff (Ken Loach 1991) Secrets & Lies (Mike Leigh 1996) This Is England (Shane Meadows 2008) Topsy Turvy (Mike Leigh 1999) TwentyFourSeven (Shane Meadows 1997) Who’s Who (Mike Leigh 1978)

8

Transgression and Transcendence William Verrone

Mike Leigh’s films and the characters who populate them have often been described as bleak, dreary, and even miserable, which may be true to a certain extent. But the films, as demonstrated through the rich and realistic characterization, also provide us with moments of transcendence, namely, instances where revelation occurs: the capacity to seek something beyond the limitations created through social, moral or ideological boundaries in order to find happiness or self-meaning. Additionally, many of the characters transgress with the intention of discovering transcendence. In other words, the characters in many of Leigh’s films do bad things and say bad things, but they do so in order to gain transcendence: worth, respect, knowledge, or essentially, value for themselves. Transcendence means something that reaches beyond any possible knowledge of human understanding. But it can also suggest the very real, very tangible transposition of the self from a state of misery or bleakness or unhappiness to one that is revelatory – one that either allows for a newness instigated from individual transgression, or, more appropriately, from actions and words that create a stronger self-individuality. Similarly, transgression can be a philosophical, sociological, and spiritual concept, suggesting boundary crossing, wrongdoing, sin, or, more figuratively, as is the case in Leigh’s films, self-searching. Individuals who transgress are ones who are compelled to act or behave ‘wrongly’ particular to situations, circumstances, or through interpersonal relationships, the key ingredient in Leigh’s films. I want to address this notion of how characters simultaneously transgress and transcend by exploring their behaviour in three Leigh films: Naked (1993), All or Nothing (2002) and Happy-Go-Lucky (2008).

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Transgression and transcendence – Themes The boundaries that have been constructed by social institutions create both the subjective and social instances of transgression and transcendence since they serve as hindrances to individual behaviours often deemed transgressive. Interpersonal interaction, the most dominant of ‘plot-driven’ devices in Leigh’s films, allows us to see the moral and ethical constraints that compel people to transgress. I should make clear too that when I speak of transgression, I mean any type of behaviour or action that may be considered wrong by others. However, I do not mean the kinds of transgressions deemed sinful (murder, for instance). What I am more interested in is the everyday things people do that are considered ‘wrong’ because they are compelled to, and that these wrongs are committed because they seek something else – transgression as boundary crossing. Some people who transgress do so because they seek transcendence, or, put more mildly, they desire something else from normalcy, from their very immediate, ordinary lives. For example, when Johnny constantly harangues others in Naked, he does so because he seeks not just personal transcendence, but to create the impulse in others to do so as well – to transgress, like he does, in order to transcend. The dual and contentious concepts of transgression and transcendence provide a thematic and formal link in many of Leigh’s films that trace incendiary behaviour. Still, beyond ‘bad’ behaviour, there are also many instances in his films that depict seemingly reasonable, rational, common people, who just so happen to act differently, or perform behaviours that are considered antithetical to supposed normal behaviours, and are thus chastised for being and doing ‘wrong’. According to Chris Jenks, in his book Transgression, transgression connotes the idea of ‘excess as abundance’, ‘excessive behaviour’ or ‘deviant conduct’, and various forms of transgression are decidedly ‘situation-specific’.1 The characters in Naked, All or Nothing and Happy-Go-Lucky all are somehow trapped by their circumstances and so decide to follow their instincts in order to escape, which means crossing sociological or cultural boundaries. (Poppy, in Happy-Go-Lucky, is probably the least ‘trapped’, but her winsome personality is, arguably, enough to keep her from experiencing life from a more ‘realistic’ perspective – warts and all – hence she needs to seek transcendence too.) The need to transgress stems, perhaps, from their need to question ‘the relationship between the core of social life and the periphery, the centre and the margins, identity and difference, the normal and the deviant, and the possible rules that could conceivably bind us

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into a collectivity’.2 But ‘rules’ are created to instill normalcy, and normalcy often begets transgression, a paradoxical and cyclical pattern that inevitably suggests that when people commit transgressive acts, and especially those in these three films, they do so because they are enacting ‘normal’ behaviour. Transgressions are also highly subjective and often metaphorical events. The explosive confrontation between Poppy and Scott towards the end of Happy-Go-Lucky shows how crossing boundaries through transgression can be both symbolic (as ‘happiness’ confronts ‘instability’ and ‘despondency’) and metaphoric (their argument is emblematic of the collected frustrations of many, and displays each individual’s subjective point of view). Transgressions are indeed ‘part of the social process, [but they] are also part of the individual psyche’.3 This idea is clearly drawn out in all of Leigh’s films. From Beverly in Abigail’s Party (1977) to Nicola in Life is Sweet (1990) to Johnny in Naked to Hannah in Career Girls (1997) or even Vera in Vera Drake (2004), they all respond very specifically to their personal situations, their immediate environments and their inability to find complacency without transgressing. It is possible to recognize transgressive acts as acts of communication that stem from an inner process that becomes outwardly manifested through acts that we witness. In other words, the meaning of an act does not always reside solely within the intentionality of the actor; indeed, in most instances it resides within the context of the act’s reception, which, in Leigh’s films, is sometimes palpably demonstrated or left ambiguous. Their working-class roots often beget mini-tragedies, but Leigh never stoops to pathos; what we see is very real to the world of the characters and thus very real for us. This is also why delineating the fine line between normal behaviour and transgression is small and tenuous: the characters believe they are right (hence their acts are ‘normal’), but what they really seek is something beyond the structure of their lives, which compels transgression and in turn, transcendence. The characters who inhabit Leigh’s films are very often in search of something – whether a new level of consciousness or a physical and psychic transposition or transfiguration. These changes can be major or minor; they can, that is, be very subjective, of greater individual significance than what we may want personally for ourselves. The key is recognizing it in others, which, I suggest, is very recognizable in Leigh’s films. More precise, the characters in Leigh’s films undertake transgressive transformations; they seek to discover themselves through personal quests or by violating boundaries or moral codes.

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It is a highly personal endeavour that requires egoism, epitomized clearly with Johnny in Naked. We can also see this egoism in Phil’s decision in All or Nothing to abandon his duties as a taxi driver and flee to the seaside for reflection on his life. While there, Phil’s son Rory has a heart attack, but no one can find Phil. His transgressive act has given him a moment of transcendence, even at the expense of others. What matters is that they (and other Leigh characters) take risks in order to discover who they are – that is, by seeking transcendence – through small or large transgressions, and if anyone does not comprehend such behaviour, then that other person may suffer, which is why in Leigh’s films there are many verbal confrontations that reveal true, deep feelings that damage other people. One of the most prominent thinkers on transgression is Georges Bataille, who articulated a theoretical and practical way of understanding the reasons people transgress. He specifically argues how taboos become interrelated with ordinary phenomena like transgressions because they give us a glimpse of our ‘continuous nature’. Bataille thinks that we need to closely examine taboos  – those things forbidden, banned or inviolable  – because they tell us about human nature, specifically, why people transgress and the resulting rewards or consequences of any transgression. To understand people is to examine their transgressions. According to Bataille, transgressions stem from taboos because transgressions provide a temporary approximation to continuity by halting homogeneity.4 Johnny, in Naked, loathes homogeneity. Conversely, Phil and Penny, in All or Nothing, seek continuity. Both films show the complexity and levels of transgressive behaviour that lead to transcendence, that moment of freedom that is rewarding versus the freedom associated with indulging in taboos. What we then should ask is what taboos in Leigh’s films instigate transgressive behaviour? For Bataille, people go through life obeying taboos  – those laws, regulations, rules or conventions that dictate how we must behave  – while constantly yearning to transgress – to violate or break – the very same laws or rules. We see this in many characters in Leigh’s films. In Naked, both the café waitress who temporarily gives Johnny a comfortable home and Brian, the night watchman who protects ‘nothing’ and spies on a woman, obey rules but secretly yearn for something else. Nicola from Life is Sweet (1990) secretly overeats and then vomits, breaking taboos and adhering to them simultaneously or concurrently. Rory from All or Nothing constantly belittles his mother through his idleness and cursing. Transgressive experience, as Bataille would have it, involves the pleasure of passing from an ordered, reasoned realm – the world of regulation – to an

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unordered, irrational and destabilized realm. Again, I would suggest the reason people do this  – and the reason why we can see Leigh’s characters doing it  – is to find transcendence, whether grand in nature or simply a momentary respite. Hence, Bataille believes that ‘transgression does not deny the taboo but transcends it and completes it’.5 The transgressive act can take one to a place where rules or manners are not governed; hence the disagreeable behaviour and words from many of Leigh’s characters lead to transcendence (Figure 8.1). Another theorist on transgression, Michel Foucault, whose ‘A Preface to Transgression’ (1977) was written in part as a response to and admiration of Bataille, examines how transgression and what he calls the ‘limit’ has replaced the older dichotomy of the sacred and the profane, highlighting how transgression instigates a ‘will-to-power’. In other words, transgression brings one closer to self-transcendence by ‘marking the limit within us’ while simultaneously revealing us as the source of the ‘limit’.6 The limit serves a symbiotic relationship with transgression: ‘Transgression is an action which involves the limit, that narrow zone of a line where it displays the flash of its passage, but perhaps also its entire trajectory, even its origin; it is likely that transgression has its entire space in the line it crosses.’7 Many of Leigh’s protagonists pursue the limit; the moment becomes the thing for them. Johnny, for instance, is always pushing himself and

Figure 8.1  Sisters Nicola (Jane Horrocks) and Natalie (Claire Skinner) sit on the steps in Life is Sweet (1990)

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especially others to cross the ‘limit’ in order to find transcendence. Ironically, Poppy, in Happy-Go-Lucky, crosses the ‘limit’ with her optimism, a different form of transgression, but one that does allow for transcendence as well. Foucault’s notion of boundary crossing is equivalent to the continual movement between the appropriate and the inappropriate  – or taboo and transgression, to use Bataille’s terms. The violence or violent verbal or emotional eruptions anticipated and created in transgression (and in Leigh’s films) is often necessary, for it is directed towards some thing or someone and also because it leads to transcendence. Transgression leads to active behaviour which in turn leads to an active result (or pursuit) of transcendence. Further, to correlate transgression with transcendence a bit more, Immanuel Kant’s philosophy suggests that the individual imposes reality upon the world, which is a way of thinking about how individual subjectivity needs release from societal taboos, something that Johnny, arguably, firmly believes in or at least exhibits throughout Naked. In the Critique of Judgment (1790), Kant suggests that the transcendent is something real but intangible.8 In other words, Kant’s idealism suggests that inner freedom comes from transcendentalism, a complicated theoretical idea predicated on the belief that there is something beyond ourselves that is unknown yet very real, which in turn possibly correlates to the creative transgression Leigh’s characters undertake because they do indeed seek something beyond their immediate selves. In other words, the characters transgress perhaps knowingly because there is a sense of something else that is more forthcoming in terms of position, knowledge, happiness or community. To achieve this, they must do what appears inappropriate – a subjective (transgressive) undertaking that brings transcendence through actions and words.

Leigh’s methods and modes Perhaps the abrasiveness of Leigh’s films stems from their often being labelled as ‘authentic’ and ‘real’, terms that are very loaded – in theoretical and practical ways  – but also true. They are true because Leigh is uncompromising when it comes to depicting the anxieties of everyday life. We can perhaps see why I suggest transgression and transcendence become thematic devices in Leigh’s films: because of the continual exploration into daily life – unadorned, horrific, bland or simply as is – Leigh’s films are as real as documentary because it often feels like he is chronicling real lives in exciting, detailed and often very painful

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ways. Naturally, then, we will witness transgressions large and small and perhaps feel empathy with the characters as they strive towards something which very often could be transcendence – a moment of passing, carrying on, or sometimes simply, an epiphany. The naturalism pervasive in his films can be oft-putting for many, revelatory for others. Many critics have discussed Leigh’s attention to ‘reality’, and Leigh himself offers, perhaps, the best insight. In an interview regarding Naked’s harshness or (seemingly) bleak attitude, Leigh says, Life is abrasive for a lot of people and there’s no getting around it. I think a function of art – and the cinema not least – is to confront these things . . . I’m absolutely committed as a filmmaker to be entertaining and to amuse; but I am also concerned to confront, as I did in Life is Sweet and other films.9

The idea of confrontation is important in understanding Leigh’s overall aesthetic of uncompromising film-making, both in a practical and more broadly speaking metaphoric sense. To confront means to face head on those things which many find uncomfortable. Leigh addresses or confronts the uncomfortable, sad, horrific and revelatory moments in his films, and this allows us to see how transgression and transcendence become parts of our daily routines, indeed, our daily living. Elsewhere Leigh has said, For most people in the world . . . life is hard work; it’s tough . . . It’s about coping. Most movies are about extraordinary or charmed lifestyles. For me what’s exciting is finding heightened drama, the extraordinary in the ordinary – what happens to ordinary people.10

Leigh’s films therefore revolve around the seemingly banal activities of ordinary people who have to deal with or confront the extraordinary, which leads to moments of transgression and also transcendence. And herein resides the transformative power of the acts of transgression and transcendence: their disclosure reveals the subjective, even spiritual, nature of Leigh’s protagonists because they are all (mostly) seeking transformation. This search is somewhat equivalent to a transcendental experience, one that does indeed involve a deeper analysis of self and personal aspiration and meaning that may lead to some higher state of being or spirituality. Garry Watson, in his book on Mike Leigh, A Sense of the Real, quotes Eric Santer, author of On the Psychotheology of Everyday Life, and his ideas on spirituality: life is characterized by ‘too-muchness that bears witness to a spiritual and moral calling, a pressure toward self-transformation . . .’11 And Watson later suggests, ‘[I]t is precisely here  – in this . . . “too-muchness”  – that we might

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find evidence of a “spiritual dimension,” one that belongs to this world and that makes possible the kind of “immanent transcendence” that exerts its force “in the very fabric of everyday life.”’12 Leigh’s films are very much concerned with ‘the fabric of everyday life’, from the subtle tensions of Meantime’s (1983) racial and domestic disputes (played out also in Happy-Go-Lucky and All or Nothing  – and most Leigh films), or the devastating berating of Shirley by Cyril in High Hopes’s (1988) wonderful Marx-grave scene, to the very literal meaning of the title Secrets & Lies (1996) and what it suggests about everyday life and the personal search for meaning. To reiterate, this self-meaning is often derived from transcendence, the result of transgression. If, as Kant suggests, transcendence connotes surpassing others to achieve a physical or mental state beyond ordinary perception, we can recognize both the attempts at reaching this level and sometimes the depiction of the transcendent state itself, which Leigh shows in his films. The nature of these quests is arguably more often than not spiritual, and by ‘spiritual’ I simply mean a personal journey for meaning or understanding while passing from one place or space to another, either inwardly or outwardly. These spiritual journeys do not have to be religious (indeed, religion and spirituality are not the same thing), and in Leigh’s films they are not. But they share something in common with Santer’s idea of ‘too-muchness’, namely, that in order to discover something beyond the self and undergo self-transformation (i.e. transcendence), one must transgress and deal with the ‘extraordinary in ordinary’ in uncompromising and harmful ways. In the following analyses of three of Leigh’s films, I hope to demonstrate how this occurs.

Naked Much has been written about Naked and its immediate distressing impact, so instead of belabouring its undeniable power, I will focus my attention on the meaning of Johnny’s quest and its influence on others. Johnny constantly asks people ‘Are you with me?’ which suggests that he is trying desperately to transform people through his words. Indeed, he acts as a messenger of sorts, one whose own transgressions point towards his personal mission of transcendence, while also directing others towards their own. Whether he is successful or not is debatable, but I tend to think that his biting, caustic remarks do cause people to reflect and transform.

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Naked is a grim film, but one of the reasons it is dark is because it deals directly with transgression and transcendence which are complicated areas of reasoning and understanding. However, what the film shows us is that Johnny’s transgressive behaviour – everything from verbal abuse or mild physical abuse – is done for a reason, for a purpose. That is, when he chastises others for their meagre and pathetic lives or for their semblance of happiness, he generates trauma in order to consequently induce a moment of transcendence. The people he encounters all seem a bit more lost than he is; in fact, they have no direction, even if they have created a likeness of one, like Brian or Louise. And Leigh has said, ‘[E]verybody in it, in a manner of speaking, is rootless, or at least displaced.’13 Johnny is necessary for them all to undergo a transformation that leads to transcendence. Though we do not see these changes immediately, they are certainly implied. In other words, Johnny, a beacon of communication who serves as a communicative vessel in a depressed and depressing world, has the power to force others into reflection and potentially cause them to change, a change that leads to transcendence. In describing his original thought process for Naked, Leigh says he was contemplating ‘the tension between spiritual and material values and the sense of impending doom’.14 And elsewhere, Leigh says, ‘[In the film] Johnny says people have had the universe explained to them, and now they’re bored. As long as something bleeps and flashes at them, that’s all they want. I feel disgusted at all that . . . I hope in some way the film approximates this tension between the spiritual and the material.’15 In other words, what Leigh is suggesting is that too many people are in a stupor, complacent because things are handed to them, and in order to reach transcendence, they have to change and not be accepting of everything that makes for an ‘easier’ life. And this journey to change is spiritual – personal, subjective, uncompromising and real. Johnny literally has come from outside the community when he suddenly appears, so the people disregard him as unfit. Taking risks means facing danger; the individual transgressor very often inverts norms of social, cultural, religious or judicial society and therefore becomes the existential outcast, the outsider. It is precisely because Johnny cannot live in his external world with its rules and regulations that stagnate and prohibit that he compensates with his knowledge, his texts. This is how and why he could be considered an outsider or a transgressor – simply because he is not conforming or because he disrupts society’s limits, having come from the outside. Society has judgements, restrictions, rules and norms, which Johnny’s transgressive personality does not or cannot adhere to. He is on his own path

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to enlightenment or transcendence, but he believes that others need to ‘wake up’ and do the same. Though he is utterly alone, has destroyed those around him, and seems to be wandering towards oblivion, it is clear that through his transgressions, Johnny has achieved what he has been looking for, though we recognize, of course, that his newfound sovereignty is ironic. His transgressive behaviour ultimately seals his own lot in life (as outsider), but it also indicates that he is far more concerned with the self – his transcendence – which allows him to become a ‘proactive visionary’,16 to destroy the world of the sacred and enter the world of the profane, ‘of going to the limits, of thought, notions, beliefs and morals – and then transgressing those very limits in order to delimit their operation’.17 Johnny does this and he wants others to do it because they too will find something. Foucault’s notion of the destabilized subject, one that is neither ‘stable’ nor ‘unified’, emerges from the idea of transgression as the continual crossing of borders, something Johnny does throughout Naked. Companionship for Johnny means foregoing any attachments to anyone, which underscores the isolation and solitude that he dwells in, in order to transgress. Johnny’s purpose as instigator is his real reason for his behaviour: he wants others to ‘get real’ and transcend their current lives. Watson correctly surmises, [Johnny] is trying to draw people into a kind (often, admittedly an initially-difficult-to-recognize kind) of ‘Socratic debate’ that is clearly designed to get them to question their basic assumptions  – with a view to possibly transforming their lives . . . what Johnny is effectively urging his interlocutors to do (at least those who seem capable of hearing what he has to say) is to start attending to what is most important in life – in other words, to start taking care of themselves.18

Louise, Sophie, Brian, the waitress, and even Sandra all need to transform. Certainly Jeremy/Sebastian does, but he is the ultimate depiction of pure transgressive behaviour whose likelihood of transcendence will not occur. Of all the characters, the seemingly lost, unstable and pathetic Sophie seems the closest to be ‘with Johnny’. (While she is acted upon quite a bit, a passive recipient, she nevertheless is aware that life is awful and that she needs more.) It is often hard to empathize with these characters; Leigh deliberately shows us Johnny’s flaws, yet somehow, he remains attractive because he is charismatic. Leigh himself mentions, ‘Johnny is a frustrated, disappointed, embittered idealist. The very opposite of a cynic. He believes in real values.’19 He is the only active person in Naked who remains authentic to his own (selfish) needs. According to Jenks, drawing from Bataille, ‘The limits to our experience and the taboos that police

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them are never simply imposed from the outside; rather, limits to behaviour are always personal responses to moral imperatives that stem from the inside. This means that any limit conduct carries with it an intense relationship with the desire to transgress that limit.’20 Johnny demonstrates this imperative and what he wants from others – the same kind of limit crossing – since it is what is necessary to find transcendence.

All or Nothing At first glance, All or Nothing might seem tame as a case study for transgressive behaviour, though it does occur. More appropriately, the characters in the film are pursuing transcendence; they want something more. In describing Leigh’s work, Michael Coveney suggests, ‘[T]he world of Leigh’s plays and films is so heated and intense, the language so sparse, or deliberately ornate in many passages, that the ordinariness of his characters’ lives is transformed into something mythical, resonant, disturbing.’21 This certainly is true for the ‘ordinary’ people in All or Nothing. The film’s characters all exhibit a stern fatalism, something many of Leigh’s characters do throughout his work, but they also display tenderness and dark humour. In other words, despite the very grim circumstances of the people in the film, their very survival depends on how to seek better forms of communication, living, of simply being. In other words, their lives rely on all-or-nothing propositions. These propositions also allow for their transcendence: the film is about redemption and transformation, and in order for everyone  – especially Phil – to finally make a turn for the better or a turn towards the new, they must turn from solitude to communion, from despair to something of worth. The ‘realness’ of Leigh’s film universe is perhaps shown as vividly as in any other film with All or Nothing. The characters are all suffering intense amounts of pain. Their transgressions, which run from the simple foul-mouthed epithets that Rory spews to Carol’s incapacity to function due to drink to Jason’s temperament to Phil’s (perhaps) egotistic fleeing  – a run from the real  – all ultimately tell us that they need change. As Watson correctly suggests, ‘Apart from anything else, spending time with – entering into the lives of – these characters means being exposed to a good deal of often extremely violent verbal abuse, with the ever-present threat, when Jason is around, of its becoming physical too.’22 This film really is less about the transgressions that people commit, however, and more about the way they need transcendence. We can admire Leigh’s protagonists

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on their quests for they overreach the bounds that are restricting. Arguably, what Leigh attempts and succeeds at capturing, are great moments of transcendence – the emotional and physical catharsis caused by existential angst and the resulting transpositioning of it into something enduring. All or Nothing really shows us the humanism capable of individuals caught in a seemingly bleak world, their vulnerability and loneliness transformed due to the at-last revelation that connections and communication is a necessity. This theme is articulated by Cecile, the French woman in Phil’s cab, who tells Phil that love really is about caring for others. So Phil must (literally) turn off his existing world and flee to the seaside to reflect and reach a moment of transcendence. But Phil is not alone in his search; everyone in the film has a moment of crisis. In a review of the film, A. O. Scott writes, All the drinking, arguing and brooding, which in lesser hands might have produced oppressive and unvarying dreariness, somehow adds up to a tableau of extraordinary vividness and variety. This is because Mr. Leigh is not the kind of realist who views his characters as representative of anything but themselves. He probes unsparingly into their awfulness, hoping they will surprise him with their decency, and when it matters most, they oblige him.23

The whole film revolves around various events, though there is a loose semblance of a plot, and through the course of the film, we get glimpses of decency after moments of crises or from confrontations with transgressive behaviour. Leigh very characteristically examines these characters carefully and thoughtfully so that we never feel above them; that is, Leigh tells such interesting stories about these people that we cannot help but see them in a very real way, which means they are human and we understand why they need transcendence. In a telling scene, Samantha, a bored and seemingly care-free girl who hangs around the apartment complex looking for trouble, acts determinedly in order to transcend. In the moment of crisis, Rory’s heart attack, it is she who takes control and gets things in order when her mother, Carol, cannot. It is a small ordeal, perhaps, but it echoes the theme of overcoming boundaries – here, lack of communication and isolation that leads to loneliness – to reach something new. Our awareness of her strength is heightened. Leigh has never said his films are about transgression or transcendence, but a film like All or Nothing demonstrates the ways by which we all need to work hard and carry on in order to survive, yes, but also in order to transform and find transcendence. Leigh says All or Nothing ‘explores central issues to do with families and responsibilities, to do with communication and lack of communication between

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people. It’s about love and passions and coping on a low income. There are also philosophical aspects to the film’.24 Taking this as our cue, we might say then that Leigh’s philosophical slant has to do with not just doing what is right (overcoming transgression) but also doing something new (finding transcendence). This is why Phil’s transcendent moment awakens him to the communication he has lost and to reclaiming the love that hovers around his marriage. His transcendence creates a new intimacy where he can choose to act differently, but it takes a moment of crisis and transgression. Phil is able to see more clearly, to appreciate actuality  – to see and to believe. His isolation, which is palpable throughout the film, ultimately leads to the need for communion. All the characters in the film have difficulty communicating which results in their separation, even when they are together or trying to communicate. As Leigh says, speaking directly about Phil and Penny but really about everyone, ‘Sometimes you can’t talk in a relationship, for a variety of reasons. It’s just how it is.’25 Loneliness has always been a central theme in Leigh’s films, and All or Nothing demonstrates this clearly. But this loneliness can be remedied through initiative. Explaining Phil’s transformation or moment of transcendence when he goes to the seaside, Leigh says, ‘He needs the head space as well as the physical space.’26 The claustrophobic world Phil lives in has created less space to be happy. Leigh continues, ‘He’s quite literally all at sea. He’s escaping. He doesn’t know what’s going on.’27 This escape is fundamentally important to having a moment of transcendence. Leaving the world behind may be a transgression, but it is a necessary thing to do because it leads him to redemption, his transcendence, his new self.

Happy-Go-Lucky Happy-Go-Lucky has been called a ‘happy Leigh’ film, which has prompted more than one critic to see the implied oxymoron of the label. But despite it having a lighter tone due to the impossibly great performance of Sally Hawkins as Poppy, it is also a film that has some shades of the characteristic Leigh gloominess: real-life people living in a dispassionate world where understanding is complicated through the social issues that dictate human behaviour. And in that sense, it is very much like many Leigh films: about real relationships, turning points, trust and infallibility. Or, as Leigh says about his films, ‘To put characters on the screen like real people; idiosyncratic, unique and individual and properly placed in their social context.’28 Happy-Go-Lucky is seemingly simple, but the

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underlying theme, perhaps, can be traced to a line Poppy says early in the film when asked if she has time for reality. She says, ‘I have no time for that.’ Poppy is fundamentally good, happy and truly caring. So maybe what Leigh is proposing is that when confronted by ‘reality’, whether in the guise of the tramp, a troubled boy from a broken home, or her driving instructor Scott, she has to transform. It is not that she has to, but rather, in order to accommodate the things in life that are terrible, she has to accept them and realize she cannot make everyone happy. (Her friend Zoë says to her, ‘You can’t make everyone happy’, to which Poppy replies, ‘There’s no harm in trying that is there?’) But there is harm, and the harm comes from the confrontation with the volatile Scott. Scott’s transgressions are many: he fails to yield to anyone else’s opinions; he’s racist; and he’s seemingly delusional. But there is realness to his vulnerability that makes us empathize with him. Just as much as Poppy might need to alter her outlook on life, so must Scott. It is a very clever device by Leigh to set up these oppositional characters – foils – in order to play out what I see as the major issue concerning transgression and transcendence. Poppy’s casual and funny dismissal of reality sets her up to confront it head-on. First, she encounters a tramp who mumbles and appears haggard, worn out and even threatening. He shows us that even Poppy’s optimism cannot erase grim reality. The tramp tries to tell her something. He says, ‘It’s, it’s, it’s’ and ‘They, they, they’ to her, and then, ‘You know?’ never even mentioning what it is he wants to get across, but Poppy, who is not as naïve as she would appear to be, understands, and says simply, ‘Yeah, I do.’ What exactly does she understand? It seems that perhaps she ‘gets’ that there is another world where hardship develops out of circumstance, which is a way of thinking about transgression. The transgressive act can take one to a place where rules or manners are not governed. The tramp, like Scott to follow, does not abide by rules or manners. Maybe this is what Poppy recognizes because her interaction with the tramp is a confrontation with reality. And unlike Johnny in Naked, she cannot help him achieve his transcendence. Johnny, in fact, serves as good counterpoint to Poppy: he is nihilistic, philosophical and angry; she is optimistic, idealistic and happy. He is dissatisfied with the world, and Poppy is not, though she wants it to be different as well – to a certain extent. But the way they feel the need to compel others is very different. Poppy wants to cheer people into having fun and being happy. Johnny prods them through volatile criticisms. But ultimately, each wants to educate others into seeking an alternative worldview, to reach a new state, to reach transcendence. Ironically, it is Johnny who is perhaps more

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successful – or, at least we recognize that his rants could be directing people to make change. Poppy’s attempts to help others find transcendence are indirect. Put more concretely, in the case of Poppy, she simply wants to help others be happy, but she herself also needs transcendence (Figure 8.2). Poppy’s confrontation with Scott also demonstrates the inability to incur change, though we clearly recognize Scott’s need to find transcendence. He is impervious to Poppy’s influence and instead lashes out at her and the world around him in a way very different from Johnny. Scott is incapable of recognizing the necessary change needed to reach transcendence or a new self. His transgressions really are his way of existing. He is the opposite of Poppy (her optimism is challenged by his pessimistic worldview), and literally, he is a bad instructor while she is a very good teacher (her interactions with the troubled boy are heartfelt and genuine). But these characters are not as clearly defined as ‘good’ and ‘bad’. In other words, is Scott more real than Poppy? Is her worldview too simplistic and can it survive the realness of the transgressions she encounters? One gets the sense that Leigh sets them up as opposites to strengthen this debate. And I read it also as a philosophical one about transgression and transcendence as both are similar and contending positions or ideas that encompass our reality. As Peter Brunette rightfully suggests, ‘[A] sense of preexisting reality motivates everything Leigh does.’29 Dealing with and confronting transgressions that point to transcendence marks Happy-Go-Lucky – and all his films – as stories about coping with the everyday ordinariness that spawns transgressive behaviour and transcendent moments.

Figure 8.2  Even in the presence of her imposing masseur Ezra (Nonso Anozie), Poppy (Sally Hawkins) manages to hold the audience’s attention by wearing a fuscia brassiere, orange panties and lace tights in Happy-Go-Lucky (2008)

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Conclusion Mike Leigh’s unflinching representations of real life are what make his films so compelling and complicated. To examine real life means scrutinizing ourselves. In an interview, Leigh says, ‘My ongoing preoccupation is . . . with families, relationships, parents, children, sex, work, surviving, being born and dying. I’m totally intuitive, emotional, subjective, empirical, instinctive . . . Primarily my films are a response to the way people are, the way things are as I experience them.’30 This remark tells us essentially all we need to know about why the films are so effective at making us also examine the very same things about our own lives. Transgression and transcendence exist in daily lives; they are often bound in smaller things like decision-making, or they are much larger, like issues concerning morals or ethics. Leigh’s films, as I’ve tried to indicate, engage with these themes regularly. They are a part of human nature, and often making mistakes or transgressions dictate our behaviours and actions and words. Likewise, we seek to be in better places or frames of mind through transcendence. Transgression can be offensive to others but it also is inherently a personal exploration into the self, just as transcendence is. But when the behaviour is recognizably personal and a universally human emotion and expression, the lines between transcendence and transgression blur, prompting one to perhaps reconsider how they fundamentally form parts of us. Leigh may be offering social commentary, satirical insight or directly addressing the ideas of taboos or limit-crossing that occurs readily and normally in society and in individual behaviour. And when this does occur in his films, there are moments of transcendence that permit or give individuals release from societal taboos. It is never completely easy nor is it completely achieved, but for the characters in Leigh’s films, it is a part of their extraordinarily ordinary lives.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6

Chris Jenks, Transgression. London: Routledge, 2003, 2–3. Ibid., 5. Ibid., 186. Georges Bataille, Erotism. London: Penguin, 2001, 103. Ibid., 63. Michel Foucault, Religion and Culture. London: Routledge, 1999, 50–60.

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7 Ibid., 60. 8 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason. London: Penguin Classics, 2008 [1781], 1. 9 David Sterritt, ‘Mike Leigh Calls It as He Sees It’, in Mike Leigh Interviews, ed. Howie Movshovitz. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2000, 43. 10 Ray Carney, The Films of Mike Leigh: Embracing the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, 14. 11 Gary Watson, The Cinema of Mike Leigh: A Sense of the Real. London: Wallflower Press, 2004, 26. 12 Ibid., 31. 13 Jay Carr, ‘Naked: English Director Mike Leigh Turns His Uncompromising Vision on the Way Things Are’, Mike Leigh Interviews, ed. Howie Movshovitz. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2000, 56. 14 Howie Movshovitz, ‘Mike Leigh’s Grim Optimism’, Mike Leigh Interviews, ed. Howie Movshovitz. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2000, 53. 15 Sterritt, ‘Mike Leigh Calls It’, 44. 16 Jenks, Transgression, 32. 17 Julian Pefanis, Heterology and the Postmodern: Bataille, Baudrillard, and Lyotard. Durham: Duke University Press, 1991, 45. 18 Watson, The Cinema of Mike Leigh, 109–10. 19 Amy Raphael, ed., Mike Leigh on Mike Leigh. London: Faber and Faber, 2008, 231. 20 Jenks, Transgression, 7. 21 Micahel Coveney, ‘In a Class of His Own’, Mike Leigh Interviews, ed. Howie Movshovitz. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2000, 37. 22 Watson, The Cinema of Mike Leigh, 168. 23 A. O. Scott, ‘Muddling Through, Souls Shredded but Intact’, rev. of All or Nothing, New York Times, 25 October (2002), accessed 19 April 2011, http://movies.nytimes. com/movie/260405/All-or-Nothing/overview. 24 Raphael, Mike Leigh on Mike Leigh, 320–1. 25 Ibid., 329. 26 Ibid., 333. 27 Ibid., 334. 28 Judy Stone, ‘Mike Leigh’, in Mike Leigh Interviews, ed. Howie Movshovitz. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2000, 27. 29 Peter Brunette, ‘The Director’s Improvised Reality’, in Mike Leigh Interviews, ed. Howie Movshovitz. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2000, 32. 30 Desson Howe, ‘It’s the Movie of the Decade. No No, It’s Just a Decadent Movie’, Mike Leigh Interviews, ed. Howie Movshovitz. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2000, 46.

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Works cited Bataille, Georges. Erotism. London: Penguin, 2001. Carney, Ray. The Films of Mike Leigh: Embracing the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Foucault, Michel. Religion and Culture. London: Routledge, 1999. Jenks, Chris. Transgression. London: Routledge, 2003. Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. London: Penguin Classics, 2008 [1781]. Movshovitz, Howie, ed. Mike Leigh Interviews. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2000. Pefanis, Julian. Heterology and the Postmodern: Bataille, Baudrillard, and Lyotard. Durham: Duke University Press, 1991. Raphael, Amy. Mike Leigh on Mike Leigh. London: Faber and Faber, 2008. Scott, A. O. ‘Muddling Through, Souls Shredded but Intact’, New York Times, 25 October (2002), accessed 19 April 2011, www.nytimes.com. Watson, Garry. The Cinema of Mike Leigh: A Sense of the Real. London: Wallflower Press, 2004.

Part Three

Beyond Verisimilitude

9

Melodrama and Tradition in Vera Drake and Another Year Stella Hockenhull

Part-way through Mike Leigh’s 2004 film, Vera Drake, the director reveals the film’s namesake’s guilty secret. Vera (Imelda Staunton) is an illegal abortionist, and is seen visiting a young pregnant girl to perform an operation. The scene commences with an establishing shot of Vera approaching the client’s house through a dark alleyway. Wearing a drab, dark green coat and clutching her handbag, she is flanked on either side by the large and overpowering walls of a grim inner-city housing complex. To the rear of the composition a faded sign advertises a tannery, suggesting a working-class district with industrial associations. Dim lighting and grey skies complete the gloomy atmosphere as Vera, placed centre-frame, negotiates the myriad passageways to find the correct house. She knocks, waiting patiently at the door, which is eventually opened a short distance to reveal the worried face of a young girl (Sinéad Matthews). Arms wrapped around her body as though seeking protection, the girl’s figure expression suggests that she is clearly distressed, but she permits Vera entry, and the older woman finds herself in the dark passageway of a grimy and unkempt house. Faded curtains hang at the dirt-encrusted windows, and the walls are in a poor state of repair. Vera puts the kettle on the hob in the cramped kitchen as the girl looks on, speechless and shivering. Subsequently, the two enter the bedroom and, placing a towel underneath the girl, Vera instructs her to lie down on top of it. Leigh frames the abortion utensils in close-up, leaving the spectator under no illusion that the subsequent procedure will be sanitized or easy. Vera grates a bar of cheap soap into a bowl and scrubs her own hands in the filthy kitchen sink using cold water. The abortion itself is not shown explicitly; instead the camera focuses on

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the young girl’s face, and then on Vera as she performs the operation. Framed through the open doorway, Vera is seen holding the girl’s hand and reassuring her, before she retreats to the kitchen to arrange her equipment. Vera operates as what was once known as a ‘back street’ abortionist, working in a post-war period when it was impossible to obtain a termination unless large sums of money changed hands. She provides the service for her friend, Lily (Ruth Sheen), who, unbeknown to Vera, receives money for this activity. At the end of the operation, Vera explains to the girl the chain of events which will ensue regarding her health, and leaves the dilapidated property to return to her own family.

Social realism and melodramatic form On the surface, this sequence offers all the ingredients of a social realist text, a point noted by Molly O’Hagan Hardy who suggests that, ‘the mise-en-scène of Vera Drake invokes the aesthetics of these films [social realist], and Leigh makes specific allusion to Karel Reisz’s Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960)’ (211). A British phenomenon, social realism is rooted in a group of documentary films of the 1950s termed ‘Free Cinema’. This was an expression coined by Lindsay Anderson in 1956 to describe a series of documentaries which were made by various international film-makers, dealt with current issues, and were shown at the National Film Theatre. Anderson and his contemporary film-maker, Karel Reisz, were critical of British cinematic tradition because of its adherence to classic narrative structures, for its conventionality, and what they perceived as its lack of aesthetic experimentation. Consequently, according to Susan Hayward, ‘they denounced the bourgeois, suburban tradition inherent in this cinema and accused it, through its lack of transparence on the working class, of avoiding reality’ (134). The Free Cinema film-makers had a commitment to a more socially aware style: they operated from an independent base rather than studio production and were influenced by European film-making, calling for a cinema which focused on the individual and the collective and films which were more experimental in technique. This led to the emergence of a wealth of cinematic releases in the 1960s which shared common features and themes: an emphasis on young working-class characters as central to the narrative, urban settings in the industrial north, location shooting, the use of hand-held cameras, documentary observation of everyday life and the frequent inclusion of scenes

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redundant to the narrative. These aspects were similar to documentary technique that ‘[is] believed to be the recording of actuality – raw footage of real events as they happen, real people as they speak, real life as it occurs, spontaneous and unmediated’ (Nelmes 1996, 169). Consonant with the work of the documentary film-makers, the social realist directors situated their characters, settings and stories as genuine and real slices of life through stylistic devices such as observational camerawork, grainy film stock and accidental footage not necessarily relevant to the narrative. Although not specifically a genre, social realism is a discursive label that can be identified by a number of distinctive features. These, as Julia Hallam and Margaret Marshment suggest, tend to be, ‘associated with an observational style of camerawork that emphasises situations and events, and an episodic narrative structure, creating “kitchen sink” dramas and “gritty” character studies of the underbelly of urban life’ (184). If social realism deals with the disenfranchised and the marginalized then, as a number of commentators suggest, some of Leigh’s work conforms. Indeed, the director’s method of extemporization and subject matter which seem to tell of the ordinary rather than the extraordinary leads to that conclusion. However, not all commentators agree. As Ray Carney and Leonard Quart suggest, ‘Leigh’s films look very different from the films of the British New Wave. No single film of his, except for Naked, is dominated by a single figure – a hero/antiheroic protagonist’ (10). Even Garry Watson admits that there is room to consider hybridization in Leigh’s work, and to repeat the opening quote, he argues that, bored . . . by some of the categories that frequently get applied to Leigh’s work; some of them (‘social realism’, ‘kitchen-sink realism’, ‘council-estate realism’) ought to be immediately consigned to the scrapheap and others (‘naturalism’, even ‘realism’ itself) ought to be used much more selectively. At the same time, there is clearly no point in denying either that most of Leigh’s films offer precious little in the way of spectacle or that they are mostly distinguished by precisely their focus on ordinary life. And of course his films do undoubtedly offer at least a kind of realism. (Watson 2004, 17)

Here Watson argues for a different kind of realism: a ‘traumatic realism’. However, despite Leigh’s focus on ‘a slice of ordinary life’ and sometimes-difficult narrative themes, arguably, his work shares more stylistic similarities with classical Hollywood film-making through his use of melodramatic form. He builds ‘dramatic conflict between the characters and constructing a plot,

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forcefully moving it all toward a final rehearsal period when he gives the improvisations final shape’ (Carney and Quart 2000, 12). If, as Thomas Elsaesser suggests, melodrama refers to, an exaggerated rise-and-fall pattern in human actions and emotional responses, a from-the sublime-to-the-ridiculous movement, a foreshortening of lived time in favour of intensity – all of which produces a graph of much greater fluctuation, a quicker swing from one extreme to the other than is considered natural, realistic or in conformity with literary standards of verisimilitude . . . (52)

then Leigh’s films obey these rules. His oeuvre is concerned with passions and sensations, operating through a series of events created as equilibrium and disequilibrium and finally offering some resolution. Similarly, his films focus on a number of characters simultaneously, and in a similar mode to melodrama, provide an opening for women. As Christine Gledhill notes, family melodrama opens up space for its female protagonists with its ‘domestic sphere and socially mandated “feminine” concerns’ (Gledhill 1994, 10), and Leigh’s films do just that. This chapter examines two Leigh films, Vera Drake and Another Year within these contexts, and suggests that, despite adhering in some respects to a social realist trajectory, Leigh presents the spectator with recognizable psychologically rounded characters, a plausible narrative comprised of cause-and-effect relationships which occur in time based on equilibrium and disequilibrium, and some degree of closure. His films offer a foreshortening of time, and he provides traditional melodramas consonant with the Hollywood tradition.

Melodramatic and the Hollywood tradition in Vera Drake The film focuses on both Vera’s family life and her illegal practices, initially compartmentalizing them so that the two do not converge. However, she lives in a rundown area of London, and as noted, her sideline deals with the controversial issue of pregnancy terminations for women living on the margins of society. At the end of the film, Vera is imprisoned; she must live with the guilt of her crime and her family must deal with the shame: for the Drakes there is no happy ending, although there is some resolution. Undeniably, the subject matter of Vera Drake is unpalatable, and indeed, the film focuses on the commonplace rather than action. However, Leigh’s 1950s

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drama cannot be described as uneventful or the narrative as uncomplicated. Not only are Vera’s illegal abortions presented with much attention to detail, from her careful preparations to the act itself, but also the rape of the middle-class girl, Susan Wells (Sally Hawkins) and Vera’s arrest part-way through the film embellish the narrative with a series of theatrical and dramatic events. These Leigh displays through a conventional approach; his frame compositions are carefully structured, and the segment discussed at the outset of this chapter is configured, as with all the other sequences in the film, in a classical style. Leigh uses establishing shots to orientate the spectator and a style of editing to evoke stability and order, to guide the viewer carefully through the narrative. Thus, it is Leigh’s style of filming which removes his work from the realist labels levelled at them. His films are invested more with a classical approach than with an adherence to a documentary style. As Hallam and Marshment point out, ‘[m]ainstream popular cinema is governed by fidelity to narrative causality; it has an official look and uses a dictatorial language which determines the kinds of subject matter that it can deal with’ (15), and, to an extent, Vera Drake conforms. At the outset of Vera Drake, the spectator is introduced to Vera through a medium shot as she walks through the streets near her East End home. Seen centre frame, the camera follows her progress towards the house of a friend. Seated by a fire, the man is clearly disabled and unwell, and Vera’s job seems to involve caring for him, cleaning his house and giving him sustenance. Unlike a number of contemporary realist films, the characters are not caught on camera as though by accident. Instead, in a carefully choreographed medium shot the two figures appear opposite one another in conversation within the confined space of the home. In a similar approach to a classical style, Vera has been introduced as a key character at the outset, and from this moment on, Leigh begins to provide her with specific character traits that suggest she is kind, caring and sympathetic to others. It is these traits that enable the narrative to progress, and in classical style, Leigh presents Vera as a psychologically rounded and believable character. Although the director uses improvisation, his actors rehearse carefully and at length. As Whitehead informs, [t]he crucial sequence in which their Sunday tea is interrupted by the police arriving at the flat to arrest Vera is a good example of how Leigh’s work evolves through improvisation in rehearsal. Imelda Staunton had no idea that actors playing policemen were going to turn up, the other members of her ‘family’ were not aware of her secret; and the ‘police’ themselves did not know they would be interrupting a family celebration. (2007, 183)

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All the actors aim at life-like performances consonant with the method acting technique. As James Leggott suggests, ‘Leigh’s famous creative method of improvisatory workshops with ensemble casts tends to result in domestic dramas about fissures in family relationships that are ultimately either repaired or fractured forever’ (2008, 73), a point which Leigh acknowledges: ‘[d]uring rehearsals we did all the usual things I get people to do, which include creating their characters and defining their relationships to one another as well as a massive amount of research’ (Lawrenson 2005, 12). Throughout Leigh’s harrowing film, Vera appears as loving and considerate. When she encounters her neighbour, Reg (Eddie Marsan), on the staircase of her tenement block she stops for a chat before enquiring into his health. When he reveals that his meal that evening will consist of ‘a bit of bread and dripping and a cup of tea’, she expresses concern over his diet and subsequently invites him for tea at the Drake family home the following evening. The camera frames her face in close-up which expresses the disquiet she experiences at the young man’s situation before, from her point of view, the camera cuts to the bemused and gratified face of Reg who gladly accepts her act of kindness. Through these various filmic conventions the spectator is invited to acknowledge Vera’s sympathetic attitude and note her as a likeable person despite the unpleasant services she provides for young women. This information enables spectator identification with the character and thus encourages compassion for the woman when she is arrested.

Class distinctions and family values Although Leigh makes no attempt at a documentary/social realist style, the director does aim to contrast the different classes but not by showing the Drake household in a poor light. This is exemplified in a sequence where Vera is cleaning for her boss, Mrs Wells (Lesley Manville). As though to expose the opposite ends of the class spectrum, Leigh begins the section by first showing the Drake family seated around a table eating their evening meal. The set consists of Vera’s husband, Stan (Philip Davis), her son Sid (Daniel Mays) and daughter Ethel (Alex Kelly) presented for the first half of the film as a close-knit group. To reinforce this notion, they are frequently shown eating meals together and sharing jokes and banter (Figure 9.1). Again in classical style, the family are introduced one by one. Vera, whom the spectator has already encountered, enters the apartment

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Figure 9.1  Stan (Phil Davis) offers Reg (Eddie Marsan) a light for his cigarette as Sid (Daniel Mays) looks on in Vera Drake (2004)

alone and is busy preparing the meal when Ethel arrives home from work. The two greet and exchange a few words before Sid enters the bustle of the kitchen, trying to wash his hands in the sink. Finally, Stan returns from work, and the four are seated at the table. In this scene Leigh obeys the rules of conventional film-making by familiarizing the spectator with the characters in a controlled approach. As he acknowledges, ‘[i]f you’re familiar with my films, you’ll see I like the discipline of this kind of set-up. I love looking through doorways . . . And in that early scene when they’re all coming and going we managed to say a lot in a totally cinematic way’ (Lawrenson 2005, 12). Indeed, if Leigh adopts a semi-classical style of filming then he also adheres to the British tradition of class representation. His approach in Vera Drake is to show the Drake family as representative of the post-war working classes; they appear happy and united even though they are not rich. This is distinct from the wealthy yet austere lifestyle of the upper classes which Vera works for. The Wells’ household is grand and uncompromising, and in the same sequence the residence is first seen following the round-table meal of the Drake family. Head down, Vera is cleaning the surface of a low, antique table, surrounded by various objets d’art. This sumptuous interior contrasts with the Drake’s relative poverty, yet the latter’s lack of adornment in their home does not suggest a deficiency of affection within the family: quite the contrary. To juxtapose, Leigh reinforces the detachment yet affluence of the Wells family by circumventing the busy

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figure of Vera who is seen in a medium shot. Eventually, the camera revolves around to centre on Mrs Wells who is seated on a chair smoking a cigarette. Unlike the bustle of the Drake family, there is a paucity of sound, and initially it appears that Mrs Wells is alone. Appearing centre frame, she is outlined by the doorframe, Leigh preferring to focus on Vera in the foreground than the isolated figure of her solitary employer. It is only when the camera tracks slightly to the left that a second figure is revealed: that of her daughter, Susan Wells. Susan sits stiffly at right angles to her elegant mother who reads a magazine, making no attempt to talk or converse with her daughter except to criticize her figure and what she perceives as her offspring’s ‘flat chest’. From this sober scene, the camera cuts back to a slightly elevated shot of the Drake meal table, but this time the four members of the family have been joined by Reg. Here Leigh uses a much tighter framing to infer the intimacy of family life in this household, reinforced when Vera invites Reg to sit on the settee and make himself at home, whence a conversation takes place. In this sequence, Leigh uses conventional framing, point of view shots and match on action to inform the viewer about the characters. Indeed, as Tony Whitehead suggests, the Drake family ‘is clearly modest – they live in a small but well-kept tenement flat – but they are a happy and cohesive unit’ (2007, 179). Just as Vera and her family and friends are introduced by conventional establishing shots, so Stan’s brother Frank (Adrian Scarborough) is introduced to the spectator. A distance shot of the interior of a garage focuses on the sign-written words ‘F. Drake’s Garage’ in the background of the building painted on an interior wall, thus providing the spectator with information concerning the ownership of the business. In the same long shot, two figures are seen working together on a vehicle. The camera cuts to a medium shot of the balding Frank, the owner, who seems exasperated by the work he is doing. A concerned Stan appears, observing him and enquiring into the health of his wife, Joyce (Heather Craney). In this short sequence the spectator is provided with a wealth of information about the individual protagonists. Leigh enjoys contrasting the personalities of his characters, and his narratives are propelled by their nuances. Stan informs Frank that Vera has provided a kindness to Reg and explains the story to which Frank concedes that she has ‘a heart of gold’ (Vera and Stan helped Frank to go to college and start his own business). Joyce, on the other hand, is represented as self-absorbed and mean-spirited. She is ambitious and wants to move to a bigger house; she is disdainful of Vera and her family for their lack of aspiration, and is materialistic.

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The ordinary and the extraordinary In all the above sequences, Leigh introduces various aspects of the everyday, yet what appears as the ordinary is not necessarily realist. Indeed, in Vera Drake Leigh does not deal with the mundane. Instead, juxtaposing the routine of the Drake family existence with the disruption caused by the police arrest, Leigh depicts the extraordinary. He organizes his narrative around events – however inconsequential – and crises: in other words disturbing the state of equilibrium with dislocation before some resolution is achieved at the end of the film. As Laura Mulvey suggests, ‘the strength of the melodramatic form lies in the amount of dust the story raises along the road, a cloud of over-determined irreconcilables which put up a resistance to being neatly settled in the last five minutes’ (1994, 76). Following the discovery of Vera’s crime and her subsequent arrest, the film follows a conventional series of cause-and-effect relationships over time. Vera’s suffering in custody and her subsequent court case from which she is released on bail are scenes interspersed with sequences paralleled with the difficulties that the family experience while their wife/mother is away. In a series of shots, Vera is cross-examined by the police while Stan sits in the waiting room. At one point Vera asks whether she can go home because ‘her children will be worried sick’, and denied this kindness, the camera cuts to a shot of Sid standing alone in their home drinking a cup of coffee before the camera pans to the right to reveal Joyce, Frank, Reg and Ethel seated at the dining table. This demonstrates their concern and confirms Vera’s fears. The subject matter of Vera Drake is distasteful and unpleasant, yet Leigh does not represent this in a particularly explicit way. Even when Susan Wells is raped he evades any detail, cutting immediately to the aftermath. The sequence begins with a hand-held camera observing the girl and David (Sam Troughton), her date for the evening, seated together on the bed. He grabs her arm, and the couple appear with their backs to the camera as Susan struggles to free herself. Leigh continues to show them centre frame as the rape commences before cutting to a daylight exterior shot of Vera descending to the basement of yet another of her cleaning jobs. Leigh has spared the spectator the ordeal of the event, only returning to it later when Susan privately seeks an abortion. As Whitehead notes, ‘Leigh “thought it important to contrast these two cultures, given that anybody could accidentally fall pregnant”, and the period setting is thus used to mobilise a tremendous anger, which underpins the narrative and the characters throughout the entire film’ (2007, 181).

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Structure and regularity: Another Year If Vera Drake focuses on unpleasant subject matter and the working classes then Leigh’s later film, Another Year, on the surface, centres on age: issues such as becoming old and life’s disappointments form the narrative structure. Here, the director uses a cinematographic style and a visual quality to create a texture akin to melodrama. Another Year is structured around the four seasons that operate thematically as an organizational principle, and this creates a sense of order and regularity to the overall film. In a self-conscious form of story telling, Leigh provides a blank screen with the title of the seasons printed on it. Thus, spring turns to summer, then autumn and winter. As Elsaesser observes, for the melodrama ‘[t]he feeling that there is always more to tell than can be said leads to very consciously elliptical narratives, proceeding often by visually condensing the characters’ motivation into sequences of images which do not seem to advance the plot’ (1994, 53). Despite a seemingly unconnected opening sequence that depicts a conversation between a depressed woman (Imelda Staunton) and her doctor, the film follows a pattern based around the times of the year. The two key characters are presented to the spectator at the outset as they load their vehicle for a trip to the allotment. Both professional people, Gerri (Ruth Sheen) and Tom (Jim Broadbent) are a happily married couple in late middle-age who met at university. Throughout the film Leigh presents their relationship as solid and harmonious, a state juxtaposed with that of Gerri’s secretary, Mary (Lesley Manville), who is unmarried, isolated and unhappy. The use of the seasons permits the rise and fall pattern of the melodrama and allows for an ellipsis of time, which creates a fluctuation in emotions. As Philip Kemp suggests, the characters divide just as easily into winners and losers. On the one hand are those who are comfortable and contented with their lot, like Tom and his wife Gerri, a verge-of-retirement couple who tend their allotment and dispense hospitality; their community lawyer son and his new girlfriend Katie . . . Left sucking the fuzzy end of the lollipop are Gerri’s colleague Mary (Lesley Manville), whose relentless perkiness does little to disguise a bitter resentment at her lonely existence; Tom’s old friend Ken, overweight and sinking into alcoholism . . .; and Tom’s nephew Carl, spitting with self-destructive anger. (2010, 55)

Arguably, in a melodramatic vein, both Vera Drake and Another Year open up space for their female protagonists, and both are constructed on the social

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nuances between characters whereby Leigh structures each segment as a series of establishing shots and shot transitions to suggest conformity and order before they become chaotic receptors of the mixed emotions of the characters. Gerri and Tom have an allotment and are regular visitors. At the beginning of the film they load the car with plant trays and boxes, and the camera cuts to a medium shot of the couple as they climb into the vehicle. This is a repeated motif in the film creating a pattern of repetition in line with classic Hollywood traditions. An edit reveals the car centre frame, and in terrible weather, they drive away from a modest but elegant Edwardian house. As with the constitution of melodrama, the focus is on family and as Gledhill points out, [t]he designation of the family as a bourgeois institution, the perceived materialisation of bourgeois ideology in these films in a sphere conventionally assigned to women – the home, family relations, domestic trivia, consumption, fantasy and romance, sentiment – all imply equivalence between the ‘feminine’ and bourgeois ideology. (1994, 12)

Tom and Gerri’s life is ascertained as a smug bourgeois lifestyle, the pair enjoying a middle-class home and existence. In an ensuing shot they are seen, now bathed in watery sunshine, tending to their garden. They work in companionable silence, operating at different ends of the plot yet clearly as a team. Gerri breaks the silence, telling Tom not to ‘do your back in again’, to which he responds that their task is now a ‘job for a younger man’. This conversation suggests the closeness of their relationship and incorporates dialogue about ‘their son and heir’, thus confirming their status as a family. If melodrama exists on a rise and fall pattern in human actions and emotional responses, operates on a foreshortening of lived time and examines family tension, then Another Year is a fitting example. Not only does the film focus on family but also the themes of success and failure, with the characters positioned as both victims and sufferers.

Success and failure as melodramatic excess Various aspects of the couple’s successful lives are outlined at the outset. Tom’s job as a geologist is established when, from an overhead position, his vehicle is seen arriving on site for an inspection. The workmen refer to him as ‘boss’ and he is clearly in control in his work environment. Pictured centre frame, he inspects the contents of a pipe before giving his verdict on its composition.

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Similarly, Gerri is given equal space. Seen at her workplace, she is a professional woman working as a counsellor at a medical practice. She appears kind and sympathetic to her patients and colleagues. When the spectator first encounters Mary it occurs through a medium shot of her and Gerri in conversation: the camera has followed Gerri’s progress along a corridor, taking patient case notes to be typed up by her younger secretary. Despite the fact that much of the film focuses on these three characters, in a similar mode to melodrama there is no hero or central protagonist who has the ability to change a situation. As Elsaesser maintains, a feature of melodrama is that ‘they concentrate on the point of view of the victim: what makes the films . . . exceptional is the way they manage to present all the characters convincingly as victims’ (1994, 64), and Leigh’s films focus on the point of view of the sufferer. If this is made obvious in Vera Drake when, following Vera’s arrest, her family suffers, or by the film’s use of Susan Wells as a stand-in for lonely and detached upper echelons of society, then so are Leigh’s collection of characters also casualties in Another Year. Described by Lesley Manville as ‘the ultimate film about human frailty’, the film concerns shortcomings and weaknesses. Mary is unhappy and lonely and suffers at the hands of Gerri who becomes hostile to her when she realizes that Mary has romantic intentions towards Joe. Mary’s troubled personality is made apparent from the outset. She is highly strung, neurotic and cannot hold down a relationship – all qualities which are the antonym of Gerri. She informs her friends that her life is in order, yet subsequently reveals that her ‘garden flat’ now has an unkempt lawn, she cannot cook and she really requires a man in her life. Gerri and Mary are having an evening at the pub, and throughout their conversation Mary engages in eye contact with a balding man standing alone at the bar. When Gerri departs, Mary remains seated, clearly hoping to become acquainted with him. However, a young girl arrives and the couple share a romantic kiss. The scene functions in two ways: firstly, it further reinforces Mary’s isolation and loneliness, particularly because Gerri leaves to return home to Tom; second, it raises the theme of age. The balding middle-aged man is involved with a much younger woman than Mary, thus exposing her vulnerability. As Carney and Quart suggest, ‘[w]hat makes Leigh unique is his ability to construct a humourously bleak and desperate world filled with characters whose comic behaviour springs from their essence as human beings. The comedy connects to their genuine agony and joy, and there are no scenes geared to just getting easy laughs’ (2000, 13).

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Mary also suffers at the hands of Joe. When he introduces her to his girlfriend Katie (Karina Fernandez), Mary is sullen and difficult. She has known Joe for some years, and although she is much older than him, the two have shared a flirtatious relationship. Indeed, in an earlier encounter Joe engages in playful banter with his older adversary, teasing her until she becomes coy and enticing. However, during the Katie encounter, Mary is clearly upset. The scene begins when Mary arrives for dinner, and from the interior of the house, Joe is seen advancing towards the front door where Mary is standing. She flings her arms around his neck and then links his arm as they walk out of the frame. Joe informs her that he has a surprise, and the camera cuts to a close-up of Katie who introduces herself to her older rival. As the realization hits Mary, Leigh cuts to an extreme close-up of her visible misery. Old university friend, Ken (Peter Wight) is also presented as a sufferer; he is overweight with a drink problem. First introduced when he journeys by train to visit Gerri and Tom, he glugs cans of beer one after the other and eats copious amounts of junk food. At dinner, he drinks an abundance of red wine and shovels food unceremoniously into his mouth, not disguising his unhealthy lifestyle. Later, sweating profusely even though the weather is not hot, he informs the couple that he is lonely and unhappy, his job is under threat, and after a drinking bout, he weeps inexplicably and uncontrollably. Clearly, from their university days, Gerri and Tom have been successful and happy whereas Ken’s life has not been as fulfilling or prosperous. Similarly, Tom’s brother, Ronnie (David Bradley) is depicted as the product of a poor education system. He has not enjoyed his brother’s success, nor apparently been lucky enough to go to university, instead remaining in their home town of Derby. Ostensibly, he has achieved very little in life; his wife, the spectator is informed, is recently deceased, having worked to keep him. He is first introduced following the announcement of winter. From an overhead shot off the gantry of the motorway, the camera frames the progress of Gerri and Tom’s vehicle heading north, accompanied by Joe. They arrive at a row of terraced houses and proceed to unpack trays of sandwiches and cans of beer from the car. The contrast between Gerri and Tom’s home and Ronnie’s meagre abode is made apparent when they enter the house to await the funeral cortège of their deceased sister-in-law. Sitting side-by-side, the three family members face Ronnie who is a quiet and taciturn man, his house sparsely furnished with functional, utilitarian furniture. The funeral only emphasizes the disparity between Ronnie and Tom’s education. Throughout the ensuing trail of events it is Tom who takes the lead, introducing himself to the funeral director and the

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minister at the crematorium and inviting the mourners back to the house. He is capable and educated in contrast to his brother, even packing for Ronnie in preparation for a short respite stay in London at his own home. At the funeral the solidarity of Tom’s family and his full life is contrasted with Ronnie’s lonely existence. To enhance the sorry spectacle, snow covers the ground and only three mourners appear, huddled against the cold. Even Ronnie’s son, Carl (Martin Savage) appears only at the end of the service, arriving slightly out of breath and angry that he has missed his mother’s committal. At the wake, he exchanges sharp words with his father and Tom, the latter reprimanded by Gerri for his abrupt, albeit provoked outburst. Both Carl and Ronnie are victims of circumstance and class. Nonetheless, although Gerri and Tom appear smug and contented, in a melodramatic vein there are also cracks in their existence. The regularity of their lives is reinforced by the absence of Joe. He no longer lives at home, and his lack of visits is emphasized and noted throughout. Joe is the subject of constant discussion between Gerri, Tom and Mary, and when Mary, unable to go home after an evening meal because she has had too much to drink, stays at the house, she sleeps in their son’s room which still evidences his childhood suggesting the couple’s reluctance to acknowledge his departure from home. Joe is not as frequent a visitor as they would like, and he keeps secret the fact that he has had a girlfriend for several months. In turn, Gerri in particular seems threatened by Mary’s attraction to her son, and when Mary is malicious to Joe’s new girlfriend, Gerri withdraws her hospitality and treats Mary as an outsider. Thus, the film follows melodramatic form with highs and lows, with the characters presented as both self-satisfied yet vulnerable. At the end of the film even Ronnie keeps Mary at bay on the doorstep before eventually inviting her in. This sequence begins with a medium shot of Ronnie in the sitting room surrounded by the clutter and ephemera of Gerri and Tom’s life. Mary arrives unannounced, but Ronnie refuses to admit her even though she is in a distressed state of mind. Eventually he allows her entry, and her exclusion becomes complete when it transpires that she has not visited the house for months and that, indeed, as Ronnie reveals, Gerri has never even mentioned her to him. As the two await the return of Gerri and Tom they smoke cigarettes in the conservatory, and Mary expresses her feelings of loneliness as she explains that on the proceeds of the sale of her car which has broken down, she purchased a bottle of champagne and is now experiencing a hangover. The fact that she

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drank alone further emphasizes her segregation from family life, and she reveals that she has no children and has lost touch with her friends from her youth. When Gerri and Tom arrive home they are distant with Mary, offering Ronnie a cup of tea but leaving Mary in the hallway. Leigh frames Mary standing alone as the noise off-screen indicates that the others are busy in the kitchen. She stands head down and shivering until Gerri, feeling sorry for her, invites Mary to join them. When Katie and Joe arrive, the house becomes full of bustle and Gerri offers them all drinks. While discussion takes place the camera pans left and downwards towards Mary who is now seated, staring vacantly into space, while Katie attempts to engage Ronnie in conversation. During the meal the discussion centres on foreign travel, and Gerri and Tom talk about their trips abroad. Throughout the conversation Leigh revolves around all the characters until he focuses on Ronnie and Mary. Both appear stunned, and the place names mentioned by Gerri and Tom are clearly alien to them suggesting their unworldliness and outsider status. The voices of Joe and Katie can be heard explaining about their forthcoming visit to Paris, but the camera remains on Mary, her figure expression suggesting her sadness and loneliness, until finally, there is no sound at all, and she is trapped in her own isolated state.

Family tensions As Laura Mulvey argues, ‘[r]oughly, there are two different initial standpoints for melodrama. One is coloured by a female protagonist’s dominating point of view which acts as a source of identification. The other examines tensions in the family, and between sex and generations’ (1994, 76). If, in a melodramatic way, Leigh introduces his characters as victims then he also focuses on the threat to family. As noted, Mary has designs for Joe despite their age difference, and when invited for dinner to Tom and Gerri’s house, she dresses glamorously, her long hair falling over her shoulder, her cleavage on display. When Mary realizes that Joe won’t be there, she is disappointed, and as if to emphasize her solitary status, the camera cuts to a medium shot of the three standing together in the kitchen: Tom to the forefront of the frame preparing food while Gerri and Mary are to the rear. The close relationship that exists between Tom and Gerri does not go unnoticed by Mary. When they playfully discuss their late rising that morning, the camera cuts to Mary whose face adopts a pained and pinched expression. It is as though

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Leigh has deliberately exaggerated her single status as opposed to the marital position that the couple enjoy. In conventional cinematic form, Leigh uses tight framing to enable the viewer to understand the emotions of the characters, and this is particularly noticeable with his treatment of Mary. Psychological pressure on characters is a feature of melodrama, and this is a point noted by Elsaesser who, when discussing Vincente Minnelli’s work, observes that the commercial necessity of compression (being also a formal one) is taken by Minnelli into the films themselves and developed as a theme – that of a pervasive psychological pressure on the characters. An acute sense of claustrophobia in decor and locale translates itself into a restless, and yet suppressed energy surfacing sporadically in the actions and the behaviour of the protagonists . . . with hysteria bubbling all the time just below the surface. (1994, 52–3)

Gerri and Tom also exercise a social power. As Geoffrey Nowell-Smith suggests, in melodrama ‘[t]he characters are neither the rulers nor the ruled, but occupy a middle ground, exercising local power or suffering local powerlessness, within the family or the small town’ (1994, 71). That the family is a strong institution is not in dispute in Another Year. When Joe arrives to help with the allotment, the three exclude Mary who is seen scurrying down the road, glancing back while Gerri, Tom and Joe load the car. Similarly, the family go down to the allotment together, the spectator having been informed of Joe’s love for the place during his childhood, and Leigh shows them first digging the patch and spreading compost on it together, then seated in the garden shed drinking tea from a flask, thus emphasizing family values, power and solidarity. The culmination of the sequence shows Joe standing at the edge of the plot gazing down protectively towards his parents. The underpinning of family strength and the family as institution is reiterated when Mary is invited for dinner. Joe and Katie sit at the table together, and he holds his girlfriend’s hand, stroking it fondly, much to Mary’s annoyance. As Mary explains about her car, she glances furtively at the couple, her facial expression suggesting that she is upset and disturbed by Joe’s relationship. Throughout her description, she is marginalized in the frame, and Tom balances the composition, standing calmly to the right as Mary relates her tale. To the rear, the kitchen is a display of memory and home and emphasizes Mary’s displacement and outsider status. Indeed, her own home is never shown or visited; the spectator is only ever introduced to the interior of Tom and Gerri’s house further emphasizing their superiority and desirable lifestyle

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juxtaposed with those less fortunate. At one point the camera cuts to a view of Joe and Katie seated side-by-side. To the rear sits a photograph, presumably of Joe as a child. Other ephemera and objects arranged on the dresser suggest a comfortable and happy home. Just as the ‘closed’, claustrophobic world that Elsaesser refers to is highlighted through a stifling mise-en-scène of middle-class items and decoration, so the interior of Gerri and Tom’s house and world seems increasingly confined and out of bounds to outsiders as the seasons pass. In the final shots of the autumn sequence, Leigh places the camera outside the family home as Gerri opens the door for Mary to leave. Now Mary is fully excluded; this time Gerri does not invite her to stay, and following a curt farewell, Gerri closes the door. In the fading light, Mary is framed in the centre of the composition walking towards the camera. Gerri has eliminated her from the warmth of the house, and the juxtaposition of the affection in Mary life as opposed to Mary’s loneliness is further reinforced when the camera cuts back to the interior space of the home. Gerri and Tom discuss the evening, noting their ‘disappointment’, presumably at Mary’s attitude. The warm glow from a lamp bathes them, seated side-by-side, in a soft light. Gerri snuggles closer to Tom, each holding a glass of wine as they discuss Joe’s girlfriend, agreeing that they both like her. As Mulvey argues, ‘characters caught up in the world of melodrama are not allowed transcendent awareness or knowledge . . . The melodramatic characters act out contradiction, achieving actual confrontation to varying degrees and gradually facing impossible resolutions and probable defeats’ (1994, 77).

Conclusion In Vera Drake, rather than generate a realist trajectory, Leigh attempts to recreate the past in an accurate and faithful way, and unlike the work of some of his contemporaries (e.g. Ken Loach, Shane Meadows and Duane Hopkins), Leigh does not aim for a documentary or observational style of cinematography. Throughout Vera Drake he obeys the rules of classical cinema: he permits the viewer knowledge of the characters and they are presented as knowable through conventions such as the close-up, point-of-view shot, and eyeline match, leaving the spectator under no illusion that this is, in any way, a factual piece of film-making.

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Referring to the work of Minnelli and Douglas Sirk, Elsaesser suggests that, [f]ilms like Home from the Hill, The Cobweb, Tarnished Angels or Written on the Wind strike one as ‘objective’ films, since they do not have a central hero (even though there may be a gravitational pull towards one of the protagonists) and nonetheless they cohere, mainly because each of the characters’ predicaments is made plausible in terms that relate to the problems of the others. (1994, 63)

In a similar manner, Leigh provides multiple players as psychologically rounded figures to enable the plot to progress. In Vera Drake and Another Year, all the characters contribute to the narrative progression. However, it is not the intention here to strictly categorize Leigh’s work, merely to offer another reading. Indeed realism and melodrama need not necessarily conflict, as Hallam and Marshment point out: [r]ealism and authenticity become key terms at the turn of the century as theatre seeks to reclaim literary and cultural respectability, denigrating melodrama as an entertainment only fit for children and women. But the two terms are not antithetical  – they present different approaches to shared ideological and cultural conditions [developing] in tandem in what Vardac has described as a ‘romantic-realist’ aesthetic. (2000, 20)

If this point is recognized then arguably Leigh is a romantic realist, his work rooted in the theatrical tenets of melodramatic form.

Works cited Carney, Ray and Leonard Quart. The Films of Mike Leigh. Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Elsaesser, Thomas. ‘Tales of Sound and Fury: Observations in the Family Melodrama’, in Home Is Where the Heart Is: Studies in Melodrama and the Woman’s Film, ed. Christine Gledhill. London: Bfi Publishing, 1994, 43–69. Gledhill, Christine, ed. Home Is Where the Heart Is: Studies in Melodrama and the Woman’s Film. London: Bfi Publishing, 1994. Hallam, Julia and Margaret Marshment. Realism and Popular Cinema. Manchester, New York: Manchester University Press, 2000. Hardy, Molly O’Hagan. ‘Gendered Trauma in Mike Leigh’s Vera Drake (2004)’, Studies in European Cinema 3:3 (2006): 211–21. Hayward, Susan. Key Concepts in Cinema Studies. London: Routledge, 1996. Kemp, Philip. ‘Review: Another Year’, Sight and Sound 20:12 (2010): 55–6.

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Klinger, Barbara. Melodrama and Meaning. Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 1994. Lawrenson, Edward. (2005) ‘Backstreet Revisited’, Sight and Sound 15:1 (2005): 12–15. Leggott, James. Contemporary British Cinema: From Heritage to Horror. London, New York: Wallflower Press, 2008. Manville, Lesley. DVD Special Features: Interview with Lesley Manville. Momentum Pictures, UK Film Council and Channel Four Television Corporation, 2010. Mulvey, Laura. ‘Notes on Sirk and Melodrama’, in Home Is Where the Heart Is: Studies in Melodrama and the Woman’s Film, ed. Christine Gledhill. London: Bfi Publishing, 1994, 75–9. Nelmes, Jill. An Introduction to Film Studies. London, New York: Routledge, 1996. Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey. ‘Minnelli and Melodrama’, in Home Is Where the Heart Is: Studies in Melodrama and the Woman’s Film, ed. Christine Gledhill. London: Bfi Publishing, 1994, 70–4. Watson, Garry. The Cinema of Mike Leigh: A Sense of the Real. London, New York: Wallflower Press, 2004. Whitehead, Tony. Mike Leigh. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007.

10

Class, Loss and Space: Reframing Secrets & Lies Frances Pheasant-Kelly

Introduction Secrets & Lies (1996), perhaps the most well-known of Mike Leigh’s films, won the Palme D’or (Best Picture) and Best Actress (Brenda Blethyn) awards in 1996 and became Leigh’s most commercially successful film to date (Watson 2004, 3). Leigh himself attributes the film’s box office success to three main reasons: first, its content, commenting that, ‘it seemed to get through to people, perhaps because it’s about identity’ (in Raphael 2008, 254); second, its achievements at Cannes and its five Oscar nominations (in Raphael 2008, 254); and third, its central issue of adoption (in Raphael 2008, 254). Indeed, Leigh’s focus on the concerns and ordinariness of everyday lives places his work, according to Leonard Quart, ‘in the general tradition of English realism, which has been one of the dominant strains of British cinema’ (2000, 8). Certainly, the film’s attention to class, race and gender, its themes of birth, death and marriage, together with a distinctive lack of glamour position Secrets & Lies within a realist milieu. Yet, it is one of the few social realist films to place a working-class woman at its centre (Lay 2002, 108) while its preoccupation with class friction is characteristic of Leigh’s work. Furthermore, as Quart explains, Leigh’s work possesses certain distinguishing elements that separate it from the realist tradition. One aspect of Leigh’s uniqueness is the way that his films depend on an ensemble cast rather than single protagonists (Quart 2000, 10). In fact, most scholarly studies of Leigh’s films place emphasis on characterization, and the ways in which Leigh encourages his cast to develop their own characters, often through improvisation. Lay partly attributes his authorial style to this approach, noting that, ‘part of

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Leigh’s style evolves from his practice of working with actors to develop their characters in great depth. The subsequent detail is picked up and amplified by the director, which in turn helps to create an intense and personal realism, or ‘heightened realism’ (Lay 2002, 90). Hallam and Marshment consider Secrets & Lies to be an expositional film that ‘combine[s] looser, episodic narrative structures with location shooting and observational or participant/observer camera techniques, [and] create[s] detailed character-centred studies of lifestyles and events that are often the subject of social concern’ (2000, 104). They too go on to comment that ‘Secrets & Lies [. . .] emphasis[es] dialogue and performance as a focus for viewer engagement rather than action and events’ (2000, 104). Leigh himself states that, ‘of course [Secrets & Lies] is about identity. There’s the whole thing about the identity of Hortense and Roxanne, but also the individual identities of all the people Maurice takes portraits of, people who are momentarily corralled into an idealized version of themselves’ (in Raphael 2008, 272). In relation to the centrality of characterization, Ray Carney identifies further defining narrative and visual qualities of Leigh’s work, noting, ‘Many of Leigh’s films pair figures who are, in effect, each other’s antitypes’ (2000, 15). Also relevant to this essay is his observation that, ‘Leigh’s fundamental organizational device is the paralleled scene. The films are virtual echo chambers of compared imaginative positions’ (Carney 2000, 16). Predominantly, therefore, there is a scholarly focus on the characterization of Leigh’s films, with less attention to settings and spaces. In their analysis of space in expositional realism more generally, Hallam and Marshment comment that such films ‘construct social space as a character-centered environment, giving the films something of the flavour of contemporary ethnography’ (2000, 105). In specific relation to Leigh’s films, Quart remarks that, The emphasis [. . .] is rarely on the landscape or cityscape bounding his characters’ lives [. . .] When Leigh uses the public world, he doesn’t make it aesthetically or sociologically vivid enough to provide release or escape for his characters or the film audience. (Quart 2000, 10)

Certainly, while there are glimpses of a stark urban landscape in Secrets & Lies, its character-centred narrative largely unfolds within domestic interiors. However, the details of the interior mise-en-scène, and particularly the way in which characters interact with their surroundings, add vitality and meaning to the film. Important too is the way in which these interactions are framed,

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the cinematography conferring additional psychological dimensions to the characters. In relation to this latter observation, Thomas Elsaesser and Malte Hagener (2010) explore the visual implications of framing in film more generally (among other ‘sensory’ approaches) and suggest a fundamental dichotomy between meanings conveyed by the window and the frame. Primarily, they argue that, one looks through a window but one looks at a frame [original emphases]. The notion of the window implies that one loses sight of the framing rectangle as it denotes transparency, while the frame highlights the content of the (opaque) surface and its constructed nature, effectively implying composition and artificiality. (Elsaesser and Hagener 2010, 14)

The distinction that Elsaesser and Hagener discern between the window and the frame is one upon which this essay draws in arguing for certain formal tendencies and metaphorical meanings in Leigh’s framing of Secrets & Lies. This essay suggests that the film deviates from the conventional aesthetics of social realism in its various distancing strategies that reflexively highlight form and performance. These include, for example, its photographic and theatrical styles of presentation that accentuate composition, incidental direct address and performance towards the camera. At the same time, this essay utilizes Carney’s observation of Leigh’s affinity for oppositions to explore its mise-en-scène from a spatial perspective, and its cinematography and framing in relation to its central themes. While not intending to contest the importance of characters to Secrets & Lies, this essay therefore suggests that its spaces and their framing are also significant, and that a further aspect of Leigh’s uniqueness in relation to this film arises in the way that aspects of identity correlate with certain spatial scenarios.

Space and Secrets & Lies These spatial scenarios take three forms: first, the sociocultural spaces of the diegesis that predominantly indicate difference of class, although also allude to race and gender; second, the inferred psychic spaces of its characters as relevant to memory, loss and trauma, and which manifest in both framing of characters, and in space as metaphor. Third, this chapter considers the cinematic space within the frame, particularly its mobilization of theatricality or photographic style. At times, these three aspects of space converge since the way in which

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Leigh frames cinematic space often corresponds to the film’s sociocultural inferences, or reflections of trauma and loss. In addition, the nature of space necessarily invokes commentary on the boundary as its defining limit, an element that has relevance to the film concerning thresholds and dichotomies of space (e.g. oppositions of inside/outside, and private/public). Integral to each of these aspects is the cinematographic frame itself as well as the use of internal framing devices within the mise-en-scène. The concept of framing and ‘capturing the moment’ is especially relevant to a narrative concerning a photographer, but it is also important more routinely in the way that it ‘contributes to the rhetoric of the picture’ (Wells 1997, 229). As Victor Burgin notes, ‘through the agency of the frame the world is organized into a coherence which it actually lacks, into a parade of tableaux, a succession of “decisive moments”’ (1982, 146). In a more specific reference to realist films, Hallam and Marshment describe how cinematography and framing depend on ‘observational, static camerawork that creates the impression of raw, unmediated footage or “handheld” camerawork that creates an unsteady image and the impression that the operator is a participant observer, caught up in the thick of action and events’ (2000, 103). They continue that editing in the expositional film ‘favour[s] the use of mid-shots and long shots, use[s] longer shot length [. . .] and tends to favour, for example, two shot compositions of character interaction’ (2000, 108). Extending these various critical and theoretical premises and incorporating Elsaesser and Hagener’s conceptualization of the frame, this chapter reconsiders interpretations of Secrets & Lies. It argues that the filming of internal spaces, which range from a mise-en-scène of shabby, floral décor to orderly, elegant black and white spaces, provides commentaries on social status, ethnicity and gender. At the same time, it suggests that the film’s generalized claustrophobic framing points to the elements of repression that underpin the narrative and indeed, reflect in its title. Freud describes how ‘the essence of repression lies simply in turning something away, and keeping it at a distance, from the unconscious’ (1957, 147). This essay argues that Secrets & Lies applies a similar exclusion in its attention to spatiality, the boundary (of the frame or the physical boundary within the diegesis) pertaining to exclusion or containment of the social outcast (Stuart Christian), socially unacceptable disclosures or unpleasant or traumatic thoughts. Such tightly framed imagery often alludes to emotion and memory, with persistent references to absence and grief emerging throughout. Predominantly, this pivots around the passing of youth, since there is repeated mention of age. Important in connection to its themes, narrative

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structure and visual style is the pairing of various elements in opposition. These oppositions emerge, for example, in the cinematography, in the framing of the scenes or the visual details of the mise-en-scène. In the film’s finale, framing and cinematography are especially important in exploring internal domestic spaces as backdrops for theatrical performance. Drawing on Carney’s discussion of antitypes and parallel scenarios, this essay outlines the distinctive oppositional spaces in Secrets & Lies. In addition, it considers how its extended takes, long shots and distant framing contribute to the meaning of the film’s spaces, and how its settings create isolated stages for performance, at times particularly suggesting the emptiness of working class life.

Secrets & Lies: The film’s plot Secrets & Lies tells the story of a black woman, Hortense Cumberbatch (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), whose stepmother dies, leading her to trace her real mother, Cynthia Purley (Brenda Blethyn). However, Cynthia has concealed Hortense’s adoption from her other daughter, Roxanne (Claire Rushbrook). Another of the film’s ‘secrets’ concerns Cynthia’s brother, Maurice (Timothy Spall) and his wife Monica (Phyllis Logan) who have hidden the fact that they are unable to have children. In a family gathering to celebrate Roxanne’s twenty-first birthday, the truth behind these ‘Secrets and Lies’ finally emerges as Maurice dramatically announces Monica’s inability to conceive, and Cynthia reveals her secret adoption (though she refuses to name Hortense’s father). These revelations, though traumatic, lead the family to harmony and forgiveness.

The sociocultural spaces of Secrets & Lies The opening scenes introduce the spectator to the scene of a funeral  – a low angle static observational shot of cemetery headstones opens the film, black funeral cars traversing the cinematic frame and constituting the only movement within it. In the subsequent sequence, the camera executes a slow semi-circular pan around a static group standing at an open grave. Gradually zooming in, it cuts to a medium close-up of the group, followed by a close-up of two men shoveling earth into the grave. These two directly contrasting cinematographic approaches evident in the opening scenes illustrate the visual and narrative

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oppositions that structure Secrets & Lies. As extra-diegetic music then cuts in to overlay the intra-diegetic sound of funeral singing, the intensity of their overlap serves to draw attention to a black female, Hortense Cumberbatch, on whom the camera finally rests. The use of close-up establishes her as one of the film’s main characters, while an overhead shot then reveals her relationship to the deceased as it reveals a floral tribute arranged to create the word ‘mum’, its whiteness prominent against the sea of black clothing. The film immediately cuts to a wedding scene, further illustrating the multiple visual, thematic and narrative oppositions that pervade the film. A white wedding car parked outside a white-porticoed mansion contrasts with the previous black funeral procession, while inside the building the bride, a white female character, occupies the social space of upper-class suburbia. The sequence also replicates the initial pattern of cinematography of the funeral as wedding photographer, Maurice Purley, photographs the bride in long shot, and then moves in to close-up. The scene thus not only juxtaposes the domestic space of the bride’s home with the public space of the cemetery and their respective colour codes of white and black, but also contrasts the emotions of joy and grief. Implicitly therefore, the film connects emotion to space. It further introduces Maurice Purley as another of the leading characters and provides a clue to the film’s preoccupation with framing through Maurice’s photography, and the incisive click of his camera as it captures the moment. The opposition between black and white establishes the theme of ethnicity from the outset while the use of colour as a motif recurs throughout the film, its purpose also being to signify class and, to some extent, gender. In addition to colour, Leigh repeatedly adopts a combination of long lens and/or tight framing to infer the claustrophobia and constriction of interior domestic spaces, often in relation to working-class settings. Middle-class domestic space also seems entrapping in the scene following the wedding in which the viewer sees Maurice’s wife Monica intently, almost violently, stenciling designs onto furniture, a close-up revealing her tense facial expression. At this point, the source of her anxiety is unclear. The camera then cuts to an exterior long shot of her looking out from the window of her suburban, detached house as a group of children skips past. This scene illustrates the tension between the window and frame that Elsaesser and Hagener define. For while Monica looks through the window, thus highlighting a narrative purpose (to watch the children walking past), the window simultaneously serves as a framing device. She appears small and trapped, the lattice window both visually fragmenting her and constituting

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one of the many ‘frames within a frame’ that pervade the film. As Gilles Deleuze notes, ‘Doors, windows, box office windows, skylights, car windows, mirrors are all frames in frames. The great directors have particular affinities with particular secondary, tertiary, etc. frames’ (2005, 15). A further cut to the interior of the house reveals Maurice sitting on a comfortable-looking armchair, drinking red wine, in a carefully colour-coordin-ated living room. ‘At least they can play out round here’, he remarks to Monica, suggesting that they live in a ‘safe’ area, and further inferring their affluent social status. The constriction implied by the window scene suggests a relationship between gender and domestic space, the unfolding of the film’s narrative continually aligning Monica with her home and rendering its spaces as constrictive. In his study of cultural geographies, David Sibley draws attention to psychoanalytic commentaries that suggest that, ‘the home serves as a boundary of the self ’ (1995, 94). He also highlights tensions within the domestic sphere, noting that, ‘[o]ppositions like inside/outside, clean/ dirty, tidy/untidy are essential features of the dwelling . . . but they are not stable or fixed . . . Thus, the fear of pollution can be a constant source of anxiety’ (1995, 94). In a related way, control over space is essential to Monica, her anxieties manifesting as an obsessive ordering of her possessions and environment. For example, we see her re-position pictures and ornaments on the mantelpiece, drawing spectators’ attention to a photograph. A close-up of the portrait shows a young, smiling girl whom we learn is Maurice’s niece Roxanne, although initially discussion between Monica and Maurice implies that Roxanne may be their daughter. ‘I don’t half miss her’, says Maurice of Roxanne and then comments, ‘I’m really proud of that picture . . . it’s the last time she ever smiled’. Their conversation turns to the last time that they saw her and introduces the film’s first sense of loss. Monica also informs Maurice that Roxanne is ‘back on the streets’, suggesting to the viewer that she is either homeless or a prostitute. In fact, a subsequent scene reveals a grim-faced adult Roxanne sweeping the streets, the image proving to be completely antithetical to the beaming child in Maurice’s portrait. Moreover, the brick wall backdrop, against which a long shot reveals Roxanne striding back and forth as she sweeps, implies a stage for performance. (This theatrical element typifies Leigh’s work, becoming most apparent in the film’s closing scenes.) A cut to medium close-up further highlights Roxanne’s surly, scowling demeanour. This visual opposition illustrates the difference of the image (the photographic portrait) to the lived reality, perhaps a Brechtian

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allusion to the nature of cinema and its illusory capacities and further reflecting Leigh’s artistic tendencies. Indeed, the notion of façade permeates the film, evident for example in Hortense’s relaxation of her professional profile (illustrated by the ‘face-pulling’ episode with Cynthia), and Monica’s possession of a four-poster ‘fairytale’ bed that is, in actuality, a site of reproductive anxiety (we learn that she is unable to have children). Monica and Maurice’s reflections about the photograph and the visual opposition between the image and the ‘original’ also convey one of the film’s themes, that of loss of youth, exemplifying how the visual strategies of social realism are able to mediate memory and emotion. Certainly, the film repeatedly references displays of emotion, and as Carney notes: the whole stylistic enterprise of these films is devoted to providing windows into characters’ souls. Musical orchestrations and expressionistic lighting cue us into characters’ emotions; close-ups let us look deep into their eyes and savor the expressions on their faces; blocking and framing techniques and editing rhythms and juxtapositions let viewers vicariously participate in characters’ emotional and intellectual states. (Carney 2000, 21)

Carney suggests that these strategies are ‘directed toward the end of making consciousness visible and audible’ (2000, 21). Here, such consciousness is rendered visible through the device of the photograph (Figure 10.1).

Figure 10.1  Roxanne Purley (Claire Rushbrook) and Paul (Lee Ross) try to remain at ease when answering questions about their plans for the future in Secrets & Lies (1996)

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Monica’s inability to have children constitutes one of the film’s ‘secrets’, and is the main source of her anguish. Her obsessive attention to domestic minutiae therefore seems to be an attempt to compensate for the inadequate physical body (and thereby disavow lack). Paradoxically, we learn that Monica and Maurice have six bedrooms, a point emerging when Cynthia, Maurice’s sister, asks her daughter, Roxanne, ‘What’s ‘e want with six bedrooms anyway?’ The size of their home is thus not only a signifier of social aspiration, but also seemingly fetishizes its emptiness. Moreover, when Maurice arrives home to find an angry Monica frantically vacuuming an already pristine carpet he is forced to squeeze past her to gain entry. Cramped physical space and framing convey the psychological strain of their tense relationship. As he tries to kiss her, she pushes him aside and curtly says, ‘mind out of the way’. While earlier Monica wore a silk trouser suit that complemented the living room décor, this time she wears a blue dress that matches the blue wallpaper and frilled blinds of the hallway, visually suggesting a connection between domestic space and gender. The camera pulls back as Maurice walks down the hallway framing him in medium close-up, which further highlights the lack of space and signifies both his feelings of grief (for the child he cannot have) and repression of that grief. In the kitchen, close framing encapsulates these emotions still further. The camera rapidly tracks Monica’s increasingly agitated figure behaviour as she angrily points out the fridge, freezer and recipe books to Maurice before it zooms into Maurice. A consistent emphasis on constricted framing renders the kitchen particularly claustrophobic, although any scene inside their home seems constrained. There are also allusions to exclusion of the ‘other’: Monica is not only obsessed with hygiene and orderliness, but is reluctant to invite Cynthia (who is working class) to a party planned for Roxanne’s birthday, and she initially rebuffs Hortense (who is black) too. The boundaries of domestic space therefore seem important to Monica, while the film also pinpoints interior divisions of space. At Roxanne’s party Monica indicates to her guests, ‘this is my bathroom’, and ‘that’s Maurice’s bathroom’. Furthermore, she is clearly embarrassed at the lifted toilet lids, these reiterating her attention to orderliness, as well as connoting concerns with hygiene and class. The relationship between Monica and her home is evident in the way that she rarely appears outside of it, on the surface conforming to traditional gendered divisions between private and public space and the conflation of women with the domestic sphere (Massey 1994, 191–211; Grosz 2000, 219). Though she visits Maurice at his studio, we mostly see her at home. Implicitly, Maurice also

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connects her to domestic space, and in a discussion about inviting Cynthia to their home, comments, ‘Bout time you showed it off, you’ve done a lovely job.’ He therefore also conflates the traditional roles of women and home while, as noted earlier, even the colour of Monica’s clothing coordinates with the interior decor. In a parallel scenario, Cynthia wears a turquoise hand-knit jumper that matches the colour of her front door and floral leggings that have a similar pattern to the wallpaper of her rented home. Thus, while Monica’s silk waistcoat and trouser outfit reflects the middle-class nature of her environment, Cynthia’s attire correlates with her working-class surroundings. Moreover, the framing constrictions apparent in Monica’s home also exist for Cynthia. For example, we often see Cynthia standing in her hallway, framed by its doorway and reflected in a mirror simultaneously. Adopting Elsaesser and Hagener’s argument here, such framing devices arguably correspond to a ‘closed film form’ (2010, 17). As Elsaesser and Hagener explain, The closed film form . . . is centripetal, oriented inwardly; the totality of the world is contained within the image frame . . . The open form, on the other hand, is centrifugal, oriented outwardly. Here, the frame (as mobile window) represents a changeable portion of a potentially limitless world. (Elsaesser and Hagener 2010, 17)

Elsaesser and Hagener go on to postulate that the difference between closed and open film form corresponds to that between the window and the frame (2010, 17). They conclude that, ‘[t]he window implies a diegetic world that extends beyond the limit of the image while the frame delineates a filmic composition that exists solely for the eyes of the beholder’ (2010, 18). While the frames in the scene in Secrets & Lies described above include a doorframe and a mirror frame, arguably such devices similarly allude to closed scenarios where the viewer is invited to contemplate the composition and/or metaphorical meaning of the scene rather than merely witness an unfolding and seemingly uncontrived social reality. In a further connection between cinematographic constriction and sociocultural commentary, we see the exterior mise-en-scène of the working-class terraced housing where Cynthia lives set against a backdrop of high-rise flats, perspective compressed by the use of a long lens to emphasize the cramped architecture. A further instance occurs in a scene when Cynthia looks out of her front door, the camera angle revealing the entrances to adjacent houses. The

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cinematography renders them in deep focus, accentuating the proximity of each doorway to the next through repetition and through camera position and lens choice. Similar spatial constrictions are evident when Maurice visits Cynthia, indicated through various internal framing devices. In this case, a static camera observes Cynthia in the kitchen framed by the hall doorway, while the domestic clutter of her kitchen also closes her in. As Maurice hangs up his coat, Cynthia automatically hands him a roll of toilet paper as if this is a well-rehearsed routine. ‘If I’d known you were coming, I’d have warmed up the seat’, says Cynthia to Maurice, seeming to confirm that this is the case. The acknowledgement of Maurice’s habits seems overly personal, while distinctions of class further emerge in Cynthia’s outside toilet. The lack of privacy associated with this as an essentially public space is evident as Cynthia converses with her brother, and the camera, assuming a high angle position from the top of the door, looks down voyeuristically at Maurice. In a prior spatial parallel of Cynthia’s outside toilet, we see Monica in one of her many bathrooms, also sitting on the toilet. The dissimilarity between their respective bathrooms implies the class difference that is typical of Leigh’s work, while the language used is also telling. When Monica shows the party guests around her home, Cynthia exclaims, ‘another lavatory!’ while Monica emphatically insists on using the word ‘bathroom’. Monica’s perceived importance of space to the construction of class and social identity emerges when she even shows the group her airing cupboard – ‘ooh, it’s an airing cupboard’, says Jayne (Elizabeth Berrington) in a disappointed tone. ‘Not very capacious’, responds Monica, seeming unaware of the futility and pretentiousness of displaying the cupboard’s interior. Entering the master bedroom, she then shows them the four-poster bed. ‘I can see Maurice thrashing about in there’, says Cynthia, to which Monica replies, ‘it is a king size’, diverting the crude implication of Cynthia’s comment to a more materialistic theme, again ostensibly fetishizing her inability to have children with material objects. ‘You’ve got everything’, remarks Jayne when clearly Monica does not. The interior of Hortense’s apartment provides additional contrast to the homes of Cynthia and Monica. A low-level close-up of a carrier bag that Hortense carries reveals the words ‘quality foods’, alerting the spectator to a further potential class distinction. The film then introduces us to a mise-en-scène of stylish cream and black furnishings. Indeed, while ornaments and highly patterned wallpaper adorn the homes of Monica and Cynthia, Hortense’s flat

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is organized and plain. Its neutral decor and content are almost wholly black and white, echoing the colours of the opening funeral and wedding sequence and repeated in Hortense’s clothing (she mostly wears black). The black and white colour motif further emerges in a bathroom scene where we see her swathed in a white bath towel, and in her personal possessions, her apartment containing a white sofa and black telephone while she holds a black address book. There are also differences in the way that she is positioned within the (camera) frame. In one sequence, she sits centrally, the background behind her appearing symmetrical while the white walls lack the internal framing devices apparent within Cynthia’s and Monica’s homes, perhaps signifying the fact that she is prepared to seek the truth (about her adoption). Attention is drawn to this opposition as Hortense telephones Cynthia. The camera subsequently reveals a distraught Cynthia (having just argued with Roxanne), whose disheveled appearance, erratic figure behaviour and immediate surroundings contrast with Hortense’s composure and orderly home. We then see Cynthia standing in the hallway from the kitchen, positioned so that the doorway through into the hall again serves as a framing device. Following her conversation with Hortense, Cynthia moves to sit on the staircase, replicating an earlier scene when a similarly distressed Monica also sat on the stairs. The banister dissects the frame and exerts a visually enclosing effect in both situations. Commenting on comparable framing effects apparent in genres of classical cinema that feature women within the domestic sphere, Elaesser and Hagener draw particular attention to a short compilation of 1950s’ Hollywood melodramas, Home Stories (Müller 1990), that condenses these effects into one film. Here, they also note the use of multiple internal framing devices, commenting that, ‘Müller’s insistent use of frames within frames – doors, windows, staircases, beams and mirrors crowd the composition – emphasizes the inner turmoil pounding against a keen sense of visual confinement. The framing allows women to come into focus, but only to enforce their own (sense of) captivity’ (2010, 53). There is thus a parallel sense of constriction through identical visual devices in Secrets & Lies, arguably conveying its melodramatic tendencies. Indeed, Sean O’Sullivan claims that Secrets & Lies conforms to ‘a traditional cinematic category: the melodrama . . . skewing towards the emotional and the confessional’ (2011, 56). However, while Monica is associated predominantly with her home, we see both Hortense and Cynthia in their respective workspaces. Still, the factory where Cynthia works is as repressive as her home, the same constricting visual strategies apparent. A pile of cardboard boxes foregrounds the frame, while

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geometrical lines dominate the setting. In the background, we see Cynthia through an open door, these aspects again visually suggesting her entrapment. A low-angle close-up highlights her downturned mouth and general air of discontentment before cutting to a high camera angle to show her repetitively machining slits into sheets of cardboard. The scene cuts to a discussion between Roxanne and Cynthia at home that revolves around the emptiness of their lives. ‘You’ve been sitting there for a month with a face like a slapped arse’, Cynthia remarks. ‘What’s there to smile about’, retorts Roxanne. Their hostile, mother– daughter interchange contrasts with the ensuing echoed scene of a young girl having an eye test at the optometrists where Hortense works. In opposition to Cynthia and Roxanne’s heated exchange, the young girl whose eyes Hortense is testing is well spoken and polite, and Hortense is kindly and reassuring. Hortense’s workplace also follows a similar visual style to that of her home, being predominantly white in colour and highly organized (although clinical rather than stylish). Hortense then leaves the optometrist’s for the weekend to sort out her deceased mother’s papers and personal effects. As she goes through her mother’s possessions, Hortense becomes aware of an argument in the hallway below. The camera cuts to a static, high-angle shot looking down from the top of the staircase as two of her family members argue about their mother’s house (their argument revolving around the large size of the house and its suitability for a family rather than a single person) thereby returning to the subject of bereavement.

Spaces of loss and trauma The theme of memory and loss introduced by the funeral scene at the beginning of the film continually pervades the film, with Hortense telling her friend Dionne that, ‘there’s nothing rational about grief ’. We also observe Maurice’s introspection at a wedding ceremony where he looks wistfully off into the distance as the words ‘for better or for worse’ echo through the church, perhaps reflecting that he has incurred the ‘for worse’ option. The matter of loss is further evident in a scene at Maurice’s studio where the previous owner of the business, Stuart Christian (Ron Cook), wanders in. Appearing unkempt and shabby, he too reveals a personal narrative of grief, telling Maurice and Monica that his wife has left him and his mother has died. ‘It’s my dad I miss’, he says to Maurice.

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There is considerable literature concerning the representation of emotion and trauma within film, these often highlighting the visual device of the flashback (see Turim 2001). Lury and Massey describe how film in general has a unique capacity to mediate temporality and memory: Mobility, passage, memory, consequences and potential can be presented and articulated through editing, flashbacks, flash-forwards, dissolves, sound effects, voiceover and music. Because it is a temporal medium, film can address spatiality in a way that other visual media can only allude to. (Lury and Massey 1999, 234)

Secrets & Lies however, dispenses with conventional cinematic vocabularies to depict internal mental states. Rather, it exploits framing, dialogue and a mise-enscène of empty or dilapidated space to conjure the past. Brian McFarlane places particular emphasis on the dialogue within Leigh’s films, commenting, ‘It is hard to think of equivalent US films which place so much reliance on the verbal at the expense of the more obviously “cinematic” qualities of mise-en-scène and editing’ (2009, 367). Certainly this is the case when Cynthia and Maurice discuss Roxanne’s birthday – Maurice looks off into the distance sadly, murmuring ‘. . . twenty-one . . .’ as if recalling his own lost youth while Cynthia reflects, ‘I was carrying her when I was twenty-one.’ Cynthia too refers frequently to youth, the yearning for this surfacing in several scenes. ‘When I was your age, I could have had the pick of the crop’, Cynthia tells Roxanne. ‘Why didn’t ya then’, retorts Roxanne. ‘Because I lost my poor mother, that’s why’, responds Cynthia, once more verbally highlighting loss. However, contesting McFarlane’s comment, Leigh argues that, ‘what is going on cinematically and visually is integral to how it works; it’s not just a whole lot of talking’ (McFarlane 2009, 367). A scene where Cynthia examines her appearance in a mirror illustrates Leigh’s claim since dialogue is markedly absent here. She massages cream into her face before cupping her hands under her chest and pushing it upwards as if recalling her youthful body, close camera framing accentuating her feelings of wistfulness while her reflection within the mirror heightens her visual constriction. This scene also lends weight to an argument that framing techniques operate to imply internal mental states. Alternatively, Leigh’s visual repertoire incorporates physical, diegetic spaces that become metaphors for the psychic spaces of memory and sorrow. Richard Porton notes this too when he comments, ‘Their drab flat, particularly the attic, with its peeling paint, leaking pipes, and worthless bric-a-brac, functions as an

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unobtrusive metaphor for their lives’ emotional detritus’ (1997, 51). Porton’s description of Cynthia’s house indicates how she, like Monica, also mediates her grief through space, but rather than an obsessive ordering of objects, Cynthia hoards her parents’ belongings, thereby similarly fetishizing loss. ‘Look at all this junk – what are you going to do with it’, Maurice asks Cynthia as he examines the leaking roof in an upstairs bedroom. A low camera angle compresses the contents of the frame as Maurice checks the stained ceiling. A medium close-up of Cynthia’s face then reveals her escalating anguish, a half-opened door dissecting the frame and household clutter surrounding her. The bedroom scene epitomizes the way that space connects to grief, feelings of bereavement made palpable both in its content and through the cinematography. In fact, space embodies not just memory but physical absence: Maurice picks up a hairbrush with their mother’s hair, seen in medium close-up, still visibly entangled within it while Cynthia randomly toys with various useless, forlorn-looking objects relating to their childhood. Close, static framing of the two characters accentuates the repression of their sadness before it becomes manifestly apparent as Cynthia then begs Maurice to give her a cuddle and sobs profusely on his shoulder. The camera zooms in almost imperceptibly as Maurice holds Cynthia who cries, ‘you’re the only one I’ve got, Maurice’. Maurice too attempts to alleviate his pent-up grief and tries to tell Cynthia about Monica’s secret. While conversing with Cynthia earlier, he had remembered his past girlfriends’ names with easy recall and some wistfulness, Cynthia asking first, ‘what’s ‘er name . . . never stopped talking’; ‘Tina’, Maurice replied. ‘And the other one, wouldn’t open ’er mouth’ – ‘Maxine’, said Maurice. Now, a close-up of his face shows him painfully trying to formulate the words to tell her about Monica’s infertility but being unable to do so. The sequence subsequently cuts to an empty bar where Maurice appears to reflect further on his troubles. The camera frames him in long shot, the surrounding emptiness of the cinematic frame highlighting his mental as well as physical isolation. It then cuts to a medium close-up, the side lighting and composition suggestive of a photographic portrait and resembling the painting that hangs on the wall above him. His anguished facial expression is replicated in the sequence immediately following where we see him sitting at the kitchen table with Monica. Garry Watson (2004, 136) notes that this shot also resembles a portrait while both Maurice’s disposition and the framing and angle of the camera, which echo the earlier bar scene, still convey his mental and emotional isolation. As he and Monica sit facing the camera with the table between them, they seem disconnected from each other. The composition of the scene thus

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visually mediates the emptiness of their lives. Watson too comments on the connection between framing and emotion, remarking, ‘like the rest of their home, the kitchen is kept spotlessly clean and the framing of this last shot conveys a strong sense of the aching sadness at the centre of this couple’s life’ (2004, 136). Maurice attempts to discuss his feelings with Monica and asks her ‘what was your mum like when your dad died’, before deliberating upon his own feelings when his mother died and his father’s reaction to her death. The sequence culminates in the film’s most telling image of grief when Maurice asks Monica if she thinks Roxanne misses her father (the identity of whom constitutes one of the film’s ‘secrets and lies’), to which Monica responds harshly, ‘You can’t miss what you never had.’ ‘Can’t you’, replies Maurice, clearly indicating that he does. We then see him go into the neatly manicured garden framed between the patio doors, walls and miniature rows of spiked, functionless railings, the claustrophobic framing again signifying the repression of loss. Even when he is outdoors, the internal framing techniques suggest that he is confined by the past and the pain of grief for the child he cannot have. This image is particularly susceptible to Elsaesser and Hagener’s analysis of frame and window, though here these modes of signification apply simultaneously, the image operating in both two and three dimensions. For, while Monica (and the spectator) observes Maurice through the patio door glass, he is framed in a constricted way by the surrounding door and garden paraphernalia. A relevant parallel, and one with which Elsaesser and Hagener introduce their book, is that of Rear Window (Hitchcock 1954). Here, the protagonist voyeuristically watches the inhabitants of the apartments opposite, each window framing them and simultaneously conveying their respective entrapments and anxieties. This oscillation between two-dimensional and three-dimensional imagery is most prominent in the various scenes of social reality that become arrested as photographic images. A useful example of how trauma specifically relates to framing constriction occurs when Maurice photographs an accident victim for insurance purposes. We first see the victim’s profile from her ‘good side’ before she turns her head to reveal her injuries. Although she visually stiffens and shudders each time Maurice releases the shutter and triggers the flash, he draws in closer in order to capture the injuries in more detail. Narratively, this reflects a need to maximize the horrific appearance of the scars for insurance purposes. Visually, the increasingly close framing, both in the manner that Maurice moves in to take the photographs and in the way that we see Maurice and the accident victim in greater close-up, correlate trauma with spatial constriction. ‘I hope

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you don’t suffer from claustrophobia’, Maurice says to her. ‘No, I don’t actually’, she responds snappily, but with each move closer she seems progressively more startled, the close-up intensifying the claustrophobia of the frame. ‘Life isn’t fair, is it? Someone always draws the short straw’, says Maurice empathetically, perhaps alluding to his own troubles. Atypically then, the use of close-up here does not particularly engage the viewer with the character but rather communicates her trauma. In general though, Leigh utilizes the close-up to connect us emotionally with the characters. Alternatively, the spectator assumes the position of an observer through a static camera. For example, in the Holborn Tube station scene where Hortense has arranged to meet Cynthia, the camera observes them in long shot before cutting into medium long shot. Conversely, Secrets & Lies seldom incorporates point of view shots. Some exceptions include Maurice’s photographs where we see each scene from Maurice’s perspective. A montage of his photography clients includes an eclectic series of dogs, babies, nurses, cats and couples, Maurice coaxing compliance or reluctant smiles out of most of them, each frame encapsulating a personal narrative. ‘For my auntie’, explains one client. ‘Fond of you, is she?’ asks Maurice. ‘No, she’s in India. Time I got married, innit’, responds the Asian client (the implication being of an impending arranged marriage). In addition to each mini-narrative, therefore, is a range of emotions attached to the image with Maurice’s photographic backdrop a transient setting for a series of constructed and idealized sociocultural spaces.

Cinematic spaces A third way in which space is significant to Secrets & Lies thus relates to its photographic style of framing as well as the theatrical composition of certain of the film’s scenes. Because the point of view shot employed in Maurice’s photographic framing invites direct address to the camera and thereby infers a Brechtian aspect, there is an element of performing for the viewer. At the same time, these images contain reality and synthesize an illusion, arguably akin to the cinematic apparatus and thus sustaining a further connection to Rear Window (which is commonly interpreted as analogous to modes of spectatorship in cinema). There are allusions to this style of framing in other scenes. For example, the coffee bar scene features an observational camera from a slightly elevated

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perspective, followed by the adoption of the photographic style just described. In addition, the colour motifs that this essay earlier associated with ethnicity re-surface, visually relevant to the facts that emerge from the dialogue between the characters: Hortense is again dressed in black while Cynthia is dressed in white. The sequence is known for the length of the take (approximately 8½ minutes) (Leigh, in Raphael 2008, 271) and the deployment of a static camera while the scene has attracted debate concerning the realism of the way in which the characters sit. Independent reviewer Adam Mars-Jones (1996) comments, ‘Would two strangers really sit side by side rather than opposite each other.’ In interview, Leigh explains that, ‘when the girls started improvising, they instinctively sat opposite one another. I asked them to sit side-by-side instead’ (in Raphael 2008, 271). Looking down on Hortense and Cynthia from its slightly elevated fixed perspective, the camera first positions the spectator as an observer. It then cuts to a medium close-up of the two sitting adjacent and closely framed. The framing here is distinctly photographic, and like many of the ‘freeze-frames’ of the film, captures an emotional life story and decisive narrative moment. As Hortense shows Cynthia the adoption documents Cynthia insists, ‘I don’t mean nothing by it, darlin’ but I ain’t never been with a black man in my life. No disrespect or nothing . . . I’d ave remembered wouldn’t I.’ She pauses before a moment of realization, evident in her shocked expression and sudden distress. Subsequently, their conversation centres on Hortense, with Cynthia remarking ironically, ‘Look at you . . . I bet your mum was proud of you . . . I’d ‘ave been proud.’ Therefore, while Leigh draws attention to ethnicity both visually and narratively, there is little evidence of racism, although Roxanne’s party perhaps features one potentially racist element. Here, Monica opens the door to Hortense, not realizing that she is Cynthia’s invited ‘friend from work’ and immediately says, ‘not today’, and begins to close the door. She clearly assumes that Hortense is either a Jehovah’s Witness or salesperson. While Leigh explains that, ‘Monica is simply not expecting a smartly dressed black woman to show up’ (in Raphael 2008, 272), Tony Whitehead remarks that ‘Monica’s racist assumption that this person could not possibly be Cynthia’s friend is highly revealing of a more insidious form of prejudice, which is totally possible in the context of her character and environment’ (2007, 128). Certainly, Monica’s exclusionary tendencies that were noted earlier encourage a reading of prejudice. In marked contrast to the empty, static café scene, the barbecue sequence features rapid character movement and comprises several segments. The camera

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perspective once more assumes a slightly elevated static position looking down on the party set against the house, which again provides a theatrical backdrop for performance. The second component of the sequence then moves in closer to the patio area, where the group sits around a table. The camera here assumes a static photographic framing style before moving indoors when, according to Leigh, ‘the audience has to make decisions about where to look and what to worry about [. . .] so, you get the textural contrast between the wide, static shot and lots of close-up intercutting’ (in Raphael 2008, 274). In the final scenes, domestic space becomes a setting for drama as Maurice vents his pent-up frustration while Cynthia discloses her secret adoption, and Maurice reveals Monica is unable to have a child. Maurice, who appears centre frame, gesticulates exaggeratedly and dramatically addresses off-screen space to articulate his anguish. Whitehead notes the theatricality of this sequence and the way that it arrests the attention of the other characters (2007, 125). In fact, the other characters transiently become part of the film’s audience, again imparting a Brechtian element. Certainly, in conversation with Cardullo, Leigh acknowledges his influences to be ‘theatre, vaudeville, circus, and pantomime, together with the British “New Wave” films; the Marx Brothers, Laurel and Hardy, Chaplin and Keaton’ (Cardullo 2011, 17). He goes on to say that, ‘the heightened, theatrical, almost vaudevillian aspect of what goes on in my films is as important as my hard, socially realistic way of looking at the world. These elements are absolutely and mutually inseparable’ (in Cardullo, 2011, 17). The final scene where Maurice communicates his anguish thus clearly exemplifies this. The film closes with a series of overhead shots: first, an overhead shot of Monica and Maurice lying in bed. After a sisterly discussion between Roxanne and Hortense we see a further overhead camera angle that reveals Hortense, Roxanne and Cynthia lying in the sun in Cynthia’s small and unkempt back garden. The overhead perspectives of these scenes avoid the internal framing devices evident previously, and as Watson notes, the garden scene ‘take[s] us back to the film’s only other shot from above  – of the wreath for Hortense’s adopted mother at the beginning’ (2004, 137). ‘This is the life ain’t it’, says Cynthia, and though Tauke (1998, 190) interprets Cynthia’s comment as a ‘return to her practices of comfortable denial in imagining her patio as a garden of paradise’, the lack of internal framing devices contributes towards a message of the importance of family unity over material possessions, and the irrelevance of class or race (Figure 10.2).

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Figure 10.2  Hortense (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) and Roxanne (Claire Rushbrook) get to know each other at a family picnic in Secrets & Lies (1996)

Summary In Secrets & Lies, Mike Leigh utilizes space to articulate differences between social classes through the mise-en-scène most obviously through the way in which the film aligns house size with status. In line with Carney’s analysis (2000, 16), the film repeatedly emphasizes these distinctions through a series of oppositions between the characters’ homes. The focus on domestic interiors perhaps reflects a trend towards family values in contemporary realist films. As Lay notes of 1990s’ social realist texts, ‘the tighter focus on family life and individuals signals a major shift from the politics of the social and public, to the politics of the personal and private’ (2002, 107). In addition, close framing of characters within these spaces is important to the signification of their associations with grief, loss and repression of traumatic memory. While many aspects of Secrets & Lies are consistent with social realism, there are instances of self-reflexivity or attention to composition. For example, in one of the film’s formal replicating strategies, the profile of Maurice looking pensively off into the garden corresponds with the outline of a figure in a print hanging on the wall behind him, its colour scheme also echoing the palette of the living room and Maurice’s shirt. Such attention to formal detail seems to lack any social realist commentary, instead pertaining to Leigh’s artistic tendencies.

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The importance of framing devices also emerges in photographs and photographic styles of framing  – serving to contain reality and sustain an illusion of perfection (we see this for example in the concealment of the dog’s flea collar during one of Maurice’s portrait sessions). Thus, the detritus of ‘real’ life is hidden, equating to the repression of loss and grief that permeates the film and the superficial orderliness of Monica and Maurice’s home. Drawing on the work of Elsaesser and Hagener who differentiate between the filmic window and frame (ostensibly as a distinction between realist and formalist signifiers), this essay has suggested that the multiple internal framing devices of Secrets & Lies often operate in formal and reflexive modes. Alternatively, framing reflects internal mental states. While outward identity and physical appearance are central to Secrets & Lies, this essay therefore argues that the film’s spaces and their framing are also important in mediating aspects of the interior self, specifically the unconscious repression of grief. Ultimately, these hidden emotions emerge in scenes of anguish, culminating in Monica’s outbursts, Cynthia’s tearful lapses and Maurice’s theatrical performance in the film’s finale.

Works cited Burgin, Victor. ‘Looking at Photographs’, in Thinking Photography, ed. Victor Burgin. London: Macmillan, 1982, 142–53. Cardullo, Bert. ‘“I Call My Films Subversive”: A Conversation with Mike Leigh’, Literature/Film Quarterly 39:1 (2011): 14–29. Carney, Ray and Leonard Quart. The Films of Mike Leigh: Embracing the World. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema 1. London and New York: Continuum, 2005. Elsaesser, Thomas and Malte Hagener. Film Theory: An Introduction Through the Senses. London and New York: Routledge, 2010. Freud, Sigmund. ‘On the History of the Psychoanalytic Movement, Papers on Metapsychology and Other Works’, in The Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 17. London: Vintage, 1957. Grosz, Elizabeth. ‘Woman, Chora, Dwelling’, in Gender, Space, Architecture: An Interdisciplinary Introduction, ed. Jane Rendell, Barbara Penner and Iain Bordern. London and New York: Routledge, 2000, 210–22. Hallam, Julie and Margaret Marshment. Realism and Popular Cinema. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000.

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Lay, Samantha. British Social Realism: From Documentary to Brit Grit. London and New York: Wallflower, 2002. Lury, Karen and Doreen Massey. ‘Making Connections’, Screen 40:3 (1999): 229–38. Mars-Jones, Adam. ‘Life is Sweet After All . . . Secrets & Lies’, Independent, 23 May (1996). Massey, Doreen. Space, Place and Gender. Cambridge and Malden: Polity Press, 1994. McFarlane, Brian. ‘The More Things Change . . . British Cinema in the 90s’, in The British Cinema Book, ed. Robert Murphy, 366–74. London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. O’Sullivan, Sean. Mike Leigh. Urbana, Chicago and Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 2011. Porton, Richard. ‘Secrets & Lies’, Cineaste 2:4 (1997): 51–2. Quart, Leonard. ‘Raising Questions and Positing Possibilities: An Interview with Mike Leigh’, Cineaste 22:4 (1997): 53. —. ‘Biographical and Cultural Introduction’, in The Films of Mike Leigh: Embracing the World, ed. Ray Carney and Leonard Quart. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000, 1–13. Raphael, Amy, ed. Mike Leigh on Mike Leigh. London and New York: Faber and Faber, 2008. Sibley, David. Geographies of Exclusion: Society and Difference in the West. London and New York: Routledge, 1995. Tauke, Beth. ‘Filling Space: Utopian Conditions in Secrets & Lies’, Utopian Studies 9:1 (1998): 189–92. Turim, Maureen. ‘The Trauma of History: Flashbacks upon Flashbacks’, Screen 42:2 (2001): 205–10. Watson, Garry. The Cinema of Mike Leigh: A Sense of the Real. London and New York: Wallflower Press, 2004. Wells, Liz, ed. Photography: A Critical Introduction. London and New York: Routledge, 1997. Whitehead, Tony. Mike Leigh: British Film Makers. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2007.

11

All or Nothing: Mike Leigh and the Fickle Finger Bryan Cardinale-Powell

Hitchcock famously said that the kind of woman who spends all day washing up and doing the housework does not want to go to the cinema to see a film about someone who spends all day washing up and doing the housework. And Hitchcock, on this thing and many others, was a million miles from the truth. He didn’t know what he was talking about. (Mike Leigh1)

I If a line were to be drawn in the sand between a movie like Mike Leigh’s All or Nothing (2002) and more conventional, mainstream films, the casual viewer would likely describe Leigh’s film as more realistic and depressing than classical Hollywood entertainment. Pressed further, the casual viewer might conclude that the realistic effect of All or Nothing depends primarily on the depiction of a large cast of apparently hard luck, working-class characters who meander through a frustratingly slow-paced, aimless storyline. The resulting sense of pathos and despair is certainly a far cry from a happy Hollywood ending. Movie reviews in the popular press as well as the limited academic attention focused on Leigh’s film generally support such casual assessments. Writing for The New York Times, A. O. Scott noted the ‘thick, yeasty sense of reality’ portrayed in All or Nothing: ‘Its characters muddle through lives of lowered expectations and weary disappointment; they hover somewhere between just enough and a little bit less.’2 Others describe the movie as monotonous, dreary and bleak; in other words, ‘art film’ material of the first degree.3

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According to Edward Trostle-Jones, in his auteurist review of the Leigh oeuvre, ‘It [All or Nothing] may be seen as a continuum of [Leigh’s] novelistic approach to his utterly ordinary subjects. His nuanced seriocomic action and emotional depth displayed once again in the realistic domestic realm epitomize the filmmaker’s talent.’4 While all of these observations ring true, a full account of the distinction between All or Nothing and more conventional films demands closer examination of Leigh’s approach to narrative than a casual appeal to kitchen-sink realism. Observations like those cited above – which are often extended to the entirety of Leigh’s filmography – fail to explain fully the manner in which Leigh’s realism is constructed, let alone the implications of such verisimilitude. How and why does Leigh juggle a large cast of characters? What principles guide Leigh’s narrative construction in the absence of a specified plot trajectory or strong causal linkage between scenes? Certainly the realistic, quotidian tone of this film (as well as virtually all others Leigh has directed) is nothing if not the result of carefully considered formal and stylistic choices that deserves more than the shorthand description ‘novelistic’ or the tossed-off comparison to Dickens. Close examination of All or Nothing suggests that Leigh’s manipulation of narrative form, even more than his choice of content, is the basis of his brand of realism. Two important narrative strategies set Leigh’s film apart. First, the film frustrates attempts by viewers to closely identify with any single character. As conventional wisdom will attest, Leigh’s narration relies on the involvement of a large number of characters that defy easy moral categorization and reveal little of their psychological motivations despite demanding audience attention. The result is a flattened hierarchy of characters that complicates and hinders the determination of the main character or the centre of the narrative’s attention. Second, rather than rely on a causally linked, goal-oriented plot structure, Leigh’s discourse suggests scenes should be compared paradigmatically, a task which encourages viewers to reflect on the patterned accumulation of dramatic information rather than focus on guessing what comes next. Taken in combination, these narrative tactics make room for crucial dramatic events to appear coincidental rather than contrived, an important characteristic of life-like experiences. More importantly, the narrative deployment of these organizational principles challenges a viewer accustomed to more traditional narration to reconsider his or her strategy for encountering, drawing conclusions about and revising understandings of characters and themes in this film. By posing this

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challenge, All or Nothing not only draws attention to some of the epistemological assumptions of David Bordwell’s model of classical Hollywood narration but also points the way towards a fundamentally different approach to construction and appreciation of film narration, an approach linked to a fundamentally different understanding of the way the world works.

II In their analysis of Mike Leigh’s films (which includes his body of work up to Naked, released in 1992), Ray Carney and Leonard Quart argue that Leigh’s work resists the classical Hollywood tendency to depict the relatively stable, transparent and clearly delineated inner worlds of characters. While Hollywood films coordinate the use of stylistic devices like lighting, camera angles, music and editing to provide ‘windows into characters souls’, Leigh’s artistic choices preserve character opacity. Where classical Hollywood narration provides viewers with privileged, wide-ranging access to the motivations, desires and goals of central characters, Leigh’s characters appear as bundles of conflicting behaviours and traits.5 As examples from All or Nothing demonstrate, access to characters’ subjective states of mind is weakened through Leigh’s use of unobtrusive camerawork, naturalistic lighting and repetitive musical motifs. The pattern is set by the film’s opening sequence: a shot of a young woman mopping a floor; then a man driving a taxi; two women working cash registers at a grocery; and a group of three people at the taxi service headquarters. A mixture of close-ups and wide shots, this sequence is held together by a musical theme that formally links the characters and sets an emotional tone for the film that doesn’t appear based on any individual character’s perspective. The limited dialogue delivered offers little indication of any personal relationships among these characters, and the narration only reveals names for two of them (Penny and Ron). Rather than provide the information necessary for audiences to begin the process of building a ‘structure of sympathy’ or identification with characters based on the presentation of character subjectivities, the narrative keeps the audience at arm’s length.6 The narrative’s psychologically detached attitude is further underlined by the routine reversal of the most subjective of Hollywood editing figures, the setup and completion of the point-of-view (POV) shot.7

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Rather than sticking to formula by presenting the shot of a character that glances off-screen followed by a shot of what the character is apparently watching, Leigh’s film repeatedly reverses the shot arrangement. For example, near the end of the film’s opening, the following sequence plays out: a gentleman delivers flowers to a gravesite, then we see the taxi driver (who is later identified as Phil) watching in the distance. The viewer doesn’t realize the first shot was a POV until after the fact, so the opportunity to establish Phil’s subjective perspective remains unfulfilled. The ability of the audience to align closely – and exclusively – with Phil is undermined. Leigh’s manipulation of the POV figure is more richly demonstrated in a more complicated scene later in the film. The sequence opens with a wide shot of Sam, a young lady looking off in the distance from a second-floor balcony in the apartment building. The shot is followed by a wide view of Craig, a young man in the courtyard apparently looking at Sam on the balcony. Next comes a shot of Maureen, Sam’s neighbour, coming out of her apartment. Maureen asks Sam if she is locked out, and in a medium shot, Sam turns to answer. The next shot shows Maureen walking away from Sam and is followed by a wide shot of the courtyard, similar to the angle on Craig but this time including Jason, a young man who is walking across the open space. The shot of Jason is followed by a medium shot of Sam, apparently monitoring Jason’s progress, a conclusion underlined by the next shot that is a tighter angle on Jason. The film cuts back to Sam and then alternates between views on her and shots of Jason arriving on the second floor. Importantly, the shots of Jason are limited to angles available to Sam’s position on the balcony. In other words, since Sam apparently can’t see the stairwell that leads to the second floor, the film doesn’t show Jason climbing the stairs (Figure 11.1). So far, the sequence clearly aligns the viewer most closely with Sam who is repeatedly depicted looking off camera in the direction of others participating in the scene. This is a skilfully constructed sequence, but not out of the ordinary as far as traditional Hollywood film-making is concerned. It isn’t until the last shot of the 2-minute-15-second sequence of 33 shots (a wide shot of Craig looking up at the second-floor balcony) that the audience is reminded that the entire sequence taken to be roughly from the POV of Sam is actually the object of Craig’s POV. Just as viewers are tempted to become comfortably aligned with Sam, they are reminded that there are potentially many different angles on events as they unfold. Building ties of identification between viewer and character

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Figure 11.1  Despite appearances, Samantha (Sally Hawkins) is more vulnerable than she lets on in All or Nothing (2002)

through subjective access to experience is apparently a complicated project in Leigh’s discourse. It should therefore come as no surprise that where mainstream films usually work to establish a hierarchy of characters ranging from principals to supporting characters to extras based in large part on the degree of viewer identification with various characters, All or Nothing appears determined to flatten the pyramid. After an opening sequence stingy with the kind of narrative information traditionally offered to establish viewer identification, the film offers scenes of the various characters coming together in their respective apartments. These episodes finally offer more detailed information regarding the relationships of the characters. As it turns out, there are three families: Penny and Phil have two children, Rachel (the janitress) and Rory; Maureen (Penny’s partner at the grocery) shares an apartment with her daughter Donna; and Ron is married to Carol; Sam is their daughter. A viewer looking for clues early on regarding which family will take centre stage in the film will be frustrated to find out that each family appears on the edge of a potentially dramatic situation. Rory is unemployed and irritable; Penny and Phil evidently can’t agree over how to deal with him. Donna’s boyfriend wants her to have an abortion. Carol is alcoholic, Ron is a liar and their daughter Sam dresses like a slut. The narration does not facilitate the task of determining which family’s circumstances will likely blow up first. Instead of focusing viewers on a

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main character, one plotline, or even one family, the film demands attention for all of them. Conventional audience strategies for sorting out the story and making sense of the characters are further destabilized through the carefully timed disclosure and suppression of contradictory pieces of narrative information. For instance, it appears safe to assume at the beginning of the film that Penny and Phil are married. They live together; Rachel and Rory refer to them as Mom and Dad; Ron refers to Penny as Phil’s ‘Missus’. It takes little imagination to account for the tension between Penny and Phil as the result of many years of marriage, and Penny’s attitude towards Phil’s poor work habits is easily explained as the demeanour of a woman who took a vow and meant to keep it. Nearly an hour into the film, however, Maureen reveals to Carol that Penny and Phil are not married. According to Penny, they never have been. Carol appears as surprised as the audience because this sudden revelation invalidates any prior conclusions drawn about Penny or Phil or their relationship based on comparison with the norms of married life. Well into the film, the viewer must re-evaluate his or her fundamental understanding of these characters. The effect is disorienting (Figure 11.2). One other practice of narrative manipulation designed to impede the conventional process of viewer identification with characters deserves mention. While more traditional films often suggest viewers draw causal links between

Figure 11.2  Maureen (Ruth Sheen), Carol (Marion Bailey) and Penny (Lesley Manville) seek solace on karaoke night in All or Nothing (2002)

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the actions of one character and effects on another, or that viewers look for one character’s motivation in the actions of another, Leigh again prefers to complicate the norm. The characters in All or Nothing often act on motivations that remain uncommunicated, either by the characters or the narrative. The suppression of this kind of narrative information opens a gap between the viewer and characters that cannot be spanned by identifying with the character. In fact, there’s so very little firm foundation on which to build a bridge of identification that viewers are left instead unable to reliably anticipate character actions and reactions. Consider Donna’s boyfriend, Jason. Obviously upset by the news of Donna’s pregnancy, he takes part in a violent sexual encounter with Sam. It’s not clear that Jason fucks Sam out of spite, or that Donna ever finds out, or that Donna’s relationship with either Sam or Jason is altered by the event. The narration simply refuses to offer the viewer an opportunity to draw a neat line between cause and effect or between character motivation and action. These various challenges to the conventional process of identification typically encouraged by normative film narration highlight the audience–film relationship implied and assumed by Bordwell’s model of classical Hollywood narrative. Bordwell sums up his model this way: ‘The classical Hollywood narration presents psychologically defined individuals who struggle to solve a clear-cut problem or to attain specific goals.’8 Given this description, a viewer reasonably expects a film to provide reliable access to character’s states of mind as well as the establishment of goals characters may or may not achieve. To a large degree, the viewer’s pleasure  – indeed, the normative film’s form, unity and closure – derives from his or her ability to satisfactorily match motivational causes with consequential effects. In other words, normative film narration provides a particular type of puzzle to solve, one that tests a viewer’s ability to recognize and link causes and effects while encouraging viewers to assume a deductive posture towards narrative information. Such a proposition is really a theory of knowledge, a model of what kinds of questions and answers are useful in the viewing of a film. Normative audiences find their way through film narration by predicting future narrative events based on cues embedded in the film. These viewers are constantly asking, ‘What happens next?’ At first blush, Bordwell’s model of art film narration appears to be both an alternative to classical Hollywood narration and an appropriate description of All or Nothing.9 After all, ambiguity is the central aspect of the art film model. Causes and effects are constructed in such a manner that they may appear overor under-determined. In All or Nothing complicated POV figures, characters

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competing for audience attention and unstable access to characters’ psychological states of mind all conspire to leave much room for ambiguity. But in the end, Bordwell’s art film model is built around the same epistemological assumptions as the classical Hollywood narrative model. Viewers are still looking for causes and their effects, it’s just that the links between them are more complicated or not explicitly depicted within the narration. Viewers do not fundamentally adjust what they are looking for in the film. They conclude that where they cannot deduce proper causes, effects and their links, the point of the narration is simply not to solve the puzzle. But there’s more to All or Nothing than dangling causes and open gaps. Leigh’s manipulation of narrative form invites viewers to entertain the possibility of posing different questions than ‘What happens next?’ Leigh’s narration rewards viewers who break with traditional viewing strategies with a rich emotional, realistic film experience. Leigh’s film helps audiences see things in a different way.

III If a film’s narration limits access to the inner state of characters and discourages identification with characters, how is a viewer expected to interact with the film? If the viewer is not privy to the motivational forces behind the actions of characters, and is therefore deterred from imagining a psychological/causal linkage of events, what alternative unifying force is at the centre of the narrative’s construction? Is there anything to find when the audience gives up looking for motivations or trying to determine what comes next? Answers to these questions begin with identifying what information Leigh’s narration does provide in a movie like All or Nothing. Consider again the opening sequence of the film. Why begin with this series of scenes if they do not provide information regarding the relationships between characters or even the names of the characters? If these scenes are not the building blocks of the structure of sympathy, of what use are they? Why depict characters in a series of apparently objective tableaus? Reflection upon what Robert Allen called ‘one of the fundamental insights of structural linguistics’, points in the direction of an answer: narrative, like language, is structured along two axes, the syntagmatic axis and the paradigmatic axis.10 While the vectorized temporality of classical film narrative compels viewers to draw conclusions

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almost exclusively from the syntagmatic arrangement of narrative elements, the narrative construction of All or Nothing reminds viewers to pay close attention to paradigmatic links as well. From this perspective, it’s easy to see the opening sequence as a paradigmatic exercise. The viewer is prompted by the opening scenes to take note of what job each character holds, to draw some tentative conclusions about each character’s attitude towards work (which might provide clues about each character’s psychological makeup) and to compare one character with another in light of this information. One job or attitude is not the cause or effect of another. Instead, the narrative lays the groundwork for a network of characters to exist within the film. The narrative will guide the viewer through the film by points of similarity and divergence rather than by points of cause and effect. This network develops layers of complexity as the narrative progresses. Each character fits simultaneously into several overlapping circles of relations. For instance, Phil is part of his family at the same time he is friends with Ron and an employee of the taxi service. Viewers are cued to compare Phil’s actions and words in the presence of characters from each group with his actions and words in the presence of others. Does he remain consistent? What variations are evidenced? What can a viewer draw from such comparisons? Furthermore, the narrative makes a point of determining the employment status of each character because the viewer is expected to reach conclusions about each character based on such information. The film is preoccupied with the depiction of three families because depiction of variations in family dynamics serves as a central theme in the film. It’s also no coincidence that the film follows the activities of six characters firmly settled in middle age and six characters on the cusp of adulthood, nor that there are as many male characters and female characters. Exploring the structure of the film according to these types of categories is the preferred method of film viewing initiated by this narrative. The paradigmatic complexity of the film extends into all corners of the discourse. Just as characters are to be compared and associated with one another, scenes are to be evaluated not only in terms of their syntagmatic placement, but also in terms of their paradigmatic counterparts. Two scenes among the women serve as an example. Samantha is at a diner where Donna works. Donna takes a seat and engages in a testy exchange with Samantha. Rachel then arrives and the interpersonal dynamic changes. Later in the film, the three older women, Maureen, Penny and Carol are relaxing at a karaoke club. Carol starts

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a testy exchange with Maureen, and Penny’s presence (and Carol’s inebriation) mitigates the circumstances. These scenes beg comparison in terms of age/youth, draw attention to themes of friendship and echo with implications regarding relationships between mothers and daughters. Although the scenes appear unrelated causally, they provide important points of comparison and contrast for the careful viewer on the lookout for such parallels. Another set of scenes initiates consideration of attitudes towards sex, male/ female relationships and power. In this example, the narration indicates there are comparisons to be made among the following, parallel scenes: first, between Donna and Jason where Donna’s lack of interest in sex leads to revelation of her pregnancy; second, the night-time encounter between Samantha and Craig (a loner in the apartment building courtyard); and third, the scene depicting Samantha having sex with Jason. Careful viewing provides access to complex understandings of the issues at play and heightens the dramatic energy of the film in part because the characters remain unaware of events they do not participate in. Consequently, their motivations remain concealed, but the narrative elicits an emotional response anyway. Then there is the parade of passengers Phil picks up in his taxi. Not restricted to appearance at the beginning of the film, these chance encounters are sprinkled throughout the film. Indeed, with the exception of the last one, none of them plays a significant causal role in the film. They instead represent a wide range of characters Phil interacts with each day. They present opportunities for Phil to demonstrate his character: what does he do when a passenger says he doesn’t have money for the fare? How does he handle a car full of kids? Or a drunken passenger? Or provocatively dressed women? This cross-section of London cab riders provides some sense of Phil while emphasizing the narrative’s construction along paradigmatic lines. The narration doesn’t even limit itself to initiating paradigmatic connections between events presented within this particular film. Just before she reveals her pregnancy to Maureen (her mother), Donna asks, ‘How long did you know my dad then?’ When Maureen replies, ‘I don’t know. About five minutes’, the viewer realizes Donna’s situation is not all that different from the one her mother faced years ago. Such a moment of insight underlines the imperative value of finding meaning in the paradigmatically complex film by using both synchronic and diachronic means. A narrative like All or Nothing reminds a viewer not only to pay careful attention to information as it is presented but also to keep in mind all the

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information presented by the film cumulatively in order to fully comprehend the present narrative moment. After all, a web of relationships, themes and events connects the characters in complex and illuminating ways. That web of relationships is further reinforced by the alternative manner of signification afforded otherwise common stylistic choices in All or Nothing. As Allen points out is the case in soap operas (which, like Leigh’s film, remain faithful to the principles of classical Hollywood continuity editing) common signifying devices like the close-up work in alternative ways in the paradigmatically complex film.11 Where close-ups and meaningful glances in Hollywood films cue viewers to look to the inner world of a character, the relative opacity of characters in this film points out that a given glance or close-up is better compared to another elsewhere in the film than considered as an indicator of psychological truth. A further consequence of building a narrative in the manner of All or Nothing is that coincidence seems more plausible in a paradigmatically complex film. This plausibility of coincidences is vital to the quirky sense of realism often attributed to Leigh’s films. In more conventional films, the narration remains true to the cause and effect spine of action that carries the film along. Every event in such a film must be linked with the causal chain or it feels out of place, unnecessary or ‘fake’. However, because the causal chain plays second fiddle in a paradigmatically complex film, the fickle finger of fate (as Phil refers to it) is accepted less critically. Thus, the viewer is more likely to accept Phil’s spur of the moment decision to drive to the beach; the surprise declaration of Donna’s pregnancy; the revelation that Phil and Penny are not married; and the sudden heart attack Rory suffers in the midst of the film. Though Rory clearly leads a sedentary lifestyle and is obviously obese, his heart attack lacks the foreshadowing and emphasis commonly provided for such a dramatic event by a traditional Hollywood film. Earlier in the film, we see him fighting with Craig; he manages to argue enthusiastically with his mother; he never complains of being short of breath or of pain in his left arm. Even when the attack occurs, he is playing soccer and bullying another kid in the courtyard. The narrative remains at arm’s length in a wide shot as Rory clutches his chest and the others in the courtyard run away. There’s no immediate, quick cut or zoom to a close-up. In sum, the heart attack comes as a complete surprise, but one that can be accepted because the narrative laid the groundwork for such surprises earlier in the film. Of course, the event also proves narratively expedient as an excuse for drawing all the characters in the film together for the concluding scenes, much in the same manner that relationships to work introduced all of

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the characters at the beginning. Of course, the sudden heart attack and each character’s reaction to the event appears realistic, though by now it should be clear such an effect is the result of a carefully constructed narrative. As the film reaches its conclusion, then, it appears that All or Nothing adheres to and emphasizes narrative principles different from those commonly used in classical Hollywood films. The diegetic world appears realistic because Leigh’s narrative provides limited and conflicted access to character motivations and psychology. Viewers are not invited to identify with the inner emotions of characters. Furthermore, the narrative provides characters, scenes and events that require consideration in parallel with corresponding characters, scenes and events. Drawing associations between these elements is the work of an active viewer who appreciates that such narrative manoeuvres make way for the plausible introduction of chance events and coincidences, hallmarks of the unpredictability of living in the real world. Such manoeuvres make Leigh’s quirky sense of realism more predictable  – not to mention more satisfying  – than kismet.

Notes 1 Derek Malcolm, ‘Mike Leigh at the NFT’, Guardian Unlimited, 7 October (2002), http://film.guardian.co.uk/interview/interviewpages/0,6737,809562,00.html. 2 A. O. Scott, ‘Muddling Through, Souls Shredded but Intact’, New York Times, 25 October (2002). 3 Other reviews include the following: Charles Taylor, ‘All or Nothing’ Salon.com, 1 November (2002); Philip French, ‘The Bleakest Link’, The (London) Observer, 20 October (2002); Peter Bradshaw, ‘All or Nothing’, The Guardian, 18 October (2002); and David Edelstein, ‘Paris Non-Match’, Slate.com, 1 November (2002). 4 Edward Trostle Jones, All or Nothing: The Cinema of Mike Leigh. New York: Peter Lang, 2003, 165. 5 Ray Carney and Leonard Quart, The Films of Mike Leigh: Embracing the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, 21–3. 6 Murray Smith, Engaging Characters: Fiction, Emotion, and the Cinema. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. 7 Edward Branigan, Point of View in the Cinema: A Theory of Narration and Subjectivity in Classical Film. Berlin: Mouton, 1984. 8 David Bordwell, ‘Classical Hollywood Cinema: Narrational Principles and Procedures’, in Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology, ed. Philip Rosen. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986, 17–34.

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9 David Bordwell, Narration in the Fiction Film. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985, 205–33. 10 Robert Allen, Speaking of Soap Operas. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985, 69. 11 Ibid., 71.

Works cited Allen, Robert. Speaking of Soap Operas. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985. Bordwell, David. Narration in the Fiction Film. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985. —. ‘Classical Hollywood Cinema: Narrational Principles and Procedures’, in Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology, ed. Philip Rosen. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986, 17–34. Branigan, Edward. Point of View in the Cinema: A Theory of Narration and Subjectivity in Classical Film. Berlin: Mouton, 1984. Carney, Ray and Leonard Quart. The Films of Mike Leigh: Embracing the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, 21–3. Jones, Edward Trostle. All or Nothing: The Cinema of Mike Leigh. New York: Peter Lang, 2003. Malcolm, Derek. ‘Mike Leigh at the NFT’, Guardian Unlimited, 7 October (2002), http:// film.guardian.co.uk/interview/interviewpages/0,6737,809562,00.html. Scott, A. O. ‘Muddling Through, Souls Shredded but Intact’, New York Times, 25 October (2002). Smith, Murray. Engaging Characters: Fiction, Emotion, and the Cinema. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Part Four

Leigh versus the Tories

12

‘Those Days Are Over’: Naked and Something Rotten in the Early 1990s Steven Morrison

Mike Leigh has described his own ‘general tendency or instinct’, when creating a new film, ‘to dish up something that’s different to what went before.’1 The resulting pattern, whereby each film diverges from the one that preceded it, can certainly be discerned in the output of Leigh’s early career and becomes more and more obvious in the later films, when one considers the unlikeness to each other of Career Girls and Topsy-Turvy, or Vera Drake and Happy-GoLucky. As a consequence, all of the films have an inbuilt capacity to surprise any audience that arrives in a cinema with expectations of what exactly a ‘Mike Leigh film’ entails. Yet none of Leigh’s films upset those preconceptions quite as thoroughly as did Naked at the time of its first release, nor has any of his films proved so lastingly upsetting. To each of the four feature films Leigh made during his transition from closely guarded national secret making television films for the BBC and Channel 4, to internationally renowned Palme d’Or-winning and Oscar-nominated director, someone or other at the time applied the epithet ‘breakthrough’ and with good reason in every case. But it is to the shocking, transgressive and lastingly provocative Naked that this label has stuck most firmly. In recent years, the idea of the film as marking a turning point in Leigh’s career is one the director himself seems to have come to accept without reservation: ‘from Naked onwards we move into a whole new chapter’.2 In interviews given at the time of the film’s release, however, Leigh often seemed reluctant to agree with this idea without a good deal of qualification, preferring instead to emphasize the continuities with what had gone before. This was in part to remind some people, as well as alerting others to the fact, that his career as a film-maker stretched

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much further back than the release of High Hopes in 1988. More pressingly, the reception of Naked was dominated by the row over the film’s, or even the director’s, supposed misogyny – even the most adulatory notices were obliged to gesture at the more intemperate responses from Julie Burchill and others – and, as a consequence, there was a perfectly natural tendency on Leigh’s part to downplay quite how shockingly different Naked actually was. The row focused upon the theme of sexual violence, with the opening scene playing an especially prominent role, as regards the question of whether what the audience sees at the start is or is not a rape. On this issue, Leigh was, at the very least, defensive, querying ‘how much rape there actually is in the film’ and suggesting ‘every situation that’s shown is of people who are there by choice for whatever sad reasons’.3 David Thewlis was unequivocal, telling Amy Taubin in 1993 that Johnny is ‘not a rapist. At the beginning, that’s not a rape. It’s sex that gets out of hand’.4 Critical verdicts have certainly covered the spectrum, from outright rape,5 to Johnny’s ‘sexually assaulting’ the woman,6 to its being merely ‘rough sex’,7 but all too often these statements from director and actor have been taken as deciding the matter, forgivably perhaps on the part of those interviewers looking Leigh or Thewlis directly in the eye at the time, but less so on the part of those who might be expected to give some consideration to the concept of the intentional fallacy. Tony Whitehead’s carefully phrased reservations, expressed in reflecting upon Thewlis’s response to Taubin, are much nearer the mark: While ordinarily wishing to defer to the writer-director and the actor who after all conceived the character, and therefore know him better than anyone, I am personally less comfortable with the idea that a sexual act which becomes non-consensual does not become a rape. (That phrase ‘gets out of hand’, too, seems to me to be disclaiming male responsibility rather too easily.)8

More persuasively still, Whitehead does not seek to follow up his dissent with any attempt to decide the issue one way or another. The issue is not decidable. The handheld camera rushes up the ‘dimly lit alley’9 to settle voyeuristically behind Johnny and the woman at almost exactly the moment when consensual sex (‘Go on!’) becomes something else instead (‘You’re hurting me’). Johnny is not a rapist, but neither is he demonstrably not a rapist. He is suspended between these two contending possibilities in a way that is far more effectively unsettling than if the viewer were able to reach a firm conclusion at the outset. The floating that ensues, with Johnny generating (and then finding himself, like the viewer, caught between) conflicting forces of attraction and repulsion, governs

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everything that follows in the film, right up to and including the final shot of the injured protagonist hobbling towards the retreating camera while straddling the broken white line in the centre of the road. Leigh himself spoke of Johnny as ‘like a kind of lost communication satellite, floating around the atmosphere, wasted’.10 This quality of floating more immediately applies to Johnny’s flight down the motorway in a stolen car, since it is impossible to be certain whether this is flight from a likely beating in Manchester or flight towards Louise and London instead. It is probably a bit of both but, intriguingly, possibly neither, since it is rarely if ever entirely clear why Johnny does the things he does. It is possible to speculate about psychological or sociological causes, but judgement has often to be left suspended above both Johnny and Naked itself. In the first shot taken from the back seat of the car, Johnny is on the M1 motorway nearing Junction 10 just south of Luton, approaching London from the north. When he then dumps the car, the unmistakable landmark of the BT Tower is clearly visible in the background.11 London does have a well-known tendency to shoot out again at unhelpful angles any motorist not greatly familiar with the city who attempts to navigate its centre, but a mystery is still left behind by this shot. Johnny appears here to be heading out of London again, so that when he takes to his heels and runs from the car, he is a long way away from Dalston. At the same time, it does mean that he starts out in London from much nearer to where he will end up later that night since the tower, though not shown again, looms right over Charlotte Street and the empty office building that Brian is guarding. Of course, while the house used for filming was in Dalston in east London, this does not mean that the house in the film is. It could be on any number of residential streets: on producing Louise’s postcard, Johnny falls into his mock snoring just before reading out the address she sent him. So too, though the scenes between Brian and Johnny were filmed in Charlotte Street, the empty offices are not specified as being anywhere in particular, other than somewhere in London. Aside from the central protagonist and various other aspects of the film, something else which floats in Naked is the city itself, refusing to settle down on top of the actual geography of London. This was an aspect of the use of location that Leigh himself was at pains to single out in explaining how at one point the filming jumps from Soho in the West End – the crowded streets where Archie and Maggie keep missing each other – to a disused railway station somewhere near Brick Lane in the East End which provided the desolate waste ground where the two finally meet up again. Whereas films like High Hopes or

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Life is Sweet give a firm sense of a particular place, Leigh explains, Naked ‘could be anywhere – New York, Berlin, wherever. It is a London’.12 That Leigh intended to bring out a dislocated and fragmented quality to the city by having his film leap around between different locations within London is clear, but it does not necessarily follow from this that Naked might be taking place anywhere. The London of the film is indeed a London, but filmic treatments of particular cities by their very nature only ever give a version of those cities: this is, indeed, intrinsic to any act of representation. In this way, from Bleak Moments all the way through to his London 2012 Festival film A Running Jump, Leigh has in fact created a series of different Londons, but each one relates to the same actual city. Naked may take place in its own distinctive London, but recognizable as London that place remains. Jay Carr, interviewing Leigh in early 1994, presents the director attempting to square this particular circle in arguing that the film is not ‘about’ present-day Britain: Well, it is, but that’s not its primary agenda. . . . while High Hopes was on one level a lamentation for socialism being something that maybe has gotten lost somehow, this film . . . takes more of an anarchist view. I despair that society really will be able to organize itself, ever. In the last couple of years, look what has happened in the world. So in that sense the film is about something fundamental rather than just local.13

That there is a newly acquired sense of scale and ambition to Naked seems obvious, but there is no real paradox here: that Leigh achieves ‘something fundamental’ precisely by being intrinsically local has always been true of his work. He may not have intended Naked to be a ‘state of the nation’ piece in the way that Meantime arguably was, but simply because of the way in which his films are made – whereby actors and director work together to develop the characters, drawing on memory and experience but also, in part and ineluctably, by soaking up the atmosphere and chance influences around them – they cannot help but be shaped by the contemporary moment to an unusual degree: ‘somehow, all my films instinctively take the temperature of where we are at the time’.14 Moreover, the fact is that Britain, at the point in time at which Naked was devised and filmed, was itself floating in a way that it had not been at the time High Hopes was created (though it was certainly starting to become detached throughout the late 1980s) and would not be a few years later (though the apparent new rootedness would turn out to be of a somewhat shallow kind). While Leigh is undoubtedly

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right to assert that his film’s preoccupations ‘are much wider than the state of John Major’s Britain’,15 it is in that Britain that those preoccupations are located and where they are explored. In High Hopes, Cyril and Shirley have named their cactus Thatcher, ‘’Cos it’s a pain in the arse – prongs you every time you walk past it.’ In Naked, Archie bellows ‘Maggie!’ into the crowded streets of Soho only to be told by Johnny, ‘She’s gone, mate! . . . Those days are over.’ While none of the films Leigh made during the Thatcher years is actually reducible to simple political polemic in any case – ‘Thing is, change what?’ as Cyril puts it in High Hopes – Johnny alerts the audience to the fact that the context has altered and that the old certainties have passed away. Between the fall of Margaret Thatcher and the renewal of national self-confidence that seemed to arrive in the mid-1990s – the ‘second summer of love’ and Britpop, Euro 96 and the rise of New Labour  – came a ‘period of benign political boredom’,16 characterized, in the cultural sphere, by a mood of stagnation at its height when the recession of the early part of the decade was at its deepest. If the resulting sense of impasse was experienced most keenly by those who shared Leigh’s leftward-leaning political outlook, there was now not even the compensation of being able to define oneself in opposition to the much demonized figure of Margaret Thatcher and the political certitudes she represented. Nor was there much lasting good cheer even on the rightward-leaning side. Earlier in the same year that filming began on Naked, the incumbent Conservative government won a slender majority in parliament and secured a fourth term in office, much against the expectations and to the despair of those on the Left in Britain. But no one would ever name a cactus after John Major. While Thatcher had been capable of inspiring both fierce loyalty and deep loathing, her successor inspired, alongside a good deal of mockery, even a degree of sympathy, as a man whose most vehement opponents were to be found on his own back benches and among the increasingly eurosceptic members of the Conservative Party’s rank and file.17 Shortly after the General Election of April 1992, the man who had spoken, on becoming Prime Minister in 1990, of the need for Britain to become a ‘nation at ease with itself ’, described the country of his own imagination, projected into the future: Fifty years from now Britain will still be the country of long shadows on county grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs, dog lovers and pools fillers and – as George Orwell said – ‘old maids bicycling to holy communion through the morning mist’ and if we get our way – Shakespeare still read even in school.18

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One need not think too long about the profound sense of unease in evidence as Johnny moves around the ravaged cityscape of Naked to suspect that, no matter how deliberately, a comment on the contemporary political and social state of Britain is being made in the film nonetheless, even if not as its central aim and even if only as a platform from which Leigh might reach for those wider preoccupations. Though his views are not on record, John Major would presumably have found Four Weddings and a Funeral, released in the same year as Naked, rather more in tune with his own view of the national condition. The historical record does indeed suggest that the Major years were relatively benign in comparison with the social divisions that had marked the 1980s and that the country was left, economically at least, in reasonably good health when Labour came to power in 1997. However, this was not how it seemed at the time: a government weakened almost from the outset by scandal, sleaze and infighting over Europe was associated with the same sense of wasted opportunity and of waste more generally that Leigh attributes to the protagonist of Naked, emblematic of a country fearful of engaging with anything new yet deeply disenchanted with the status quo, frantically treading water amid the exhaustion of possibility. Developing out of this sense of inertia and the dearth of opportunity for meaningful political expression, despair, nihilism and even apocalypticism were extremely prevalent themes in the cultural sphere, emerging as Thatcherism unravelled and intensifying through the early 1990s. When Leigh describes his film in this way, as looking towards the millennium19 or being ‘about the impending apocalypse’,20 the terms employed are not nearly so idiosyncratic or as peculiar to Mike Leigh as they might at first appear. Considering the literature of the time, Patricia Waugh claims that its dominant mood during the years from 1960 to 1990 was ‘disaffection if not outright apocalypticism’21 and it is fair to say that the apocalyptic strand reached its zenith right at the end of this period which marks not just the close of an arbitrary period of British cultural history, of course, but the more emphatic ending of the Cold War. There is no little irony in the fact that just at the point that the threat of nuclear Armageddon was starting to recede, the fear of the end of all things seemed to intensify. This fear found other sites on which to focus, some new and some old: ‘We are, of course, destroying our total environment. Several thousand babies have been born since you started reading this page, but the planet has remained the same size. And we haven’t learned to stop knocking lumps off each other.’22

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In this way, Naked occupies a place alongside many other British works, literary, filmic and other appearing during the late 1980s and early 1990s, many set wholly or partly in London, which share this apocalyptic outlook. This particular form of apocalypticism has little in common with the hi-tech play on Armageddon of popular Hollywood films of the 1980s, concerning itself instead with a less literal treatment of the end of all things – with the whimper ahead of the bang, as it were – often with an eye to contemporary ideas about the end of history then finding theoretical formulation in the work of, among others, Fredric Jameson and David Harvey (the former’s Postmodernism and the latter’s The Condition of Postmodernity were both published in 1991). In his introduction to Naked and Other Screenplays, Graham Fuller notes in passing a connexion between Leigh’s film and Martin Amis’s London Fields23 and not just because each became, on its first appearance, embroiled in a row about its supposed misogyny. Amis’s is a novel which ties the death of love to the end of the world, projecting it forward as Johnny does to the very end of the century, through the designing figure of Nicola Six who, like Jeremy/Sebastian with regard to his fortieth birthday in Naked, has no intention of passing into old or even middle age. In Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, Gibreel, like Johnny a stranger to London and seemingly cast, like him, in the alternating roles of false prophet and avenging angel, wanders the streets quoting scripture while the city first boils over and then burns down. Amis and Rushdie made their conspicuous turns to the London-set apocalyptic a few years ahead of Naked, but other examples came thick and fast during the early 1990s. Different contexts inform the pessimistic vision of history in Ian McEwan’s Black Dogs and the existential nihilism of Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting, but the apocalyptic tone aligns them with the differing reflections, in novels as diverse as Iain Sinclair’s Downriver, Angela Carter’s Wise Children or Jeanette Winterson’s Sexing the Cherry, on London, the transgressive and the end of all things. In the work of Iain Sinclair, it should be said, these three themes have coexisted from the very outset of his career as a writer, his great London novel of 1990 being only one example. Sinclair’s shabby secondhand book dealers – ‘Our motives were, as always, opaque and spiritually unsound’24 – roam the streets of a London as ravaged by time as they are, in search of strange significances, fractured chains of association and treasures of obscure worth. All the qualities of Naked that seem least typical of Leigh – the interest in signs and symbols, both Johnny’s and even the film’s own; the tattoos, maps, occult numerology, Biblical exegesis, analysis of bar codes and all the rest – find an echo in Sinclair’s work.25 With respect to the interest in the obscure, the arcane and the hidden

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psychogeography which lies within and beneath the real city of brick and tarmac, Sinclair is as much critic as practitioner – often he is both simultaneously – but there is also a desire to trace out the ancestry of this kind of London writing, back through T. S. Eliot and Thomas De Quincey to William Blake and beyond. For Richard Todd, writing in the mid-1990s, one had to look back almost as far – certainly to before the Second World War – to find any precedent for the way in which London had become the focus ‘for a quite extraordinary burst of creative energy since the 1980s’, a burst related to the city’s ‘socio-economic decline over the same period’ and the ‘sense that the 1980s witnessed one of the worst collapses in London’s civic and communal health, both physical and spiritual’.26 Given this context, it is hardly surprising that the apocalyptic and millenarian note was in no way confined to the literary world. It is clearly discernible in much of the work of those young British artists soon to be loosely gathered together under the collective (and slightly unimaginative) name of the Young British Artists, such as Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin and the Chapman Brothers. The same was true of the music starting to emerge as the 1990s went on, where, if J. G. Ballard was the tutelary spirit for much of the literary apocalyptic of the period, the influence of 1970s David Bowie at his most chiliastic loomed large. Michael Coveney notes of Brett Anderson and Damon Albarn, the charismatic and articulate frontmen of two of the most significant bands to emerge in Britain in these years, that each ‘would consistently invoke the films of Mike Leigh in their interviews with the music press’.27 Blur’s seminal album of 1994, Parklife, with its tales of suburban frustration and premature world-weariness (complete with guest appearance in the album’s title song by Meantime’s Phil Daniels in full-on Cockney wide-boy mode) has a clear relation to Leigh’s work more broadly – the same is true of a good deal of British television comedy of the 1990s, from The Royle Family through to The League of Gentlemen  – but the specific notes of apocalypticism and pre-millenarian decadence struck in Naked are certainly detectable in Blur’s music, as they are in the work of Suede, Radiohead, Massive Attack, Portishead and any number of others. At the same time, by the mid-1990s, the mood was subtly changing. Appearing in the year following Naked’s release, Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting appears at first to strike the same note of embittered disaffection that Johnny sounds in Leigh’s film and Welsh’s Mark Renton even seems, at first sight, something of a kindred spirit to Johnny himself. Each has far more intelligence and verbal dexterity than he really knows what to with; each espouses a despairing and nihilistic

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philosophy; and each keeps returning to the same pattern of destructive and self-destructive behaviour. In neither the novel nor the film, filled as each is with the spectacle of urban degradation and the signs of imminent social collapse, is there a simple relation between cause and effect, as though unemployment, or the breakdown of traditional communities,28 or the consumerist values of late capitalism might somehow ‘explain’ Renton or Johnny. Nevertheless, there is a key difference. While drug addiction and the subcultures surrounding it complicate matters considerably in Trainspotting, it is also possible to see that, for Renton, the heroin and the way of life that comes with it are as much a symptom as a cause and that, underlying everything else, simple boredom has led to the desire for a bit of drama. As his girlfriend Hazel puts it: ‘You just want ta fuck up on drugs so that everyone’ll think how deep and fucking complex you are.’29 In other words, once the countercultural position of despair in the face of the end of everything became fashionable – which, moving on from the early 1990s and into the middle of the decade, is precisely what it did become – it also becomes a pose, a stance to be adopted rather than a genuine and immediate reaction to one’s surroundings. Although there is a definite sense that Louise has the same clear-sighted view of Johnny in Naked as Hazel has of Renton in Trainspotting – so electrifying is Johnny’s speech denouncing boredom and the bored that it is easy to miss how effectively Louise bursts his bubble with her understated riposte, ‘It’s a bit borin’, actually’ – it is hard to imagine her making the same accusation. There is nothing of the pose about Johnny’s manner: even when he is at his most frenzied, or his most theatrical – when wringing the maximum possible effect out of such innocuous-looking phrases as ‘happy little person’ or ‘I’m delighted’, say – there is no sense that he is merely playing a part. It is precisely this authenticity which charges the film with that force of attraction needed to counterbalance the forces of repulsion, just as it is this authenticity which distinguishes Naked from many of the other apocalyptic works instanced above, beginning with Trainspotting, in which Mark Renton is constantly stepping in and out of different roles, jumping up and down the social scale to work matters to his own advantage and confound people’s expectations. One of the central concerns of London Fields is the way in which experience is so wholly shaped by role-playing, one’s own and other people’s, that a shared reality is not merely distorted but even abolished altogether as a result. Salman Rushdie and Iain Sinclair are each interested, in different ways, in the partly fictional and textual nature of the real world. While the tendency towards posturing and self-parody, albeit often of a very clever sort, was undoubtedly there in much

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British music and art as the decade wore on, it is precisely the sense of felt reality that underpins Naked – given that it is Mike Leigh’s signature, in many ways  – and dominates in Johnny too, the impression given of a late modern sensibility set adrift in a postmodern world. This only increases Johnny’s appeal, of course; for this is the potential for attraction that the opening scene, casting the audience into such profound doubt as to how to place the film’s protagonist, is intended to counterbalance. For Johnny, even at his most dilapidated  – or, perhaps, precisely at his most dilapidated – there is always a sense of something approaching glamour in the fullest meaning of that word, intensified by the idea that he is in no way deliberately playing this part. He is as he appears to be. As Amy Raphael revealingly phrases it in her book-length interview with Leigh: ‘If I’m honest, David Thewlis is oddly attractive in Naked.’30 The oddness of the attraction is revealed by that prefatory ‘if I’m honest’: knowing full well that Johnny’s actions and behaviour ought to be treated, if not with condemnation, then at least clinically, a viewer may still find himself or herself drawn towards him in just the way so many of the characters around him are (Figure 12.1).31 This quality of Johnny’s, of fascinating without seeking to fascinate, may explain why so many commentators have felt the need to locate a tradition in which to place him and yet have struggled to find a precursor which fits him at all precisely. After all, the conventional figure of the malcontent, staple of the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage, was already an artificial posture ripe for

Figure 12.1  Johnny (David Thewlis) leafs through a book as Sophie (Katrin Cartlidge) listens in Naked (1993)

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undermining when Shakespeare employed a variant of it in Hamlet. The whole line of theatrical angry young men descended from the Jimmy Porter of John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger are certainly there in the background, as is Dostoevsky’s Raskolnikov, by Leigh’s own admission.32 It may even be that Johnny brings his unarticulated torments with him from Manchester to London rather as Byron bore ‘the pageant of his bleeding heart’ in flight from England across Europe. But Byron soon gave way to the merely Byronic: the thrilling stance of the right here and right now becomes a posture, a mere part to play, through repetition and familiarity. Again, it is the authenticity of Johnny which accounts for the attraction as it does for the repulsion, precisely in the fact that his behaviour cannot be written off as mere posturing any more than a clear type can be found that he might be playing. For Mike Leigh and David Thewlis to have come up with something for a distressed and dishevelled young man in a long black coat to do – nearing the end of a century which had already offered, on the page, in the theatres and up on the screen, countless variations on that particular type – which yet has no trace in it of merely playing a preexisting role, is one of Naked’s founding and most impressive achievements. In the end, the larger types or roles – those with the most room for manoeuvre and varied interpretation – seem to fit Johnny better than the range of particular ones that have been suggested. Among these larger roles – and with the possible exception of Jesus Christ – none is larger than Hamlet. At almost exactly the same time that filming was ending on Naked, Kenneth Branagh was opening in a Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) production of Hamlet at the Barbican Centre in London. A measured and controlled treatment of the play, the distance between these two points in contemporary British culture might seem, at first sight, unbridgeable.33 Yet this is to think of Shakespeare in the way that John Major clearly did when emphasizing the importance of teaching it in schools, paying the national poet the same patriotic lip service that Laurence expresses in Abigail’s Party: ‘Part of our heritage, hm? Course, it’s not something you can actually read.’ When Leigh was first encountering the theatrical world in London, there was something of a revolution going on in the area of staging Shakespeare, spearheaded by Peter Hall at the RSC and including a groundbreaking production of Hamlet in 1965 in which David Warner played Hamlet as a disaffected young man in a way that tapped directly into the spirit of youthful rebelliousness which was emerging during that decade. As Paul Clements explains, Hall produced

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Shakespeare’s plays ‘not as museum exhibits exhumed as a matter of cultural duty, but as works with a currency and relevance to contemporary life. . . . Leigh remembers seeing the plays and noticing that “what was extraordinary was the sense of things being real”’.34 Michael Coveney has shown that there are widespread echoes of Hamlet to be heard in Naked, ranging from the obvious indebtedness to Hamlet of Johnny’s attire and certain of his remarks to more fleeting patterns. When Johnny says ‘I’ve seen more life in an open grave’, it is actually quite hard not to think of the gravedigger scene in Hamlet, though it would be equally hard to declare with any confidence that this is an actual allusion. After all, it is hard to imagine how a British director, cast, and crew educated by the British school system and learning a trade in the British theatre might make a film with a disaffected and articulate young man at its centre and not have traces of Hamlet emerge in it. Beyond the incidentals, there is a deeper commonality between the two protagonists. As Coveney says: Johnny doesn’t use his intellect to engage with other people; he uses it as a buffer to his own near-psychotic condition and as a weapon of subordination, just as Hamlet uses his own wit as a stalking horse under whose cover he shoots at others (that’s everyone) less witty than himself.35

There is a form of dramatic kinship between the two, then, but there is a significant distinction suggested here also, conveyed by the very terms Coveney uses. Hamlet does indeed use his wit as a stalking horse, as a consciously intended and deceptive device, since there are always two Hamlets at work: the real (for want of a better word) Hamlet who is the Hamlet who soliloquizes or who communes with Horatio; and the antic Hamlet who feigns madness, bedazzling and confusing in equal measure. The distance between these two Hamlets is open to endless critical debate, and different productions of the play are often founded on exactly how far apart they choose to keep the two personae. With Johnny in Naked, on the other hand, though the buffer of his intellect may seem at first sight to act much as Hamlet’s stalking horse does, we can only infer the psychology underlying it as Coveney does in the passage above since there is no other commenting and reflective persona. Nor is it clear how voluntary Johnny’s use of his own form of ‘wit’ is, since it only seems to disappear altogether very briefly, in extremis, in the climactic scene on the landing of Sandra’s house. For all that, Johnny does have recourse to verbal resources that most around him do not. Hidden depths are

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intimated in him in the way they always are throughout Leigh’s work, through the detailed rendering of the surface not through the artifice of exposition or recourse to improbable forms of eloquence drawing on sudden flashes of self-knowledge. Johnny may be playing a role, but only inasmuch as everybody else is: he is, otherwise, exactly as he appears to be, refusing to perform in accordance with other people’s expectations as Sophie, for one, discovers to her cost. There is one major exception to this refusal and, significantly, it is in this particular sequence – which also includes the only use of the word ‘naked’ in the film – that many of the most prominent echoes of Hamlet are clustered. Coveney suggests that the second part of this sequence is ‘the equivalent to the closet scene where Hamlet begs his mother not to sleep again with his murderous stepfather’,36 while the first part, beginning where Johnny and Brian first meet, relates to Hamlet’s earlier encounter with his father’s ghost. One doesn’t need to hear the word used – ‘Look, Dad, will you just back off?!’ – to pick up on a paternal quality to the way in which Brian relates to Johnny; nor do we need the confirmation offered by Johnny’s line ‘You look like me mother’ to sense the presence of something Oedipal in Johnny’s visit to the flat across the road from the round window through which he and Brian previously watched the woman dance.37 What does need to be borne in mind is that this is the one moment in the film where Johnny is not only conscious of being watched but is willing, at least initially, to play a part, to enact something that Brian himself cannot or will not, though whether to taunt or to console the older man is unclear. Brian is rendered ghostlike by these actions – ‘a species of pure thought’, it may be – his presence only briefly glimpsed but continually sensed by Johnny who reminds the audience of this spectral presence by occasional glances out of the windows. The camera periodically removes itself from the flat to take up Brian’s perspective, watching these same windows. One window looks on to the head of the bed where Johnny and the woman grapple (when she submits and turns her head away from him, she may be looking up at Brian’s window, though it is hard to be sure), while the other looks on to the armchair to which Johnny retreats and in which he subsequently spends the night. (When he wakes, it is to find himself next to a large circular mirror which seems to be much the same size as the round window across the street). The play between the two windows effects a division between the Johnny who acts and the Johnny who reflects, so momentarily heightening the relation to Hamlet. At the same time, it also suggests that outside this isolated moment of

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theatre – a play within the play, indeed – with its dance of gazes and glances and its clustering of symbols of uncertain significance (the map of Ireland, the skull and crossbones tattoo), Johnny contains these elements of action and reflection within himself in a form of dynamic equilibrium. Convinced of the futility of engagement with society in the face of an assured and imminent end to all things yet equally charged by the need to engage constantly with the world around him and constantly railing at others who refuse to do the same, the suspension between these opposing forces drives Johnny just as it drives the film, eventually driving him out of the door of Sandra’s house and on to the road again with a pocketful of someone else’s money, heading into a future that is unknowable. In the light of Whitehead’s suggestion that the narrative of Naked falls roughly into four acts,38 the absence of a fifth act, the one in which, in revenge tragedies, the act of vengeance is carried out and the hero meets his required end, points back towards Hamlet yet again but only to reinforce once more the difference between the two men. Hamlet endlessly puts off acting in order to act a part. Johnny is endlessly in action but is never actually acting at all (Figure 12.2). If there is a pattern of divergence from one film to the next in Mike Leigh’s work, there is, as he rightly insists, continuity as well which can be seen in the way that one film will throw up questions to which the next will return, approaching them from a completely different angle. When, in the climactic moments of Life Is Sweet, Wendy confronts her bulimic daughter Nicola and

Figure 12.2  Brian (Peter Wight), a night watchman, takes Johnny (David Thewlis) on his rounds as they carry on philosophical conversation in Naked (1993)

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attempts to shake her out of her solipsistic state simply by telling her that she ‘should be out there’, the point is not what form the action should take, whether it be becoming a plumber, buying a knackered old chip van or starting a family, but that the important thing is the act of engagement itself, with the world and with other people. It is a familiar note from throughout Leigh’s films manifesting itself in many different forms, often made to provide the necessary shaft of sunlight after the storm has passed: the change of heart over starting a family at the end of High Hopes; the various forms of loving reconciliation at the end of Secrets & Lies; the unexpected sense of renewal in the closing scenes of All or Nothing. But in Naked, it is as though Leigh began with that same idea of the need to engage with the world and stripped it of everything else – rational motivation, emotional attachment, even self-interest – so as to examine it as a pure principle. When Brian twice tells Johnny ‘don’t waste your life’, the scene is loaded with significance, but it is impossible to imagine what shape an unwasted life for Johnny might take: for another man with the same abilities and potential in another time and place perhaps, but not for this Johnny, here and now. As Life Is Sweet ends, Nicola has made it at least as far as the back garden and the audience is free to imagine the different paths her life might now take whether further ‘out there’ or back inside. When Naked stops, Johnny is already ‘out there’ yet again, but the effect is utterly different. ‘We cut to black’39 – and the rest is silence. This examination of a familiar principle in a raw and unadorned state might well be an aspect of what Mike Leigh meant in talking of Naked as being about ‘something fundamental rather than just local’, but it is hard to imagine how any other series of locations or any other historical moment might have allowed the examination to take the form it does. While fundamental leanings can be made to relate to Hamlet, the purely local appears to work against this. Yet Naked relates to the immediate context in which it was created no more and no less keenly than Shakespeare’s play does to London at the very moment one century was ending and another beginning, when the city was also the focus for an ‘extraordinary burst of creative energy’ and the site of endless apocalyptic anxiety and expectation. In the years prior to 1992, High Hopes and Life Is Sweet could be viewed by the light of a much more readily decipherable political context. A few years afterwards and Secrets & Lies would ride on the wave of renewed national self-confidence subsequently marketed as ‘Cool Britannia’. These three films have far more in common with each other than any of them has with Naked, that howl of pain into the darkness after the manner of its own protagonist’s screams into the night on the Caledonian Road. In this light, the film is made to seem wholly

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singular, being not merely without precedent but pointing out no direction ahead, throwing up questions to which no subsequent film could return. This is appropriate, perhaps – ‘The end of the world is nigh, Bri. The game is up!’ – but also paradoxical. Naked is indeed a breakthrough film, but it broke through into a new mode which, taken here as far as it might possibly go, could lead to nowhere else at all apart from eternally back into itself.

Notes 1 Amy Raphael, ed., Mike Leigh on Mike Leigh. London: Faber and Faber, 2008, 226. 2 Tony Whitehead, Mike Leigh. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2007, 90. 3 Howie Movshovitz, ed., Mike Leigh: Interviews. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2000, 46. 4 Garry Watson, The Cinema of Mike Leigh: A Sense of the Real. London and New York: Wallflower Press, 2004, 16. As with Leigh, Thewlis does make clear in his interview that he is in no way condoning rape and that Johnny is, if not a rapist, nevertheless ‘out of order’. 5 Ray Carney and Leonard Quart, The Films of Mike Leigh: Embracing the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, 227. 6 Bert Cardullo, Loach and Leigh Ltd.: The Cinema of Social Conscience. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2010, 2. 7 Edward Trostle Jones, All or Nothing: The Cinema of Mike Leigh. New York: Peter Lang, 2004, 123. 8 Whitehead, Mike Leigh, 91. 9 Mike Leigh, Naked and Other Screenplays. London: Faber and Faber, 1995, 5. 10 Movshovitz, Mike Leigh, 56. 11 At a guess, Johnny might here be coming off the A40 at the Marylebone Flyover which would mean that he has been driving westwards and back out of London at this point. Two decades on and a lot of construction later, it is rather hard to be certain. On the following day he does unaccountably drift westwards to the encounter with the chauffeur in Holland Park. 12 Movshovitz, Mike Leigh, 67. 13 Ibid., 55–6. 14 Leigh, Naked and Other Screenplays, xli. 15 Raphael, Mike Leigh on Mike Leigh, 228. 16 John Harris, The Last Party: Britpop, Blair and the Demise of English Rock. London: Fourth Estate, 2003, 22.

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17 Many were soon wondering whether they might not have been better off losing the election of 1992, a year which even someone as untouched by social malaise and economic hardship as the Queen famously described as an annus horribilis: after the humiliating and costly debacle of the pound crashing out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism in September of the same year, the Conservatives fell far behind Labour in the opinion polls where they would remain for well over a decade. 18 John Major, ‘Speech to the Conservative Group for Europe, 22 April 1993’, John Major, last modified 27 June 2012, www.johnmajor.co.uk/page1086.html. 19 Movshovitz, Mike Leigh, 56. 20 Leigh, Naked and Other Screenplays, xxxviii. 21 Patricia Waugh, Harvest of the Sixties: English Literature and its Background 1960 to 1990. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995, 24. 22 Leigh, Naked and Other Screenplays, 3. 23 Ibid., ix. 24 Iain Sinclair, Downriver. London: Paladin, 1990, 16. 25 When Scott, the driving instructor in Happy-Go-Lucky, feverishly rants about how the height of the Washington Monument relates to the ‘number of the beast’ in the Book of Revelation – surely a backwards nod at Naked on Leigh’s part – the effect is to reinforce an impression of his character as lying somewhere between merely paranoid and fully unhinged. When Johnny points out the same correspondence to be found in the details of the bar code, the effect is very different: Brian’s attentiveness conditions the audience’s response as surely as Poppy’s amusement does in the later film, encouraging the viewer in the case of Naked to take Johnny, if not his beliefs, entirely seriously. Edward Trostle Jones may be right when he suggests that there ‘may be less to Johnny the philosopher than first meets the eye and mind’ (All or Nothing, 122), but the ultimate object of interest is not the ‘philosophy’ itself, but the effect it has on Johnny and the sincerity with which he espouses it. It is worth noting that although Johnny refers to Revelation when inside the building with Brian, outside, in the doorway, he is reading Deuteronomy, chapter 13, on the need to have a false prophet, a ‘dreamer of dreams’, put to death. 26 Richard Todd, Consuming Fictions: The Booker Prize and Fiction in Britain Today. London: Bloomsbury, 1996, 164. 27 Michael Coveney, The World According to Mike Leigh. London: HarperCollins, 1997, 11. 28 Communities which were, at least according to received wisdom, less resistant to break down in London than in Manchester or the Edinburgh of Trainspotting, places where ‘people talk to you’, as Louise says. Quite apart from the fact that Naked gives an extended hearing to northern voices for the first time in Leigh’s

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32 33

34 35 36 37

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Devised and Directed by Mike Leigh films since The Kiss of Death in 1977, it remains the only film of Leigh’s in which the outsider’s perspective is the central one. Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting. London: Minerva, 1994, 186–7. Raphael, Mike Leigh on Mike Leigh, 230. It is telling also that Raphael refers to Thewlis rather than to Johnny since in the context of the interviewer’s question from which this quotation has been taken, she is clearly referring to the character rather than to the actor who plays him. Of course, given the intensity of Thewlis’s performance, this is a confusion to which anyone might be liable. Leigh, Naked and Other Screenplays, xxxv. The facial hair that Branagh went on to sport in the film of 1996 is worth comparing to Johnny’s as each owes a debt to the styles of Shakespeare’s day (as ‘before’ and ‘after’ shots, perhaps), arguably best known from representations of Shakespeare himself (‘ever grown a beard?’ asks Alan Dixon of the photographer Mr Shakespeare in Who’s Who). Adrian Noble’s 1992 production did not necessarily give Hamlet any greater contemporary currency than the play seems always to enjoy, but something which did give it such currency among precisely those audiences that would subsequently take such an intense interest in Naked, was Richard E. Grant’s rendition of the speech from act II, scene ii (‘I have of late – but wherefore I know not’) in the closing sequence of Withnail and I. Another electrifying central performance in a film which also acquired an immediate cult following, Grant’s Withnail is well worth considering alongside Thewlis’s Johnny. Such has been the influence of the sequence in question, that the speech has been reproduced many times since with the words ‘nor women neither’ repeated twice as a way of closing it as if this beautiful redaction belonged to Shakespeare’s play rather than to Bruce Robinson’s film. Paul Clements, The Improvised Play: The Work of Mike Leigh. London: Methuen, 1983, 10. Coveney, The World According to Mike Leigh, 28. Ibid., 26. The presence of the Oedipus Complex in Hamlet was first suggested by Sigmund Freud himself in The Interpretation of Dreams (1899). Whether receptive or hostile to the idea, subsequent critical accounts of the play have rarely allowed themselves to leave it undiscussed. In Naked, the Oedipal motif is established by Johnny’s very first deliberately shocking reference to his mother. Whitehead, Mike Leigh, 91. Leigh, Naked and Other Screenplays, 95.

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Works cited Cardullo, Bert. Loach and Leigh Ltd.: The Cinema of Social Conscience. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2010. Carney, Ray and Leonard Quart. The Films of Mike Leigh: Embracing the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Clements, Paul. The Improvised Play: The Work of Mike Leigh. London: Methuen, 1983. Coveney, Michael. The World According to Mike Leigh. London: HarperCollins, 1997. Harris, John. The Last Party: Britpop, Blair and the Demise of English Rock. London: Fourth Estate, 2003. Leigh, Mike. Naked and Other Screenplays. London: Faber and Faber, 1995. Major, John. ‘Speech to the Conservative Group for Europe, 22 April 1993’, in John Major. Last modified 27 June 2012, www.johnmajor.co.uk/page1086.html. Movshovitz, Howie, ed. Mike Leigh: Interviews. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2000. Raphael, Amy, ed. Mike Leigh on Mike Leigh. London: Faber and Faber, 2008. Sinclair, Iain. Downriver. London: Paladin, 1990. Todd, Richard. Consuming Fictions: The Booker Prize and Fiction in Britain Today. London: Bloomsbury, 1996. Trostle Jones, Edward. All or Nothing: The Cinema of Mike Leigh. The History and Art of Cinema, Vol. 7. New York: Peter Lang, 2004. Watson, Garry. The Cinema of Mike Leigh: A Sense of the Real. London and New York: Wallflower Press, 2004. Waugh, Patricia. Harvest of the Sixties: English Literature and its Background 1960 to 1990. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. Welsh, Irvine. Trainspotting. London: Minerva, 1994. Whitehead, Tony. Mike Leigh. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2007.

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Gendered Troubles on Screen: Reproduction and Nationalism in Mike Leigh’s Four Days in July Derek Gladwin

All nationalisms are gendered, all are invented, and all are dangerous.1 Gender and nationalism are intricately linked in many colonized communities. Pregnancy and birth are two significant tropes of this type of representation and both often symbolize reproduction for the nationalist cause. Links among women, women’s bodies and women’s reproduction for the nation also constitute a recurring theme in Irish culture. It is at this intersection that Mike Leigh’s made-for-television film, Four Days in July (1984), stitches themes of reproduction and nationalism into an already complicated political fabric within the sectarian conflict known as the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland. In Four Days, women’s bodies represent the nation and reproduction for both the Protestant and the Catholic position. Within these discourses in Four Days, women’s bodies are one of the pre-eminent sites where nationalism is embodied and promulgated through the unfolding development of Leigh’s realist cinema. Irish cinema as a whole is often characterized by four dominant themes: the landscape is romanticized, the narrative tends to return to the past, incidents of violence and sexuality occur perpetually and the family or community play prominent roles.2 For example, in Neil Jordan’s The Crying Game (1992) and Breakfast on Pluto (2005), plot structure winds tightly around themes of violence and sexual representation. Jim Sheridan’s The Field (1990) and Into the West (1992) examine the landscape of western Ireland and how modernity is defeated through a nostalgic return to the past. Margo Harkin’s Hush-a-Bye Baby (1990) challenges notions of teenage pregnancy within a modernized era of birth control

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and abortion. Confirming this seemingly predetermined general pattern, Four Days adopts the theme of family and community, but despite falling into what seems to be unavoidable categories of Irish film-making, Mike Leigh’s critically undervalued film can be viewed differently because he brings an original and perhaps a more objective and realist perspective as an outsider to its production. The role of family and community, especially in relation to issues of gender, encapsulates the film and allows the viewer to see gender as centrally positioned in what otherwise might seem peripheral in a film about the sectarian divisions in Northern Ireland. Furthermore, nationalism within Four Days begins to develop a more substantial and richly nuanced relationship with gender discourses. Louise Ryan and Margaret Ward argue in Irish Women and Nationalism: Soldiers, New Women and Wicked Hags, ‘While nationalist symbols, images and texts have continued to depict women within a narrow range of cultural stereotypes, women’s roles within nationalism have been, and continue to be, diverse, multifaceted and dynamic.’3 Four Days, then, brings together with effective forcefulness an entire set of pervasive and interconnected themes revolving around gender, nationalism and realism during a particularly contentious period of the Troubles in Belfast.

Filming sectarianism as an outsider How does a British film-maker walk into Belfast at the height of the Troubles and capture a depoliticized perspective that is sympathetic of both Catholic and Protestant nationalisms? In Mike Leigh on Mike Leigh (2008), Amy Raphael notes that Leigh views his film-making beyond the parochial confines of Britishness.4 Often compared with fellow British film-maker Ken Loach, Leigh replaces Loach’s penchant for (P)olitics with his own for (p)olitics. The latter form of small ‘p’ politics, with its unavoidable connection to the social sphere but without the overt markers of an advanced political agenda, is what I will refer to in this essay at times as the political-non-political. In other words, Leigh is less concerned with the explicit tensions existing within established political agendas than he is with a focused portrayal of ‘how we live and relate and survive’ within these political tensions, as in such films as All or Nothing (2002) or Secrets & Lies (1995).5 And yet, a thread of political tension persists beneath the surface of conventional social issues. This ethos is fundamental to understanding Leigh as a film-maker; it is also essential to understanding how Leigh depicts the

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contested July 12 Orange Parade celebrated in Belfast, which is the historic event underpinning Four Days.6 Mostly organized and funded by the Orange Order, the largest fraternal organization in Northern Ireland and one that considers itself the apotheosis of Ulster loyalism, over 3,000 parades take place between June and August.7 The Catholic community, however, has consistently resisted Orange Order parades because they are viewed as an ideological mouthpiece for the Protestant cause. In Material Conflicts: Parades and Visual Displays in Northern Ireland, Neil Jarman asserts, ‘Catholics and nationalists publicly denounce the Orange Order as a sectarian, anti-Catholic, anti-nationalist, divisive force within the north.’8 The July 12 Orange Parade represents the most celebrated Orange Order event in Belfast, and its ritualistic displays span over four days, hence the title of Leigh’s film.9 The parade season condenses a long and complicated history that primarily reinforces forms of Ulster loyalty. According to Rachel Ward in Women, Unionism, and Loyalism in Northern Ireland, ‘When viewing the parades from the perspective of culture and history, attempts by Irish Nationalists and Republicans to prevent the passage of parades becomes a threat to that culture, reinforcing the nationalist sentiment of unionism.’10 Such opposing ideologies collide at the climax of these four days in July, often resulting in bloody protests and violent confrontations. Notwithstanding the political and practical risks involved, Leigh wanted to film during this controversial Belfast celebration while somehow managing to refrain from politicizing the event of the parade.11 This (p)olitical stance characterizes Leigh as a political-non-political director, focusing primarily on human and family relationships amidst surrounding ethno-religious tensions rather than sensationalizing the sectarian conflict. Four Days, consequently, examines gender and nationalism through the way in which relationships unfold in conversation as opposed to dramatic or overstated depictions of the violence within the history of the Troubles. Even though Four Days is set in a historically fraught situation, the plot structure of the film is relatively transparent and accessible. Four Days looks at two couples: one Catholic and the other Protestant. The women in each couple are both close to the end of their pregnancies. Overlapping the domestic focus, the film stretches over four days of the July 12 Orange Parade celebrations, beginning on 9 July and ending on 12 July with four clearly demarcated sections paralleling each respective day. It concludes with the Catholic and Protestant women finally coming together after having given birth, suggesting that women

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only connect in the film through the act of reproducing the nation. The climactic scene occurs when the men meet up in the waiting room while the women lie beside one another in the recovery room. Although both the formal structure and the use of cinematographic techniques of the film are quite straight forward, each of the scenes unfolds with greater insight into the characters, leading to a culminating change in the end. Despite the compelling theme and delicate negotiation between both Catholic and Protestant ideologies, few Irish studies or film scholars have written about this film. Four of the definitive texts published on Mike Leigh  – Michael Coveney’s The World According to Mike Leigh (1997), Ray Carney and Leonard Quart’s The Films of Mike Leigh: Embracing the World (2000), Garry Watson’s The Cinema of Mike Leigh: A Sense of the Real (2004) and Amy Raphael’s Mike Leigh on Mike Leigh (2008) – mention Four Days in some capacity, although none of these authors devote substantial critical attention to the film. The one exception to this list is Sean O’Sullivan’s recently published Mike Leigh (2011), which is one of the latest instalments of the Contemporary Film Director’s series. O’Sullivan investigates the plot focus of Northern Ireland in Four Days in comparison to unemployment in Meantime (1983) and identifies Leigh’s signature method of scrutinizing how character and plot function as ubiquitous constructs that inform and mediate our lives.12 Other than O’Sullivan’s broader overview of the Northern Ireland sectarian conflict in Four Days, one can only speculate about the dearth of scholarship on this film. Perhaps it is due to the fact that Four Days resists categorization into any of the established scholarly taxonomies, such as ‘Irish cinema’, ‘the Troubles’, ‘British cinema’ and/or ‘Thatcher’s Britain’. Regardless, it is probably the least critically analysed films in Leigh’s entire oeuvre. Whether the film has been marginalized by critics because it was made for BBC television or because it may have failed to connect directly to a singular Irish, Northern Irish, or British audience, Four Days is nevertheless a centrally important film that addresses the incisive issues in Northern Ireland that are still relevant today, particularly through the lens of gender and nationalism. In addition to its taxonomic transcendence, Four Days lacks the status of an indigenous Northern Irish film because Leigh is conspicuously British and the film was funded by the BBC. However, Four Days was shot completely on location in Northern Ireland, which was no small feat considering the difficulties of obtaining genuine firearms or documenting soldiers on film. Leigh also hired an all-Northern Irish film crew (only his camera operator came from London).

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In fact, he spent many months prior to making the film travelling around Ireland and chatting with a diverse range of Irish people in order to gain a sense of the ‘local’ cultural flavour. He also used predominantly Irish actors, many of who were from the North. In making Four Days Leigh took a decisive step to redress a situation lamented by Ruth Barton in Irish National Cinema, where Irish film-making needs to address alternative viewpoints, which has been compromised by an underdeveloped and almost non-existent local Northern Irish film-making tradition.13 Only with the induction of Channel 4 in the 1980s were some of the lower budget Northern Irish films funded, but the industry really did not begin to expand until the 1990s.14 Four Days occupies the paradoxical situation of being created at a time when indigenous films were rarely made in Northern Ireland (this was the first one outside of England for Leigh), yet both its subject matter and production crew give it the unique identity of a semi-indigenous film. John Hill describes the dilemma of indigeneity that confronts the Northern Irish film industry: ‘The peculiar status of Northern Ireland – geographically a part of the island of Ireland but politically a part of the U.K. – has meant that the history of filmmaking in Northern Ireland has been a modest one, confined to the periphery of both the British and Irish film industries.’15 Regardless of the film’s complex status within the British or Irish film industry, it accurately reveals extant issues at play in Northern Irish culture, depicting how ordinary people try to get on with life despite their unshakable ethno-religious associations. Always true to his method, Leigh eliminates the barriers that often force labels and social constructs upon everyday people, securely anchoring his place in a unique style of realist cinema.

The realism of unfolding In terms of timing, Leigh’s cinematic style is not visually complicated, but the way he uses duration and motion significantly enhances his craft of realism. Time for Leigh is also the duration and the motion of bodies onscreen in connection with conversational situations. This category of ‘the conversational situation’ transcends an over simplistic style often adopted in Hollywood cinema that undermines the sufficient duration needed in order to develop a core aspect of the real. Whereas Hollywood realism aligns the point of view of the viewer and camera as one and the same thus forcing a prescribed viewpoint onto the viewer, Leigh constructs scenes that unfold past what is a standard point of view

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for the viewer. That is, rather than employ strategic camera placements and techniques designed to enhance realistic effects that are commonplace in modern commercial cinema, Leigh’s direction captures spontaneous conversations existing at sites of becoming, where things unfold, materialize and take shape. When a realist conversation begins, for example, it generally lacks an end goal; rather, it unfolds instinctively, which is not linear or teleological. It is based on duration, on the length of time in which it unfolds, not on a desire to reach a defined end or goal. Paralleling Leigh’s cinema technique of realism through unfolding, pregnancy, birth and nationalism all develop through time and with a similar transformative significance. We can see Leigh’s technique in action by timing some of the scenes in Four Days. The longest scene in the film shows Dixie (Stephen Rea) and Brendan (Shane Connaughton) in the house of Collette (Brid Brennan) and Eugene (Des McAleer). The scene lasts for about 20 minutes (almost one fourth of the entire film) and is shot within three changes of location: (1) a quick exterior shot of Collette speaking with Dixie as he is cleaning windows outside of her house on a ladder; (2) an interior shot of all four characters conversing in the kitchen as Dixie now cleans the windows right outside the kitchen; and (3) an interior shot of all four characters in the living room as they continue their conversation before Dixie and Brendan leave. These individual interior scenes not only extend much longer than the industry standard, they also lack congruent dramatic conformity and narrative development. If we re-examine the scene just mentioned, the dramatic sequence stays consistently flat. For instance, no significant action rises or falls throughout the scene nor does much sequencing of the plot development occur as the characters discuss their lives, reflecting upon traumatic histories and the inevitable hardship of living in Belfast. With minimal lighting and set design, the camera includes the viewer as part of the conversational situation in this long interior sequence by maintaining the duration of realism. Another example of this type of unfolding can be seen in the opening shot of the film. Leigh uses a deep focus shot down an alleyway, thereby incorporating all planes of view. The shot holds without movement on the alley while in view a few young girls play with some roaming dogs on a warm summer Belfast day. This may seem to be a clichéd trope of realist cinema, but as the shot sustains for a long 2 minutes without a cut, which is especially long for an opening shot of a film, Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) vehicles drive through the perpendicular streets after the girls and dogs cross. The girls make their way down the alley, getting smaller in the field of vision as more UDR vehicles continue to cross

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the camera’s field of view. The crisscrossing alleyways in this shot, it should be noted, resonate with meaning in Belfast because they represent customary urban spaces where paramilitary retaliation traditionally occurs due to its clandestine interiors. Likewise, they are also historically places to hide from occupational forces. Possibly functioning as a synecdoche for the whole film, this opening shot highlights how ordinary people repeatedly inhabit urban space within contested zones filled with military occupation. The opening of Four Days also suggests in one sustained shot sequence that what might appear to be a standard urban milieu in the summertime intersects, much like the represented alleyways, a world of sectarianism through political and military occupation. Leigh’s construction of the timed conversation also materializes emotionally through spontaneity. According to Brian McIlroy, ‘Mike Leigh’s film is typical of his general style: he seems to invite and encourage improvised scenes based on an extended prerehearsal period, and by positioning his camera unobtrusively in the midst of a conversation.’16 Leigh consistently applies this improvisational pre-filming strategy to shape the film’s final structure; indeed, the emphasis on a prerehearsal period is where the unfolding scenes of conversation originate. Leigh, then, has to capture this later on the set through longer takes and extended scenes during the filming. With a sustained reliance on ordinary people, Leigh continually reinforces his brand of realism. He nurtures the unfolding of each scene by using local actors and allowing spontaneous construction of the film from the initial stages of planning on into the production. One underestimated consequence of this subtle approach to realism, however, is that it brings the dimensions of gender and nationalism into greater profile. ‘If ever there was obvious opportunity to exploit the dramatic, this was it’, Garry Watson suggests.17 He then continues, ‘Here, in the case of childbirth (and all that surrounds it), we have an example of that kind of “experience” that can indeed be said to be that “of ordinary people everywhere,” even if not everyone experiences it directly.’18 This kind of ‘experience’ reinforces how gender and nationalism can be discovered in Four Days: both Catholics and Protestants experience a paralleled coexistence among such universalisms as reproduction, the family and national identity.

Gendered nationalism Nationalist representations that are articulated through embodied experiences of both the pregnant women in the film allow the viewer a privileged access to this understated facet of realism. Documenting on screen the domestication of

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women’s bodies by nationalism, which renders them as subordinated spaces, will optimally unfold naturally and without prescribed texts or obvious manipulation of its subjects. This nationalist ideology, inscribed in the very bodies of its conquests, provides the realism in Four Days with a fertile cinematic landscape needed to critique the longstanding ravages of nationalist hegemony. The varieties of nationalism differ depending upon the territory and objectives they arise from, but they universally emerge through cultural, historical, political, territorial and/or economic claims, whether by enfranchisement or disenfranchisement.19 Tamar Mayer distils this point even further in her introduction to Gender Ironies of Nationalism: Sexing the Nation when she claims, ‘The ideology which members of the community, those who are of the same kind, share – through which they identify with the nation and express their national loyalty – is what we call nationalism.’20 Two widely recognized forms of nationalism are defined as primordial and modernist. Primordial nationalism functions on the idea that nationalist rhetoric depends upon myth and folk narratives to bridge actual and imagined histories. Longevity, blood connection and cultural difference are all necessary to establish a primordial nationalism. Much of the rhetoric of the Orange Order, for instance, can be defined as primordial nationalism due to a heavy reliance upon historical and cultural legacy to legitimate claims of dominance and victory.21 One of the opening scenes in Four Days illustrates a form of primordial nationalism when Edward McCoy (John Keegan) inaccurately claims to the UDR that his Ulster people ‘have been here in Ulster since before the time of Jesus Christ himself ’, thereby tracing an identifiable lineage and reinforcing a form of primordial nationalism. Modernist nationalism, in contrast, is based upon the notion that nationalism has been deliberately formed and functions as a tool for the nation to empower national identity among its people. It is also a relatively new concept that arguably results from the French revolution.22 As Benedict Anderson reminds us, ‘The key to situating “official nationalism” – willed merger of national and dynastic empire  – is to remember that it developed after, and in reaction to, the popular national movements proliferating in Europe since the 1820s.’23 Modernist nationalism, then, is a relatively new construct and challenges the idea of an unwavering primordial nationalism. This paradoxical relationship identifies the gap between Catholic and Protestant nationalisms, with the former typically adhering to a modernist form and the latter to a primordial one. In consequence, gendered nationalism identifies within the modernist construct,

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on the one hand, but it must also function within a less congruent primordial viewpoint due to increasing mythic narratives, on the other hand. Before moving into an exclusively gendered nationalism, it is important to point out that when addressing the nationalist cause in Northern Ireland it is commonly seen as a conflict between the Catholic Irish and republican position and that of the Protestant unionists and loyalists. Irish nationalism signifies a recognized rhetorical construct that some scholars define culturally and, to an even greater extent, ethnically. Debates have arisen when identifying Protestant unionism and loyalism also as a nationalist cause. When it comes to gendered nationalism, Catholic and Protestant positions have equal footing because both adhere to principles of nationalist rhetoric. John McGarry and Brendan O’Leary argue in Explaining Northern Ireland: Broken Images, ‘Unionism is a type of nationalism, a variation of British nationalism, and it has both civic and ethnic dimensions, just like its Irish nationalist counterpart.’24 Quite similar to Irish nationalism, which calls for recognition of a distinctive ethnic identity through political legitimacy and religious, cultural and economic enfranchisement, unionists, despite being in a historically privileged position, also struggle to achieve cultural and ethnic identity. The ‘majority of unionists’, Feargal Cochrane maintains in Unionist Politics and the Politics of Unionism since the Anglo-Irish Agreement, ‘are concerned about their identity, their culture, their religion, and their history, as of course are nationalists’.25 This would seem to suggest that Irish nationalism and Ulster unionism parallel similar ideologies, though historical positions of enfranchisement through either modernist or primordial nationalism clearly differ. Simply put, then, it is the crisis of legitimacy in Northern Ireland that leads to nationalism, and this crisis can be felt on both sides. I make this point to distinguish between what might appear as solely an Irish nationalism actually represents a principle shared by both Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland. With regards to gendered nationalism, Elizabeth Porter affirms the necessity to underscore nationalism within both identities and to root it firmly in gender. She argues, ‘Viewing the conflict in Northern Ireland as one between nationalists and unionists has three main shortcomings: it oversimplifies national identity, it fails to recognize that unionism is also a form of nationalism, and it silences the extent to which nationalism is thoroughly gendered.’26 More direct emphasis on this point provides greater insight into how Leigh examines both of the women in Four Days within their distinctive nationalist causes, while also rooted in a shared gendered nationalism.

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Female representations of the nationalist project typically denote that women are constructed as the guardians and torchbearers of longstanding national traditions.27 While nationalism and gender became the tropes of an established discourse throughout the 1990s due to scholars such as Nira Yuval-Davis, Floya Anthias, Anne McClintock and Kumari Jaywardena, critical attention in the Irish context has been less forthcoming until more recently.28 Traditional constructions of female gender within Irish nationalist discourses typically depict an essentialized mythic figure such as the great mother or young maiden seen as the nation, elevated through her subordination of the dominant masculine psyche. Indeed, such a central motif appears in W. B. Yeats’ influential Cathleen Ni Houlihan (1902) and recurs throughout the twentieth century. Reflecting on this longstanding tendency to construct gender within the nationalist struggle, Barton points out, ‘The relationship between feminism and nationalism, and feminism and unionism, has been widely debated (Meaney 1993; Longley 1994, 173–95) without any position of agreement being reached as to whether nationalism/unionism can accommodate feminist ambitions.’29 In Irish cinema specifically, Barton also cites a number of factors that have contributed to the marginalized representations of women as national symbols: the denial of women’s roles in history; prevailing cinematic images of women; the failure of the early filmmakers in the first years of independent production to create positive images of men and the idealization of a nurturing, passive concept of motherhood fostered by the post-Independence authorities.30

Moreover, much of the writings about women in Northern Ireland have focused on women in political conflict and women who have been imprisoned or punished for their roles in these conflicts. Ryan and Ward suggest, ‘While nationalist symbols, images and texts have continued to depict women within a narrow range of cultural stereotypes, women’s roles within nationalism have been, and continue to be, diverse, multifaceted and dynamic.’31 While the traditional depictions of the dramatic episodes of political conflict contain some relevance, there is also an understated aspect of a woman’s role in the nationalist project that demonstrates an underlying national consciousness. Just as other Leigh films highlight conversations throughout, Four Days pinpoints several of these conversations to illuminate issues of nationalism and gender. One quick shot used to visually communicate this concept is of a mural for a ‘New Ireland’. The mural shows a woman coddling a flag as though it were an infant. The connection to the nation manifests as a newborn baby – something

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that has been reproduced and nurtured by a feminine presence – and parallels Collette and Lorraine (Paula Hamilton) producing their own offspring in the film. This mural represents a form of gendered nationalism that has historically lauded the theme of Mother Ireland, similar to Yeats’ depiction of Cathleen Ni Houlihan, and continues to be promulgated throughout the Troubles. While Leigh’s clip of the mural presents a traditional symbol for woman vis-à-vis its nationalist inflection, it also underscores that Leigh’s realism accentuates both the nationalist and feminized dynamic in each of its conversation scenes, leading up to the culminating scene in the hospital where the reality of mother and infant is given back its original significance for the nation. In nationalist discourses, woman’s bodies serve as a place where nationalism is pursued, embodied, created, nurtured by, reproduced through, and, as a result, forced onto them, presumably by male agents. Four Days portrays traditional female roles in domestic spheres as an entry point to move into a greater understanding about women and nationalism. McClintock confirms that, ‘nationalisms are indeed gendered places where women in subordinating roles exist within the greater structure of society’.32 From the outset of the film, it is clear that Collette and Lorraine are pregnant, thus reproducing both for themselves and for their respective nations. Ian Paisley, the zealous Protestant political figure known for his controversial speeches, often proclaimed, ‘Go home and breed for your country’, full well knowing that regeneration perpetuates a nationalist cause.33 Ward also identifies that national identity connects ‘strongly with territorial possession  – as a mother gives birth to her children, so the mother-land bears the children of the nation’.34 What is unclear is how will these reproductive modes promote nationalism while also promoting women’s rights? How will long-prevailing patriarchal traditions of domestic roles go on to enfold both the new mothers and their offspring in distinct and empowering ways?35

Erasing the silence In Four Days, Collette maintains a relatively strong position in her socially subordinate role, whereas Lorraine accepts her submissive role. This can be evidenced through each woman’s distinct voice and speech. Collette reveals decisive agency through her voice. She often speaks with intensity, intelligence and humour. She engages and challenges Dixie and Brendan during their banter with Eugene in the kitchen. When Dixie confounds Eugene with the joke, ‘what is the ship’s name in the film Mutiny on the Bounty?’ Collette later shakes her head

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and answers for Eugene, ‘the Bounty!’ She is also the only person able to answer Dixie’s riddle posed just before he leaves about the bottle and the shilling while also correcting a mistake Dixie makes in another joke about a seagull and pigeon. These roles are completely reversed in Lorraine’s situation. She has no voice of her own and submits constantly to Billy’s UDR mates, especially when she listens to the men sing Protestant loyalist songs and recount stories of masculine domination rituals such as slaughtering and barbecuing a cow in one of their many border missions. It is important to point out that Billy (Charles Lawson) is a soldier in the Ulster Defence Regiment and in his traditional masculine role of ‘protector of the nation’, he unreflectively subordinates his wife to her traditional (if lesser) feminine role as reproducer of the nation.36 According to Ward, ‘This shows that there are men in positions of influence who view women as politically naive and therefore in need of guidance. The prevailing patriarchal attitude, which some women appear to accept or be resigned to, must be seen in the broader context of a political agenda dominated by competing nationalisms.’37 Here I wish to engage for a moment with Begoña Aretxaga’s thesis in Shattering Silence: Women Nationalism, and Political Subjectivity in Northern Ireland (1997), which demonstrates that women have a voice and do participate in the nationalist struggle despite attempts to be silenced and erased by hegemonic masculine narratives. As is increasingly evident, women’s roles in nationalism are complex, complicated and diverse.38 According to a nationalist woman from Belfast, ‘Women are the backbone of the struggle; they are the ones carrying the war here and they are not receiving the recognition they deserve.’39 One short but poignant scene in Four Days recognizes this struggle, although Leigh does not overstate the scene nor is it integral in driving the narrative forward. Nevertheless, it subtly represents the role women play in the larger struggle for independence. Collette returns with a traditional British pram for her soon to be born baby, but during her journey home she has to unexpectedly walk through the streets of Belfast because of a problem with the car. In its cinematic function, it is one of the few exterior shots in the film and Leigh shoots it from a distance, encapsulating the exterior façade along Falls Road. The pram assumes particular significance because women agents of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA or Provos) used it regularly to conceal firearms and bombs during the sectarian conflict. Collette, however, is seemingly untouchable even in this contested zone because she is pregnant and her body elevates her above search and seizure. And her defiance, which could be read as a dangerous sortie through Belfast, is converted into an act of independence. The point here is that,

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clearly, pregnant women transcend political divides because they are ‘carriers’ of a greater cause; they are uncontested reproducers of the nation. Later, when Collette and Eugene retire to bed on the eve of her baby’s birth and of the Orange Parade on 11 July, they join together in singing a lullaby to fall asleep. Collette humourously begins to sing the loyalist song, ‘The Sash my Father Wore’, and they both have a bit of a laugh. After they sing in parody, Eugene cracks, ‘get the Pope!’ This scene is in response to a previous camera cut on Billy and his UDR comrades patriotically singing the exact same song as Lorraine quietly taps her knee with the drumbeat: It is old, but it is beautiful, And its colours they are fine It was worn at Derry, Aughrim, Enniskillen and the Boyne. My father wore it as a youth In bygone days of yore And on the Twelfth I love to wear The sash my father wore.

By juxtaposing these parallel situations, as Leigh often does in the film, the realism of unfolding denudes each scene. In other words, a rawness of the genuine Belfast reality for both Catholics and Protestants in the two contrasting conversation scenes unfurls slowly, much more slowly than standard cinematic timing, producing a realism of unfolding that forces viewers to place themselves in the scene without being in full control of the camera’s vision. It also allows a political-non-political point to be made about the sheer partisan celebration of the 12 July holiday through witnessing the perpetuation of a hegemonic Protestant culture in Northern Ireland from the perspective of Collette and Eugene. One could speculate, for instance, that it is highly unlikely Billy and his mates know the words to any Irish songs, whereas it is clear that Collette and Eugene clearly know the words to ‘The Sash My Father Wore’. Collette fully embodies the persona of Mother Ireland when she sings alone the Irish Fenian song, ‘Patriot Game’, in contrast to the overtly loyalist, ‘The Sash my Father Wore’. She begins: Come all ye young rebels, and list while I sing, For the love of one’s country is a terrible thing. It banishes fear with the speed of a flame, And it makes us all part of the patriot game. Behan 2011

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This song not only generates an impassioned response in Collette; it is also the only thing that lulls Eugene to sleep, as though the Irish male were some baby being rocked by his great Mother Ireland. In addition, ‘The Sash my Father Wore’ signifies a patriarchal lineage without any inclusion of the feminine, whereas ‘Patriot Game’ elicits gender neutrality and emphasizes making ‘us all part of the patriot game’ instead of the recurring paternal exchange of the ‘sash’ as a primordial nationalistic construct. Aretxaga points out that ‘Irish nationalists developed a discourse of nationality in which the masculinity of the people was underwritten by the idealization of traditional motherhood within the symbolic terrain of nationalist culture: the rural home.’40 The centrality of the nation as the metaphoric home, rather than the ‘father’, literally on the eve of motherhood reinforces this sense of female nationalism.

Viewing gender and nationalism in the real Four Days conflates what Watson describes as the ‘sense of the real’ and gender consciousness because it uses the ‘ordinary’ as contrapuntally nationalistic.41 Giving birth is usually placed in the realm of the ordinary, insomuch as almost every woman can experience it if she chooses; however, it does not play such an ordinary role in Four Days. First, it takes place on a significant annual holiday for Protestants, the 12 July Orange celebration. More importantly, the ordinary of daily life motivates conversation within the realism of the moment and invokes nationalist discourse. Even something as abstract as nationalism is actually grounded in the ordinary because it exists within the perfunctory daily routine. The penultimate scene in the maternity waiting room crystallizes this very point in terms of nationalism and gender. However, it also underlines the subtle relationships between the male figures in the film with the notable addition of Mr. Roper (John Hewitt), the curmudgeon who is also waiting for his wife in labour. While this scene could be chalked up to traditional masculine heteronormative behaviour – husbands awkwardly waiting for their wives during labour – it also depicts the emasculated Irish male. The women in Four Days carry the torch of genuine change because they can reproduce and populate the nation. The men, on the other hand, are constrained by their own emotional or physical ailments. Eugene, for instance, has been injured on three separate occasions by sectarian violence. Although he was not part of the IRA on any of these occasions, he was haplessly in the wrong place at the wrong time. Eugene’s condition serves as a

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peripheral theme in Four Days and also in Irish fiction and film collectively, that modern emasculation of the Irish man is the consequence of a long history of failed revolutions.42 If we look at the contrasting physicality of Eugene and Billy, a clear discrepancy between Catholic fragility and Protestant potency emerges. Eugene, the Catholic, is physically subordinate both in terms of his visible physical disability (resulting from indirect sectarian violence that forces him to walk with crutches) and of his environment (he must remain safely indoors in Protestant-controlled Belfast). Billy, the Protestant, symbolizes the strength of oppressive rule and denotes both a public force as a UDR soldier and domestic strength. In the home, he is seen doing pushups in his living room as his wife drinks tea on the sofa and he is also shown openly storing a firearm in the kitchen cupboard. Here, the domestic and the protective blur together into a masculine dominated space. Billy’s role as a commanding soldier is not invariable, however; an interior shot later portrays Billy in a drunken stupor spilling beer on his shirt as though he is incapable of any motor control. While seemingly more formidable, Billy also reveals limitations, albeit much less overtly than Eugene. By contrasting the masculine physicality between Eugene and Billy, Leigh constructs a powerful political metaphor for the contrasting ethno-religious identity each character represents. Later in the maternity waiting room, these two physical contrasts equal out once political identities become subordinate to the regeneration of nationalism. The waiting room scene reinforces that masculinity is subordinate to the needs of reproduction and childbirth. Eugene strikes up a conversation with Mr. Roper simply to be friendly. Mr. Roper expresses frustration with the fact that his wife has taken over 3 hours in the delivery room. He then goes on to complain, among other things, about the raucous reverberations of the Orange Parade outside. Eugene agrees with the parade nonsense, which, as Jarman notes, overtakes ‘total and uninhibited control of the public spaces of the city’.43 This space of regeneration in the maternity ward alternatively constitutes one of the only public spaces that a Catholic could be comfortable on 12 July in Belfast. Mr. Roper fiercely retorts to Eugene, ‘There are bigger eegits than them ya know. At least they’re not murderin’ and shootin’ people in their own country.’ Mr. Roper, as we see, does not overtly align with either a Catholic or Protestant position. He represents the classically embedded Leigh character that takes a political-non-political stance. Quickly the scene cuts to Collette crying in agony while she receives oxygen in the delivery room. The viewer gets a sense that the pain associated with childbirth suffered by both women directly relates to

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the enduring hardship of supporting the nation. With the shortest of intervals, the camera cuts back and forth between the waiting room, now occupied by Mr. Roper, Eugene and Billy, and then to Collette and Lorraine in the delivery room. The nationalist ordeal of childbearing is shown as an equal torture for both women and for both the Catholic and the Protestant body. Lorraine, too, bears an agonized history of pain, along with a coincidental orange cloth on her forehead to remind us of her unalterable position. In one of his many rants, Mr. Roper grumbles that he does not even want children. Not only does this match the apolitical position that he expressed earlier, it also confirms that populating a nation through reproduction reinforces political discourse. Eugene asks Mr. Roper, ‘you didn’t fancy goin’ in did ye?’ ‘No, I did not! That’s womin’s business’, he emphatically replies. Eugene enthusiastically asks, ‘Is this yer first?’ Mr. Roper belligerently retorts, ‘My first what?’ ‘Child’, Eugene answers. ‘Ay, it tis’, Mr. Roper exclaims, ‘and it will be my last. Not going through all this again!’ He then goes on to admit, ‘What is there for them in this country anyway? Nothing!’ The laconic Billy now chimes in, ‘you want to emigrate do ya?’ ‘Emigrate where?’ asks Mr. Roper. ‘Anywhere ya like’, Billy answers. Mr. Roper concludes his rant by claiming, ‘There’s nowhere to emigrate to. Everywhere in the world is as bad as this place.’ Mr. Roper’s comment evidently echoes the comparison between national conflicts globally and the one in Northern Ireland. While mired in intense sectarian violence, Northern Ireland is not the only space with conflicting national identities. He then admits, ‘You’re better off never being born at tall!’ At this very point, the scene cuts to Collette and Lorraine pushing in agony at the very moment their babies arrive into the world. Two aspects of this scene support the argument for national reproduction. Firstly, reproduction populates a cause, whether it is Irish nationalism or Ulster unionism, and when one does not have a position either way, like Mr. Roper, reproduction is not necessary. In fact, when Sister Midwife (Ann Hasson) pulls Mr. Roper away to have ‘a wee chat’, we get the sense that something dreadful has happened to his wife, child or even both. Although Leigh never reveals the outcome of Mr. Roper’s implied tragedy on screen, the message is clear: when one does not support a political position, reproduction cannot occur. Mr. Roper openly admits that he not does not want another child, but also suggests in homage to Sophocles’ Oedipus, and later in Schopenhauer, that it is better never to have been born at all. This can certainly be an understandable position in a violent and bloody sectarian environment such as Belfast in the height of the Troubles,

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but childbirth in Leigh’s cinematic metaphor also means national regeneration, and the only means towards it in his realist paradigm is by re-integrating the essential participation of women: through childbirth via a woman’s body. Second, this scene illustrates how the identity of the body is temporally linked to the realism of unfolding. The woman’s body becomes a kind of expresser of thought in film by gauging each scene’s sequencing and transition. The time that it takes each woman to do something, whether a communication or a movement, connects body, time and thought. The body expresses life in duration and provides the realist film with a link to the way in which conversation unfolds. For example, the prolonged scene with Dixie, Brennan, Eugene and Collette in their kitchen and then in the living room, centres on Collette’s physical need to make Eugene food, talk with Brennan about the toilet and then to sit down and rest in the living room. This is a time-specific scene of duration, but it also emphasizes body movement; indeed, all action follows the body movement of Collette. Leigh is not always a major stylizer of the body, but he does continually juxtapose various embodied actions, especially in the closing scene when both women are in labour and the men stand conversing in the waiting room. How do their bodies and faces express emotion and conceal it at the same time? We see this answered through representations of both the masculine and feminine throughout Four Days, but the culmination of this technique comes during the childbirth scene. The last scene accentuates reproduction for the nation by situating the women’s voice through two contrary national languages: Irish and English. The only interaction between Collette and Lorraine in the film occurs when they share the same recovery room while waiting for their babies to be brought in to them. Sister Midwife sits between them, acting as a symbolic mediator since religious identity both separates and mediates connection and disconnection. Collette is the only one to initiate and maintain the conversation with Sister Midwife. While Collette holds her own baby, Sister Midwife holds and feeds Lorraine’s baby. By a meaningful coincidence, Sister Midwife shares with Collette her familiarity with the pressure women feel to have babies. She laments that changing modern roles make it difficult to distinguish between a woman giving birth for the nation and for her own personal or professional aspirations. Leigh also introduces a subtle tension at this point: the soldier’s wife, who is cast in the more subordinate role as a reproducer of the nation, is not necessarily the better ‘mother’ of the nation (indeed, she does not even initially hold her own child). In fact, Collette, who is clearly the more political of the two, gives her child an

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Irish name. She is also more outspoken, independent and ultimately depicted as a better ‘mother’ through the juxtaposition between her and Lorraine in this poignant scene. Sister Midwife begins by inquiring, ‘How long have you been married?’ ‘Six years’, Collette replies. Sister then responds, ‘Six years is a long time.’ Collette then admits, ‘Well, sometimes it feels like a lifetime, but then at others it feels like I’m just married . . . just starting out again.’ While Collette reflects on the eternal timelessness of marriage, as though she were a voice for all married Irish women, the camera’s focus turns not to Collette but to Lorraine, who quietly lies in bed with her back turned to the conversation. Invoking meaning from Aretxaga’s title here, Lorraine’s silence is being shattered by the reproduction of the Irish nationalists through vocal agency. In other words, Ulster primordial nationalism turns to past glories for legitimization while the Irish modernist nationalists look to the future. Lorraine’s silence underpins this subtle ethno-political transformation in the Troubles. Sister then goes on to discuss the difficulty of being a woman in the modern world. ‘Twenty-eight felt old because there were all these pressures on ya. To get married. Your family pressures. Social pressures. Even the pressure working as a midwife.’ There is a constant reminder of the duty of the nation more than of literal childbirth. This burden carries a historical resonance within all Irish women right up to the present day. She finally concludes, ‘The right time [to have a baby] is when you feel like it yourself.’ What personal agency do women actually have when enlisted in a nationalist cause? A female’s reproduction through her body is mandatory as much as a male’s participation in violent sectarian resistance. Aretxaga underscores Sister’s reluctance to procreate by maintaining, ‘Irish nationalism, perhaps more than others, remained trapped within the framework of colonialist false essentialisms. The consequences were enormous for women who were erased from the professional and intellectual life of the country.’44 Naming also becomes fundamental in nationalist discourses, especially in light of gender analysis. Aretxaga argues, ‘Names define reality, create history, and shape memory.’45 She then goes on to point out, ‘Naming is a form of rewriting “history,” erasing traces of past lives, burying dissenting versions, and refashioning memory. This is often the prerogative of those holding economic and political power; a prerogative, however, that seldom remains uncontested.’46 Collette and Lorraine inquire about the names of each other’s babies in the climactic scene. Collette asks Lorraine, ‘What are you going to

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call your wee boy?’ ‘Billy’, she softly replies. Not only is this all she says back, but it also confirms the finality of the present without hope for the future by naming her boy after the father and, ultimately, after the definitive Protestant and victor of the Battle of the Boyne, William of Orange. No hope stirs for a future of change when relying on a past age of glory and identity. The present political moment is what needs to remain, despite the momentum of the future. Lorraine asks in turn, ‘What are you going to call yours?’ Collette answers, ‘Calling her Mairéad, after my mommy. Mommy is called Margaret.’ Lorraine then doubtingly asks, ‘Why didn’t you just call her Margaret?’ ‘Cause Mairéad is the Irish for Margaret, ya know’, Collette proudly responds. Mairéad, in fact, also means ‘pearl’ and symbolizes success and purity, both symbols of a nationalist cause. Collette embodies the nation not only through reproduction but also through voice in Four Days. The naming of her child after a national symbol of success and purity recognizes that although historically marginalized, the nation contains generative traits of renewal and rebirth. Additionally, the Irish language serves as a nationalist symbol emphasizing one of the most significant roles in the sectarian divide. In just one of many cinematic examples to illustrate this, Ken Loach’s The Wind that Shakes the Barley, which is a recount of the transition between the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War, creates a scene where one of the young boys of Co. Cork is brutally murdered for answering his name in Irish to a British Black and Tan soldier.47 Collette has a girl, whereas Lorraine has a boy. In nationalist discourse, the girl would symbolize the furthering of the nation and optimism for future liberation. The boy signifies strength and reinforcement of the present, without the possibility of a reproductive future, especially because he is literally a baby of a soldier who is named in the image of his father and therefore in the primordial lineage of Ulster unionists. Sister Midwife ironically suggests that one never knows who a child will become. ‘This might be the next Hitler’, she queries as she looks at Billy Jr. As she hands Lorraine the baby, she notices that he is ‘Not a bit like you [Lorraine]. He must be like your husband.’ This reinforces the male line of the present dominant discourse but without continuation into the future. While men typically represent pro-generators of a lineage, women are the creators and carriers and therefore more important ‘repositories’ of a generative future in nationalism. Lorraine’s silence, as a result, parallels a silent future of reproduction and primacy of Ulster unionism (Figure 13.1).

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Figure 13.1  Protestant Lorraine (Paula Hamilton) and Catholic Collette (Brid Brennan) both deliver babies on the same day in the same Belfast hospital in Four Days in July (1985)

Conclusion Although the narrative of Four Days centres on the Troubles in one sense, the film also moves beyond this overstated theme by scrutinizing the relationships within the ethno-religious and cultural conflict, thereby emphasizing humanistic and universally recognized local conditions. According to Barton, ‘The very specific challenge that now faces filmmaking in and about Northern Ireland is to move beyond the tired paradigms of Troubles cinema and invent a new set of narratives that correspond to the wider experience of the inhabitants of that geographical space.’48 Moving beyond the Troubles could present a difficult challenge when this conflict has consumed many generations over several decades. Four Days works within this political and cultural reality, while also transcending the ethno-religious conflict. Identifying an equally complex and problematic relationship between gender and nationalism, Four Days magnifies the machinations of everyday existence in Belfast. Leigh achieves the ‘everyday’ and ‘ordinary’ by couching (P)olitical situations in (p)olitical settings, using mostly interiors within an externally divisive urban space. These settings, in fact, provide a platform for a political-non-political statement because the ordinary allows for a powerful statement in its own right.49 Leigh then situates his agenda within a cinematic framework that subtly disarms

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(P)olitical discourse by creating sympathies with the real and ordinary aspects of the human condition. As opposed to demonstrating violence as a mode of rhetorical persuasion using pathos, Four Days finds power in another kind of pathos: that of humour and the ordinary within the unfolding of the real. Shot selection and character interaction through conversation are two of the driving forces behind this type of cinema, but these strategies also access tensions from an alternative angle in Northern Irish debates. Four Days, as a result, should be critically reconsidered as a Northern Irish film that challenges notions of gender within conflicting nationalist discourses.

Notes 1 Anne McClintock, ‘Family Feuds: Gender, Nationalism and the Family’, Feminist Review: Nationalisms and national Identities 44 (1993): 61. 2 Luke Gibbons, Transformations in Irish Culture. South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1996, 117. 3 Louise Ryan and Margaret Ward, ‘Introduction’, in Irish Women and Nationalism: Soldiers, New Women and Wicked Hags, ed. Louise Ryan and Margaret Ward. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2004, 3. 4 Amy Raphael, ed., Mike Leigh on Mike Leigh. London: Faber and Faber, 2008, xi. 5 Ibid. 6 The July 12 Orange Parade, also called ‘The Glorious Twelfth’, commemorates Protestant King William’s victory over the Catholic King James at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. The battle took place just outside of Drogheda in the Boyne Valley, thereby inaugurating an enduring Protestant folklore in Ulster. The parade itself marches through Belfast in order to perpetuate Protestant culture and history, but it is also generally regarded as a celebration of the Protestant victory over the Catholics. As such, it still remains a controversial event in Northern Ireland. 7 Neil Jarman, Material Conflicts: Parades and Visual Displays in Northern Ireland. Oxford: Berg Publishing, 1997, 94. 8 Ibid., 95. 9 For more on the historical, cultural and political context of the parade season and the Orange Order in Northern Ireland, see Dominic Bryan’s Orange Parades: The Politics of Ritual, Tradition and Control (2000) and Neil Jarman’s Material Conflicts: Parades and Visual Displays in Northern Ireland (1997). 10 Rachel Ward, Women, Unionism and Loyalism in Northern Ireland: From “Tea-Makers” to Political Actors. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2006, 66.

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11 Leigh filmed Four Days during the month of July and the parade footage in the film is of an actual July 12 Orange Parade. 12 Sean O’Sullivan, Mike Leigh. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2011, 36. 13 Ruth Barton, Irish National Cinema. London: Routledge, 2004, 162. 14 Ibid. 15 John Hill, ‘Filing in the North’, Cineaste 24.2:3 (1999): 26. 16 Brian McIlroy, ‘Challenges and Problems in Contemporary Irish Cinema: The Protestants’, Cineaste 24.2:3 (1999): 59. 17 Garry Watson, The Cinema of Mike Leigh: A Sense of the Real. London: Wallflower Press, 2004, 19. 18 Ibid. 19 Ward, Women, Unionism, and Loyalism in Northern Ireland, 25. 20 Tamar Mayer, ‘Gender Ironies of Nationalism: Setting the Stage’, in Gender Ironies of Nationalism: Sexing the Nation, ed. Tamar Mayer. London: Routledge, 2000, 1. 21 Ward, Women, Unionism, and Loyalism in Northern Ireland, 25. 22 Ibid. 23 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1983, 86. Italics author’s emphasis. 24 John McGarry and Brendan O’Leary, Explaining Northern Ireland: Broken Images. Oxford: Blackwell, 1995, 92. 25 Feargal Cochrane, Unionist Politics and the Politics of Unionism since the Anglo-Irish Agreement. Cork: Cork University Press, 1997, 346. 26 Elizabeth Porter, ‘Identity, Location, Plurality: Women, Nationalism and Northern Ireland’, in Women, Ethnicity and Nationalism: The Politics of Transition, ed. R. Wilford and R. L. Miller. London: Routledge, 1998, 37. 27 Ryan and Ward, ‘Introduction’, 1. 28 Ibid. Some notable exceptions in the Irish context include Begoña Aretxaga, Siobhán Kilfeather, Margaret Kelleher and Eavan Boland. 29 Barton, Irish National Cinema, 114. 30 Ibid., 116. 31 Ryan and Ward, ‘Introduction’, 3. 32 Anne McClintock, ‘No Longer a Future Heaven: Race, Gender and Nationalism’, in Dangerous Liaisons: Gender, Nation and Post-Colonial Perspectives, ed. A. McClintock, A. Mufti and E. Shohat. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1997, 90–1. 33 Quoted in Ward, Women, Unionism, and Loyalism in Northern Ireland, 68. 34 Ibid., 39.

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35 Pat Murphy’s incisive Northern Irish independent film, Maeve (1981), contests the issue that a woman’s role is solely to support the nationalist cause at the expense of a woman’s individual rights. Maeve is probably the most decisive example in Irish cinema where an argument is made to supplant nationalist discourses for feminist ones. In one poignant scene, Maeve responds to an accusation from Liam that she is forgoing ‘the cause’ for her own rights at the expense of the nation. She argues, ‘When women put themselves behind male politics, the result has not been a recognition of our rights, but a moderation of our aims. When you’re denied power, or when it’s continually co-opted, the only form of protest is through your body. Our struggle is for autonomy, for the control of our bodies.’ 36 The UDR existed between 1969 and 1992 as a military protective unit in Northern Ireland. Although the supposed bipartisan objective of the UDR was to protect the citizens and curb sectarian violence, many have argued that it was a British occupational force. Another problem with the UDR was that it mainly employed local Northern Irish from the Protestant loyalist position. Catholic nationalists have argued that the UDR was a partisan occupational unit consisting largely of loyalist paramilitary soldiers. For more on the UDR, see John Potter’s A Testimony to Courage: The Regimental History of the Ulster Defence Regiment 1969–1992 (2001) and Chris Ryder’s The Ulster Defence Regiment: An Instrument of Peace? (1991). 37 Ward, Women, Unionism, and Loyalism in Northern Ireland, 69. 38 Begoña Aretxaga, Shattering Silence: Women, Nationalism, and Political Subjectivity in Northern Ireland. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997, 4–11. 39 Ibid., ix. 40 Ibid., 150. 41 Watson, The Cinema of Mike Leigh, 190. 42 Declan Kiberd, Inventing Ireland: The Literature of the Modern Nation. London: Vintage, 1996, 380–94. 43 Jarman, Material Conflicts, 108. 44 Aretxaga, Shattering Silence, 150. 45 Ibid., 43. 46 Ibid. 47 Black and Tans were considered to be the worst kind of occupational force in Ireland during the Irish War of Independence (1919–21) because of their gratuitous brutality. They consisted of half police and half army. 48 Barton, Irish National Cinema, 178. 49 Watson, The Cinema of Mike Leigh, 90.

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Works cited Anderson, B. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1983. Aretxaga, B. Shattering Silence: Women, Nationalism, and Political Subjectivity in Northern Ireland. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997. Barton, R. Irish National Cinema. London: Routledge, 2004. Behan, D. ‘Patriot Game’, Brobdingnagian Bards: A Bard’s Celtic Lyrics Directory, 2011, accessed 11 April 2011, www.thebards.net/music/lyrics/Patriot_Game.shtml. Breakfast on Pluto. DVD. Directed by Neil Jordan. London and Dublin: Pathé Pictures International and the Irish Film Board, 2005. Bryan, D. Orange Parades: The Politics of Ritual, Tradition and Control. London: Pluto Press, 2000. Carney, R. and L. Quart. The Films of Mike Leigh: Embracing the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Cochrane, F. Unionist Politics and the Politics of Unionism Since the Anglo-Irish Agreement. Cork: Cork University Press, 1997. Coveney, M. The World According to Mike Leigh. London: Harper Collins, 1997. The Crying Game. DVD. Directed by Neil Jordan. London: Palace Pictures and Chanel Four Films, 1992. The Field. DVD. Directed by Jim Sheridan. London: Granada Television, 1990. Four Days in July. Directed by Mike Leigh. DVD. London: BBC, 1984. Gibbons, L. Transformations in Irish Culture. South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1996. Hill, J. ‘Filming in the North’, Cineaste 24.2:3 (1999): 26–7. Hush-a-Bye Baby. VHS. Directed by Margo Harkin. London: Chanel 4 Television Corporation, 1990. Into the West. DVD. Directed by Jim Sheridan. London: Chanel 4 Films, 1992. Jarman, N. Material Conflicts: Parades and Visual Displays in Northern Ireland. Oxford: Berg, 1997. Kiberd, D. Inventing Ireland: The Literature of the Modern Nation. London: Vintage, 1996. Maeve. VHS. Directed by Pat Murphy. London: British Film Institute, 1981. Mayer, T. ‘Gender Ironies of Nationalism: Setting the Stage’, in Gender Ironies of Nationalism: Sexing the Nation, ed. T. Mayer. London: Routledge, 2000, 1–22. McClintock, A. ‘Family Feuds: Gender, Nationalism and the Family’, Feminist Review: Nationalisms and National Identities 44 (1993): 64–84. —. ‘No Longer a Future Heaven: Race, Gender and Nationalism’, in Dangerous Liaisons: Gender, Nation and Post-Colonial Perspectives, ed. A. McClintock, A. Mufti and E. Shohat. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1997, 89–112.

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McGarry, J. and B. O’Leary. Explaining Northern Ireland: Broken Images. Oxford: Blackwell, 1995. McIlroy, B. ‘Challenges and Problems in Contemporary Irish Cinema: The Protestants’, Cineaste 24.2:3 (1999): 56–60. O’Sullivan, S. Mike Leigh. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2011. Porter, E. ‘Identity, Location, Plurality: Women, Nationalism and Northern Ireland’, in Women, Ethnicity and Nationalism: The Politics of Transition, ed. R. Wilford and R. L. Miller. London: Routledge, 1998, 36–61. Potter, J. A Testimony to Courage: The Regimental History of the Ulster Defence Regiment 1969–1992. Barnsley, South Yorkshire: Pen and Sword Books Ltd, 2001. Raphael, A., ed. Mike Leigh of Mike Leigh. London: Faber and Faber, 2008. Ryan, L. and M. Ward. ‘Introduction’, in Irish Women and Nationalism: Soldiers, New Women and Wicked Hags, ed. Louise Ryan and Margaret Ward. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2004, 1–13. Ryder, C. The Ulster Defence Regiment: An Instrument of Peace? Dublin: Methuen Publishing Ltd, 1991. ‘The Sash my Father Wore’, The City of Oaks Pipe Band, accessed 13 October 2011, http://cityofoaks.home.netcom.com/tunes/SashMyFatherWore.html. Ward, R. Women, Unionism and Loyalism in Northern Ireland: From ‘Tea-Makers’ to Political Actors. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2006. Watson, G. The Cinema of Mike Leigh: A Sense of the Real. London: Wallflower Press, 2004. The Wind that Shakes the Barley. DVD. Directed by Ken Loach. Montreal: Christal Films, 2006.

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‘No Room to Live’: Learning Disability, Class and Fluctuating Identifications in Meantime Ana Katherine Miller

Discussing the early television films Mike Leigh made for the BBC, Leonard Quart argues that, in comparison with those released for the cinema, ‘[t]he subtlety and uniqueness of these films have never been given their due’ (1999, 41). The same could be said of Meantime, a television film Leigh directed for Channel 4 that was first screened in December 1983. While Meantime has been widely praised for its powerful depiction of unemployment, poverty and youth alienation under Thatcher, there has been less sustained critical engagement with this film in comparison with Leigh’s later films.1 And yet, Richard Porton argues that Meantime is possibly Leigh’s best (if also his most grim) film (2002, 51), while Michael Coveney argues that ‘[t]he sapping, debilitating and demeaning state of unemployment, the futile sense of waste, has not been more poignantly, or poetically, expressed in any other film of the period’ (1996, 174). In part this chapter is an attempt to give the ‘subtlety and uniqueness’ of Meantime its due through a detailed analysis of the interplay between ambiguity and political meaning in the film, as this is realized through the representation of morally ambiguous and shifting interpersonal relations within the framework of socioeconomic hardship under Thatcher. One reason for revisiting Meantime is the contemporary relevance of its subject matter. In representing the culture of alienation and disenfranchisement during the early years of Thatcher’s reign, the film resonates with the present moment in Britain, with the onset of increasingly tough times for Britain’s poor and vulnerable as rising unemployment is once again being accompanied by drastic cuts to social welfare. Not only does the film engage with the marginalization

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of the unemployed ‘working’ classes, as has been widely acknowledged in the existing criticism, but it also raises the issue of disability and the intensification of marginalization in this context. This is an area of the film’s meaning that has generally been overlooked and one that I will address here. My reading will explore these political inferences raised in Meantime. However, I am also interested in the often-indirect form of Leigh’s engagement. Meantime is the first of a trilogy of political films Leigh made in the 1980s (with Four Days in July (1985) and High Hopes (1988)), but Leigh’s films are subtle in their politics, focusing on the lives and struggles, often of working-class people, within particular political and economic frameworks (Coveney 1996, 170–1; Quart 1999). As many critics have observed, while Leigh’s films engage critically with British class structures, they eschew providing a Manichean political message, and working-class characters are not idealized; an important part of the power of Leigh’s films remains the ambiguities that permeate them (Quart 1999; Carney 2000; Porton 2002; Medhurst 2007). Part of what is striking about Meantime is the difficulty of deciding on a single or simple interpretation of what is happening. The film is constructed in such a way that it appears to deliberately invite fluctuating and sometimes contradictory interpretations as it unfolds. Indeed, Leigh has suggested that he aims for a deliberate ambiguity: ‘You do not walk out of my films with a clear feeling about what is right and wrong’, Leigh says. The films are supposed to be ‘ambivalent’, to ‘ask questions’ of the viewer (Leigh, quoted in Riding 2000, 103–4). Building upon criticism that recognizes the value of this ambivalence, this essay will demonstrate that Leigh’s effort to construct a film that confounds straightforward interpretation plays an important role in the political implications of Meantime. The critic who really captures in detail a sense of the pervasive ambiguity in Meantime is Ray Carney, whose arguments I engage with in some detail in this chapter. In ‘Challenging Easy Understandings: Meantime’, Carney observes that the film does not offer ‘a set of static, abstract meanings to be decoded but a sequence of flowing shifting events’ (2000, 164). He demonstrates how this thwarts straightforward interpretation, emphasizing the ultimate undecidability of meaning in the film. Carney’s reading is excellent at accounting for how the moral ambiguities of characters lead to constant fluctuations in how the viewer is invited to respond to what is happening and in this sense my reading is affiliated with Carney’s. I go on to argue that this ambiguity is significant to how the film implicates the viewer in some of the problems raised in Meantime. However, my reading also runs against the grain of Carney’s criticism of readings of Leigh

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(and film more generally) that focus too heavily on filmic technique or that emphasize the ideological and sociological meanings of a film. Carney situates his reading of Leigh in opposition to two conventional ways of reading within film criticism. Firstly, he begins the chapter on Meantime by criticizing readings that focus in obsessive detail on how filmic techniques create meaning, as if ‘every lighting effect, camera angle, or prop is freighted with interlocking significance’ (Carney 2000, 163). Second, Carney makes a related criticism of the tendency to translate the ambiguities of film and the ‘interpretive uncertainties’ of Leigh’s films in particular, into ‘the clarity of ideological or sociological abstractions’ (2000, 177). Because my reading focuses on how the film engages with disability and class, my approach is open to the latter criticism because, in focusing on the film’s serious political implications, other aspects of what is ultimately a complex and often funny film will find less emphasis. With the proviso that I am not attempting to capture every aspect of Meantime, such a focus remains important because, while it is important to attend to the ambiguities that pervade Meantime, it is also important to be attuned to the political inferences that are raised quite deliberately. I want to retain the value of Carney’s reading of the ‘interpretive uncertainties’ that permeate Meantime and yet simultaneously evaluate how the form and content of the film do produce certain meanings. Indeed, I will argue that Carney occasionally overemphasizes the undecidability of meaning in Meantime, with the result that he sometimes overlooks how the film invites certain interpretations, even though these are not straightforward. Meantime depicts a few days in the life of the Pollock family. Mother Mavis (Pam Ferris), father Frank (Jeff Robert) and young adult sons Mark (Phil Daniels) and Colin (Tim Roth) live in a small flat with paper-thin walls and broken windows on a council estate. An atmosphere of boredom and destitution pervades and the family take out their woes on each another. The majority of characters in the film are unemployed in a world where there are no jobs and scant opportunities. Much of the film revolves around the relationship between the two brothers. While the younger and more naïve Colin looks up to Mark, as the film progresses Colin becomes increasingly alienated from his brother, who constantly puts him down. Colin attempts to befriend two of their peers Hayley (Tilly Vosburgh) and Coxy (Gary Oldman) but finds himself unwelcome and humiliated. When Colin’s (comparatively) wealthy Aunt Barbara (Marion Bailey) offers Colin a job helping her decorate her house, this is a rare moment of opportunity for him. However, Mark feels the job offer is degrading and disrupts

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the plan. Colin’s growing frustration throughout the film eventually leads him to snap, and when he finally stands up to his overbearing parents, Mark starts to treat him with respect and the seeds of a more positive relationship between the two brothers are sown. The representation of Colin’s struggle in the film makes for uneasy viewing because he is repeatedly treated in destructive ways by the other characters. It is a critical commonplace to remark on the disturbing nature of viewing many of Leigh’s films. For those sympathetic to Leigh, this is an important part of their power (Quart 1997; Leach 2004; Watson 2004; Giles 2007). For instance, Quart, in his review of Meantime, writes the following: ‘Mike Leigh’s best films are often uncomfortable and unpredictable, and aim to make an audience uneasy. They subvert the formulaic and force the viewer to see just how multifaceted and complex the most everyday of lives are’ (1997, 47). Certainly, a central part of what is powerful about Meantime is its complex and multifaceted representation of the characters and their often destructive interpersonal relationships. However, I want to suggest that an important part of what makes Meantime uncomfortable to watch centres around how the characters treat Colin and Colin’s evident but often silent suffering as a result of the way he is treated. The camera repeatedly lingers on Colin in a way that focuses the viewer’s attention on his reaction to the ongoing belittling he endures. Colin’s social exclusion and the way he is treated by the other characters suggest that he may have learning disabilities, and the film invites viewers to recognize the destructive impact of forms of behaviour that stigmatize, dehumanize, exclude and silence people with learning disabilities. While some critics suggest in passing that Colin has learning disabilities, to my knowledge there has been no sustained discussion of what, in my response at least, is a central aspect of the impact of Meantime. One of my main purposes in this article is to address this unaccounted for centrality of Colin in the film. For this reason, my reading is largely character and narrative driven and focuses on the representation of interpersonal dynamics. However, at the same time, I also want to emphasize the ways in which Leigh uses filmic techniques to guide our interpretation. After exploring how the film invites an empathetic reaction to Colin’s marginalization, the second thread of my discussion will focus on how Meantime encourages fluctuating responses that prevent the viewer from making straightforward moral judgements about the negative forms of behaviour it depicts. Although Leigh’s representation of the working classes has been criticized by some critics for being derogatory and condescending, I

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align my argument with critics who argue that his approach to working-class characters is ultimately sympathetic. Against critics who interpret the characters of Meantime negatively, I outline how the film encourages an ultimately sympathetic response and argue that a negative response may be indicative of viewing the film from a different class position. As I have suggested, Carney is the critic who explores most fully the inherent ambiguity of the characters in Meantime, demonstrating how this thwarts straightforward explanation or judgement of their actions. I build upon Carney’s argument by suggesting that, in addition to the moral ambiguity of the characters, the film’s foregrounding of the class structures that both dispossess the central characters and lead those in a position of power within the narrative to judge them negatively serves as a warning to the audience against doing the same. The film compels its viewers to respond sympathetically to characters struggling in a world of mass unemployment and economic marginalization (Quart 1997; Sterritt 2006), and it ultimately draws into question the ability of outsiders to judge the behaviour of its central characters from a superior moral height.

Unsettling attitudes towards learning disability In ‘This is What We Think’, a collaborative article written by researchers into disability and learning disabled research, the writers emphasize the constant dehumanization that people with learning disabilities experience as a result of continuously being called names like “‘idiot’, ‘fool’, ‘thick’, ‘stupid’, and ‘dumb’” (Docherty et al. 2010: 433, 435). In Meantime, Colin is called or referred to by a similar range of derogatory names: ‘retarded’ (John), a ‘wally’, a ‘prat’, an ‘idiot’ (Coxy), ‘stupid’, ‘muppet’, ‘Kermit’ and ‘superfrog’ (Mark). In this section, I want to outline how Meantime foregrounds this kind of exclusion and stigmatization and also how it implies the destructive psychological implications for people who are consistently exposed to dehumanizing treatment. In the film, Colin experiences various forms of oppressive treatment, from overt forms of bullying, verbal and physical abuse, to various forms of patronizing and condescending behaviour. In what follows, I will begin by introducing how the film infers the issue of learning disability before exploring the centrality of Colin within Meantime. I will discuss how the film highlights Colin’s vulnerability, isolation and suffering and how it problematizes the way that other characters treat him. While Colin’s perspective remains somewhat enigmatic because he does not always verbally

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articulate what he is feeling, the camera often lingers on Colin, encouraging the viewer to intimate his perspective through a range of cues. I discuss how the film is constructed in a way that encourages a sympathetic response to Colin and a more negative response to the characters who mistreat him. However, as we are continually and subtly reminded, the problems depicted are not reducible to the bad behaviour of individuals; Meantime suggests the complicity of the political system in contributing towards a society in which the marginalization of people with learning disabilities (and vulnerable people more generally) is ubiquitous. Although Colin is never officially diagnosed in the film, there are multiple inferences that he may have some form of learning disability. Significantly, as I will illustrate, many of these inferences arise from the way that others treat him; in this way the film emphasizes the part that social environment plays in constituting disability. In addition to being referred to as ‘retarded’ (by John (played by Alfred Molina)) and having his intelligence consistently undermined by other characters, Colin is excluded from his peers and is more intensely marginalized within the world of unemployment depicted in the film. The way in which his family struggle to support Colin when they perceive his inability to protect himself indicates Colin’s social vulnerability. Colin also exhibits certain characteristics often associated with learning disability: ‘difficulties with language, attention, and information processing, and problems interpreting social information such as facial expressions’ (Mishna 2003, 337) (Figure 14.1). While certain critics infer that Colin has learning disabilities, they do not explore the significance of this in any detail. Indeed the labels used by certain critics to describe Colin are inadequate to capture the complexity of his character and his experiences. Quart describes Colin as ‘slow-witted’ and ‘quasicatatonic’ (1997, 46) and Porton refers to him as ‘endearingly dimwitted’ (2002, 171). These labels are themselves derogatory, particularly when there is no further discussion of Colin’s experience; in an echo of the narrative, such readings evoke mental incapacity in a misleading and dehumanizing way, as though Colin was not capable of thought or feeling, or his character was not substantial enough to bear further analysis. There is a general failure among critics to account for the complexity of Colin’s experience and for the destructive impact of the way he is treated. This is to flatten out Colin’s character and to evade a central resonance in the film. A critical approach that is more attune to the complexity of Colin’s character is Carney’s. Carney ponders the significance of Colin, seeing him as an enigmatic and unexplained presence in the film. He argues that Colin’s ‘confused’,

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Figure 14.1  Mavis (Pam Ferris) tries to explain to Colin (Tim Roth) how to operate the machines at the laundromat in Meantime (1984)

‘withdrawn’ (2002, 166) and ‘spacey’ behaviour is ultimately unexplained: by the end of the film ‘we are no closer to knowing why [. . .] Colin is so spacey’ (2002, 167). Carney’s emphasis on this ambiguity is valuable because it captures Colin’s complexity and refuses to reduce his experience to a label. Indeed, it is true that Colin cannot be pinned down to a simplistic identity; he appears in a variety of different ways as the film progresses. Furthermore, by problematizing how characters label Colin and undermine his intelligence, Meantime implies the danger of labels and their ability to contribute to processes of othering. However, I want to argue that the film does suggest explanations for Colin’s behaviour. Although the film never explicitly states that Colin has learning disabilities, the characters around him treat him as if he does, and the film depicts his social marginalization as a result of his ‘difference’. Interestingly, in interviews with Tim Roth and Leigh on a special edition DVD release of Meantime in 2007, two different readings of Colin’s social difference are offered. Roth argues that Colin is not ‘retarded’ but downtrodden. Leigh implies Colin has learning disabilities when he argues that Colin is more up against it than the other characters because he is the kind of person who needs to be supported within society. These two readings capture the two interlocking inferences in the film

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that help us to understand why Colin is ‘so spacey’. The first is the possibility that Colin has learning disabilities and needs (but is not getting) additional support within the adverse socioeconomic conditions represented. The second is the evidently debilitating effect of Colin’s social environment which leaves him isolated and gives him no opportunity to develop a positive social position or sense of identity. While labelling often has negative and dehumanizing consequences (Moir and Alexander 2008), the diagnosis and treatment of learning disability can be a positive process and one which is becoming increasingly attuned to the social production of disability and the complexity of individuals who may struggle with certain things and show capability in others. Learning disability is ‘no longer considered entirely an absolute, invariate trait of the person’. Rather, it is produced through the interaction of the person and their environment, and supportive frameworks are enabling and can enhance individual functioning (Schalock et al. 2007, 117). Furthermore, diagnosis can promote a more positive sense of ‘disability identity’ tied to notions of self-worth and political engagement (Schalock et al. 2007, 117). Faye Mishna argues that, while there is a ‘lack of clarity’ in determining ‘the causes of the social skills deficit’ in people with learning disabilities, the problems they face are reinforced by the lack of a supportive environment: isolation limits ‘opportunities to learn, practice, and receive validation for [. . .] social skills’ (2003, 337). In the following analysis, I want to outline how Meantime reflects this suggestion that adverse social circumstances play a part in producing disability. The film illuminates an interplay between Colin’s social awkwardness and the rejection, bullying and marginalization that reinforces, exacerbates and produces his isolation. I argue that Colin’s ambiguity in the film is productive because it emphasizes his humanity and refuses to locate his difficulties in inherent characteristics. At the same time, it is clear in Meantime that Colin suffers as a result of his exclusion and that he is not receiving the support that he needs. A problem in critical interpretations of Meantime is the failure to engage with Colin’s social exclusion and how this leads to Colin being treated in dehumanizing ways. For instance, as part of his emphasis on the undecidability of meaning in Meantime, Carney asks whether Hayley is in love with Coxy, Colin or Mark (2000, 169). But the possibility of Hayley fancying Colin is not a possibility in the world of the film, and to fail to see this is to fail to grasp something vital. Hayley refers to and sees Colin as ‘funny’  – she views him as Other, and she treats him condescendingly, maintaining a distance and revealing an aversion

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that is different to her behaviour towards Coxy and Mark. A similar failure to account for Colin’s exclusion is suggested in David Sterritt’s reading when he places Colin within the film’s ‘squirm-inducing portrait of bratty youths’ (2006, 317). Not only is Colin secluded within this group, his isolation and vulnerability makes the label ‘bratty youth’ seem wide of the mark. My reading of Meantime is largely an attempt to address the significance of Colin in the film. It is surprising that critics have not explored the significance of Colin in any detail for, in my opinion, the film foregrounds his experience in both its content and through the formal strategies Leigh employs. This is another point at which my reading diverges from Carney’s. Discussing Meantime, Carney distinguishes Leigh from mainstream film-makers who use techniques such as lighting, camera angles and mise-en-scène to guide the spectator’s interpretation and to suggest the inner subjectivity of characters. Carney problematizes critical approaches to film that decode the meanings inferred through the formal aspects of film, such as camera angles and props. This forms part of Carney’s warning against reducing the shifting and ambiguous experiences generated by watching Meantime into ‘a set of static, abstract meanings’ (2000, 164). However, it is possible to appreciate the play of ambiguous meanings in Leigh’s films without sidelining the significance of the filmic techniques Leigh uses or overlooking the fact that certain meanings are suggested. Indeed, I want to suggest that, in relation to Colin, certain interpretations are encouraged by the camera work which works in combination with dialogue and silence to suggest Colin’s isolation and suffering. In Meantime, the framing of shots and the use of close-ups consistently guide the viewer’s interpretation or illuminate the characters’ inner world, albeit obliquely. When the camera lingers on Colin, the film encourages viewers to reflect on Colin’s perspective, even if this remains elusive because Colin is less vocal than many of the other characters and often seems unable or unwilling to express how he is feeling. Indeed, Quart foregrounds the importance of these emphasized silences in Leigh’s films: ‘Leigh has a special knack for using pauses and silence to convey a person’s emotional make-up more tellingly than pages of explicatory dialogue’ (1999, 50). Similarly, Miguel Mota refers to Leigh’s tendency to use the camera to ‘linger unwaveringly on the actors, often uncomfortably longer than mainstream cinematic practice would condone’ (2008, 37). Extended close-ups of Colin’s face repeatedly suggest feelings of distress that he does not articulate verbally. The camera angle and framing often infer Colin’s isolation and the oppressive nature of his surroundings. For instance, the scene outside

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the dole office as Colin waits for and is then left behind by his brother emphasizes Colin’s loneliness. The shot emphasizes the contrast between the bustle as Mark and his friends exit the frame and the emptiness as the camera lingers on Colin when he is left behind. Colin’s smallness within the frame as well as his stance (he has his head down) as he plays aimlessly with a stick, underline his isolation. Furthermore, the film consistently invites viewers to intimate Colin’s perspective through various other cues: from the words Colin speaks; from Roth’s acting, and in particular, the resonant facial expressions and body language he imparts to the role of Colin; from Colin’s actions and responses to others throughout the course of the film; and from the viewers’ own imagination of what it would be like to be treated in the way that Colin is being treated. In the multiple encounters where Colin is treated in a negative way by other characters, the film encourages a sympathetic response to Colin and a more negative response to the characters that mistreat him, although, as I go on to argue, this critical response is complicated by other factors. Although Mavis often appears ‘abrasive, sour [and] uncaring’ to all members of her family (Quart 1997, 46), her treatment of Colin is particularly harsh as she repeatedly vents her frustrations on him. This is foregrounded from the start in the contrast between Mavis’s reprimanding of Mark and Colin when they get mud on their trousers in one of the opening scenes. The positioning of the actors within the frames of this sequence emphasizes the differing power dynamics between the characters. When Mavis shouts at Mark, she is sitting down with her head turned away from him and he is standing up, placing him above her in the frame. She speaks without meeting Mark’s gaze, indicating a feeling of powerlessness. By contrast, when Mavis goes to the kitchen and shouts at Colin, she towers over him in the frame and Colin’s vulnerability is emphasized in several ways. The scene is shot from behind Mavis, and the camera looks down on Colin who takes up much less space, positioned within the left hand corner of the frame. When Mavis demands to know how she is supposed to get the mud off his trousers, Colin replies quietly with his head down, dejected and unable to meet her gaze. Mavis responds violently to Colin’s sensible reply (‘wash them’) by hitting him and knocking him off balance. Mavis’s oppressive treatment of Colin and Colin’s vulnerability are emphasized both by the action and by the framing of the shot, and this encourages viewers to empathize with Colin against Mavis, as does the sense of his reply and the inappropriateness of Mavis’s response. This establishes a recurring pattern in the way that Leigh uses both form and content

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to highlight Colin’s vulnerability and isolation and to problematize the way that other characters treat him. In addition to revealing how Colin is routinely treated in abusive or patronizing ways, Meantime also implicitly draws attention to the damaging psychological implications of this behaviour. Colin rarely articulates how his experiences make him feel. However, the film focuses the viewer’s attention on Colin’s unarticulated experiences. While having difficulties with expression is a characteristic associated with learning disability, Meantime foregrounds how Colin’s social environment has a silencing effect on him. It is instructive to consider Colin’s quietness in light of insights developed by trauma theorists relating to the difficulty of articulating traumatic experiences when there is no ‘addressable other’ or ‘empathic listener’ (Laub 1992, 68). Laura Brown observes the need to expand conventional models of trauma that focus on extreme events to incorporate the ‘insidious’ traumas ‘that are not necessarily overtly violent . . . [but] that do violence to the soul and spirit’ (1995, 107). Although Brown is discussing sexual violence against women, her identification of the need to recognize ‘as traumatic stressors all of those everyday, repetitive, interpersonal events that are so often the sources of psychic pain’ (1995, 108) is pertinent to a consideration of the destructive psychological consequences of the constant bullying and social exclusion that Colin experiences. Attacked and undermined by almost everyone around him, Colin has to deal with constant psychologically harmful experiences, and he has no one who he can share these with. Colin’s social and familial circumstances have a detrimental effect on his ability to speak about his experiences.2 His quietness in the film is connected to the social environment in which he lives. Colin’s verbally unarticulated suffering is suggested in the aftermath of a particularly distressing episode when Colin is humiliated by Coxy in front of Hayley, a girl Colin likes. While being locked in a tiny cupboard by Coxy, he hears Hayley refer to him as ‘funny’, and when Coxy lets him stumble out of the cupboard, everyone in the room laughs. The close-up of Colin’s face implies embarrassment and hurt, and his glance over at Hayley suggests that her complicity is particularly painful. Colin’s sharp exit and his gait and expression as he walks home across the estate are resonant in suggesting Colin’s pain and isolation, although it is not explicitly stated what particular emotions Colin is feeling. In the next scene, we hear that Colin has locked himself in the bathroom, ‘all evening’ according to Frank. The shot emphasizes the claustrophobia of the flat as Mark, Frank and Mavis squeeze past each other moving in and out of the frame as they harangue Colin out of the bathroom  – the only space that

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permits some degree of privacy. Colin clearly wants to be left alone, and when he is driven out of the bathroom, he tries to avoid Mark who follows him around, keen to interrogate him about hanging around with Coxy. Colin is unresponsive to Mark’s questions, and his reaction to Mark resonates in various ways. Although Colin does not say what has happened, his actions imply the distressing nature of what has happened and his refusal or inability to talk about this to Mark. Colin’s attempt to avoid Mark also indicates his weariness at being constantly attacked and undermined by those around him and his correct anticipation that this is what he is about to get from Mark. None of this is stated explicitly, but Colin’s behaviour and his silence indicate that he has been shaken up by what has happened and that his family environment is not a space where he can communicate what has happened (or happens) to him. In addition to suggesting the destructive implications of the way Colin is treated by those around him, Meantime also reveals Colin as a complex character who is more perceptive than others give him credit for. While Colin is repeatedly called names, physically attacked and treated as if he is stupid, Meantime problematizes this mistreatment and suggests the limitations of labels like ‘dim-witted’ and ‘quasicatatonic’ for capturing the complexity of Colin’s understanding of the world. There are fluctuations in Colin’s levels of social awareness and a constant interplay between moments where he appears less able to pick up the nuances of social conventions than other characters and other moments where he demonstrates an awareness of what is happening. Indeed, there are times where Colin’s perspective appears more sympathetic than that of the other characters so that we are often invited to side with Colin’s perspective over that of other characters. In the relationship between Colin and Coxy, there is a strong sense of Colin’s vulnerability because of his apparent inability to perceive the danger of Coxy’s ‘friendship’. Coxy bullies Colin relentlessly, and his behaviour appears consistently aggressive and dehumanizing. And yet, Colin clearly looks up to Coxy and desires his friendship. The scene where Coxy proclaims his friendship to Colin is tense to watch because, to the viewer, Coxy’s proclamation of friendship appears, at best, insincere. Coxy’s ‘friendly’ behaviour towards Colin exists on a knife’s edge, and tension builds as the viewer anticipates Coxy’s next aggressive act. Moments where Colin places hope or trust in unreliable people make for uncomfortable viewing because they emphasize Colin’s vulnerability. However, it is not straightforwardly the case that Colin is oblivious to the derogatory way he is treated by Coxy and others. There are other moments

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that suggest Colin’s awareness and frustration with how he is treated. Colin’s yearning for friendship, his alienation from his brother, and perhaps simply his desire for something to do, often prevent him from running away from Coxy’s aggression. But he is not oblivious to Coxy’s danger, and there are times when Colin’s attitude towards Coxy appears ambivalent. In one scene, which takes place in the lift of Hayley’s towerblock after Coxy calls Colin an idiot and racially abuses the other man, Colin’s head drops and he does not meet Coxy’s gaze or answer when Coxy asks whether he wants to hear a joke. This could be read in various ways: it may indicate Colin’s annoyance or a sense of dejection at being called an idiot; or discomfort with Coxy’s racially aggressive behaviour and the desire not to participate; or fear of Coxy; or an awareness that things might be about to turn violent; or in all likelihood a combination of various things. In this scene, Colin clearly perceives and is affected by the tension, aggression and danger of this encounter, all of which is heightened within the claustrophobic space of the lift. At moments like this, viewers are more likely to side with Colin’s implied perspective than with Coxy’s. The camera’s persistent focus on Colin’s facial expressions suggests a pattern in the way Colin responds to other characters and particularly to those he admires, such as Coxy, Mark and Hayley. Colin appears to be caught between a desire for recognition that compels him to pursue all potential promises of friendship hopefully and an awareness that he is often being mocked. These conflicts are implied in Colin’s facial expressions which oscillate in quick succession, often as a positive or neutral expression changes as Colin perceives someone’s negative behaviour towards him. Similarly, Colin’s stance and the way he becomes physically diminished in reaction to certain characters (like Mark) and to acts of aggression indicate his awareness and anticipation of negative treatment. Colin’s awareness and discomfort with how others treat him does not prevent him from trying to befriend those who attack him, and while this could partly be connected to an inability to read the nuances of social interactions, the film emphasizes Colin’s lack of choice and disempowerment; if Colin wants social company he will have to put up with the derogatory and condescending attitudes of others because they are endemic. Colin responds to the various forms of bullying and patronizing behaviour he receives in different ways. He often resists the derogatory labels others assign to him. He reacts against his brother’s labelling of him as ‘muppet’ and ‘Kermit’ and tries to stand up to his brother. At one point Mark says to Colin: ‘I’ll get you a job. All you’ve got to do is lick my arse, Kermit.’ A close-up shows Colin

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respond assertively, looking at Mark as he says ‘don’t call me that.’ The camera remains on Colin as Mark taunts him: ‘Kermit, how’s Miss Piggy? You given her one lately?’ After holding Mark’s gaze for a moment, Colin looks down and blinks. His expression, as well as his subsequent refusal to do what Mark tells him to, implies his resentment and resistance to the way Mark treats him and his growing struggle to stand up for himself as the film progresses. Moments where Colin resists are significant because they foreground his discomfort with and opposition to the way he is treated. They also demonstrate fluctuations in Colin’s levels of social awareness. If at times his vulnerability is associated with a difficulty in following the nuances of social interactions, Colin is often aware that he is being put down, and he exhibits a perceptiveness that those around him often refuse to recognize. In the previously discussed scene, fully aware that Mark is lying to and mocking him, Colin calls him a liar and Mark’s response is indicative of the way that Colin’s intelligence is consistently undermined: ‘Don’t call me a liar, alright? You don’t even know what it is.’ Evidently Colin does know what a liar is. The film represents a pattern whereby Colin is repeatedly silenced and undermined, whereas the film itself resists this by showing Colin to be more intelligent and capable than he is given credit for. Meantime suggests that many of Colin’s problems arise from the debilitating social environment in which he lives. The film echoes a central message put forward by disability activists and scholars: that the ‘problem’ of disability arises not from ‘the person with disabilities’ but with the way that ‘normalcy is constructed to create the “problem” of the disabled person’ (Davis 2010, 3). The ‘problem’ with Colin resides in the complete lack of a place where he can fit in and have his identity and personhood recognized in a constructive way. The problem does not reside (only) in the individuals who treat Colin badly; Meantime represents a society where the marginalization of people with learning disabilities is ubiquitous. The normality of this dehumanization is implied in the way that all of the characters treat Colin in negative ways. Furthermore, the complicity of the system is suggested in the dole officer’s disdainful attitude towards Colin and in John’s contradictory outlook towards Colin’s disability. While John sees Colin as a ‘retard’ so unable to look after himself that he cannot take his own coat off, he also suggests that Colin is not his responsibility and should learn to stand on his own two feet. This contradiction encapsulates the ideology championed by Thatcher (not to mention the current British government) of self-responsibility over social and state support, an ideology that obscures the multiple factors that often prevent vulnerable people from supporting themselves. Such difficulties are

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intensified under the kind of cuts to incapacity benefits drafted in by Thatcher and more recently by the Cameron-Clegg government. Kay Andrews and John Jacobs foreground the ‘double insult’ of Thatcherite ideology for people with disabilities: ‘Invocations of self-help must bring a particular despair to those who would give anything to be able to help themselves, but these strictures have been made worse by so often being accompanied by appeals to political responsibility which have served to underline the loss of benefits, rights and services, all of which have been reduced’ (1995, 95). Andrews and Jacobs emphasize how economic hardship affects disabled people intensely because they find it more difficult to find and keep work and may need additional care in the home, making it more difficult for other family members to work. Although Colin is never diagnosed as having a disability and therefore does not receive any additional support, the conversation the Pollocks have about Colin’s unofficial decorating job make it clear that Colin would be unlikely to find official work, and the suggestion is that he is doubly disadvantaged in the struggle against unemployment. Excluded within the economic underclass in a world where opportunities are scarce, they are even less available to Colin. Similarly, the ambivalent behaviour of the Pollocks towards Colin can be understood in light of the additional pressures families coping with disability face under such circumstances. In the following section, I would like to explore Meantime’s ultimately sympathetic representation of the Pollocks and its suggestion of the inherent moral ambiguity of people more generally.

Fluctuating identifications and class Central to how we interpret Meantime is the question of how we respond to the Pollocks, a family that Quart describes as ‘a model of callousness and dysfunction’ (1997, 46). Most critics agree that while the Pollocks are represented as dysfunctional, the audience is, nevertheless, invited to empathize with them. Porton observes how despite its ‘less than admirable protagonists’, the film conveys ‘obvious empathy for broken lives’ (2002, 51).3 The film compels its viewers to respond sympathetically to characters struggling against unemployment and economic marginalization. However, moral judgements of the characters creep into certain critical discussions, particularly in relation to Mavis and Frank where there is sometimes an emphasis on their negativity that

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obscures the more sympathetic aspects of their representation. For instance, Quart argues that: Meantime makes clear that the Thatcher-induced culture of unemployment helps create a society of depressed futile people where the wit and insight of a man like Mark just turns rancid and goes to waste. Still, Leigh is too honest an observer to make us believe that the family’s whole story is explained by the oppressive nature of the English class system and the dead-end social and economic alternatives they face. The Pollocks, especially the parents, are the type of emotionally stunted, unpleasant people, who are incapable of ever breaking out of the set patterns of their lives. (1997, 46)

While I have some sympathy with the first two points Quart makes, I am less comfortable with Quart’s unsympathetic reading of the Pollocks as inherently ‘emotionally stunted’ and ‘unpleasant’, representing the ‘type’ of people ‘incapable’ of breaking ‘the set patterns of their lives’. There are a number of problems with this argument. Firstly, there is the suggestion of innate negative characteristics. For the most part, people are not born emotionally stunted and unpleasant; they become trapped in negative behaviour patterns as a result of complex factors, such as their social, economic and familial circumstances. Second, Quart’s reading overlooks the ambiguity and humanity of the Pollocks, who are not represented entirely unsympathetically in the film. Furthermore, his argument implies that people can be separated into good and bad (or ‘unpleasant’) ‘types’. I am more convinced by Carney’s emphasis on the pervasive moral ambiguities that make it difficult to categorize the characters, or indeed themselves, in this way: ‘In Leigh, no one is simply right or wrong [. . .]. Everyone is many different, contradictory things’ (2000, 173). In what follows, I would like to outline how the film encourages a sympathetic response to most of its central characters, despite the destructive forms of interaction represented. To see the characters as only uncaring and unpleasant is ultimately to view them from a superior moral height, which fails to recognize their humanity and the moral ambiguities of people more generally. It is to dissociate from the social, economic and cultural factors that play a part in producing people’s behaviour patterns. This kind of approach is also, perhaps, to view from a different class position. Andy Medhurst argues that while Leigh refuses to idealize his working-class characters, he always represents them sympathetically. Medhurst argues that the failure of some middle-class commentators to respond sympathetically arises because Leigh delivers ‘characters who unapologetically have tastes, manners and habits that middle-class audiences cannot help but find distressing’ (1993, 8).

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This section will return to the question of how characters treat Colin in order to discuss the ambivalence that prevents any simplistic moral judgement of the characters that mistreat him. Although characters behave in negative ways that encourage a critical response, this is held in tension by other opposite aspects that invite a more empathetic response, both because characters also demonstrate more positive character traits and because their own vulnerability and suffering is made apparent. Furthermore, if certain behaviour patterns come across in a negative light, the film also suggests that all people are morally ambivalent. Each member of the Pollock family is a complex character. While their behaviour may sometimes appear unpleasant, at other times they appear caring, protective, intelligent, insecure, frustrated, oppressed or witty, among a range of other qualities. Frank, Mavis, Barbara and Mark all behave towards Colin in ambivalent ways. Despite their sometimes-problematic behaviour, Colin’s family also try to protect, support and defend him. The film encourages fluctuating responses by illuminating a constant interplay between Colin’s family’s struggle to support him and their failure or inability to do so. Most critical approaches that discuss or mention how Meantime invites contradictory responses to its characters tend to focus on the ambiguities of Mark’s and Barbara’s behaviour (Quart 1997; Carney 2000; Whitehead 2007). This may be because the climactic sequence of events surrounding Mark’s sabotage of Colin’s decorating job at Barbara’s house is rich with the moral ambiguities and fluctuating identifications that pervade the film. However, before exploring these events, I want to consider the film’s more sympathetic engagement with Mavis and Frank. Quart describes Mavis and Frank as ‘abrasive, sour, uncaring parents’ (1997, 46). Whitehead also emphasizes their negative depiction, describing how Frank humourlessly ‘grumbles his way through the film’, while Mavis is consistently ‘sour, bad-tempered and thoroughly ground down by life’ (Whitehead 2007, 50–1). While there is some truth to these observations, there is also more to Mavis and Frank than such descriptions suggest.4 Frank has his moments of wit and intelligence despite his grumbling manner, and he is also perhaps the most sympathetic character in terms of his treatment of Colin. Frank protects and defends Colin wherever he perceives people patronizing or being unfair to Colin – he defends Colin against the dole officer, Mavis, Barbara and Mark in this context. And although Mavis appears ‘abrasive’ and ‘sour’ throughout, she is not always ‘uncaring’, even if she struggles to show her love. Mavis’s aggressive behaviour is also repeatedly set against intimations of her own vulnerability.

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For instance, when she attacks Colin for getting mud on his trousers, this is associated both with her inability to assert her authority over Mark and with her evident insecurity in the suburban house of her wealthier sister. Her need to keep up appearances is linked to power dynamics that position the Pollocks beneath John and Barbara in the social and economic hierarchies of British society. In recognizing that Mavis’s behaviour is connected to her own disempowerment in this setting, the viewer is able to respond empathetically towards her while simultaneously feeling uneasy about the way she treats Colin. This is indicative of the way in which the film suggests the need to locate problematic forms of behaviour within the power structures that play a role in producing them. In Meantime, while the characters may behave in destructive ways any negative response that the film encourages is quickly undermined or complicated by insight into the complex factors that drive the characters and by a foregrounding of their vulnerability and legitimate frustration with their situation. Other moments in the film show Mavis and Frank acting in more positive and supportive ways. In the scene before Colin goes to work, Colin, Frank and Mavis all appear excited about Colin’s new job, exhibiting a sense of pride that Colin is going to be ‘doing a job of work’ (Frank). The double emphasis in Frank’s choice of words implies his pride and happiness that Colin has got a job as well as the rarity of this occasion. Mark’s hostility and the cruel way he tries to dissuade Colin from taking the job – by emphasizing his incapacity – come across negatively in the scene, although there is also the sense that Mark may not be acting out of selfish reasons. By contrast, Frank’s and Mavis’s attempts to support and defend Colin against Mark appear more positive, although Mavis’s plan to take half of Colin’s money perhaps complicates her position. This scene is indicative of the way in which the film invites constantly fluctuating responses as the characters exhibit sympathetic and more ambiguous forms of behaviour while simultaneously providing insight or understanding into the latter. This makes it likely that the viewer will keep switching allegiances as the action unfolds and it becomes difficult to find a stable interpretative position. The scene reveals some of the ambiguities that are typical of the way Colin’s family behaves towards him; although each character tries to protect Colin from what they perceive as hostile influences, they also repeatedly do him harm in their overbearing, aggressive and belittling behaviour. This is particularly true of Mavis and Mark. Moral ambiguities pervade the behaviour of most of the characters. Barbara is an interesting example because while she appears particularly sensitive towards

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Colin’s needs, her attempt to support him is both commendable in certain respects and problematic in others. Barbara appears to treat Colin with more compassion than a lot of the other characters. She rejects her husband’s dismissal of Colin as ‘retarded’ and recognizes that Colin’s behaviour is connected to social circumstances that offer him no opportunity for support or growth – ‘He’s not retarded. He’s just never been given a chance’, Barbara tells her husband. Barbara’s job offer is an attempt to give Colin an opportunity to develop skills, autonomy and a sense of self-worth that she recognizes he is missing. Indeed, the prospect of this job clearly has a positive effect on Colin’s psyche. The moment where Colin says with evident pride – ‘I’m a painter and decorator’ – is a rare moment where Colin demonstrates a sense of pride, identity and self-worth. However, because Barbara’s job offer is far from neutral and because her behaviour is also ambiguous, the viewer is encouraged to respond to her treatment of Colin in fluctuating ways. Barbara’s manner towards Colin is often patronizing and her ‘helping’ of Colin is also motivated by self-interest; it distracts her from her unhappy marriage and enables her to feel good about herself. In the climactic scene where Mark comes to disrupt the decorating plan, while Barbara initially seems the more in tune with Colin’s feelings, by the end of this sequence her treatment of Colin is harsh. As Barbara becomes increasingly upset as a result of Mark’s onslaught she struggles to maintain the banter with Mark, but her behaviour towards Colin also shifts. When Barbara accuses Colin of letting her down and wasting everyone’s time, her behaviour appears cruel and unjustified because Barbara is evidently aware that Colin has been disturbed by Mark’s presence. Not only does this make Barbara’s actions appear in a negative light, it also shifts the way we understand Mark’s conduct because it indicates a certain legitimacy to his concerns that Colin will be vulnerable under Barbara’s authority. However, the negative response that Barbara’s treatment of Colin encourages is simultaneously complicated by the fact that Barbara is evidently attacking as a result of her own pain. Indeed, Barbara’s cruel behaviour here, like that of many of the other forms of destructive interaction in the film, is clearly the product of her own vulnerability as she deflects her hurt at Mark’s brutal deconstruction of her unhappy marriage by lashing out at Colin. While many of the characters vent their frustration on Colin (and each other), the suggestion is that although this is unfortunate and destructive, it is also perfectly ordinary. Meantime foregrounds the ambiguities that pervade human interactions, making it difficult to make clear distinctions between

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‘good’ and ‘bad’ types of behaviour or people. Carney celebrates the way that Leigh foregrounds the imperfections of his characters. Far from being an expression of cynicism, it is an appreciation of his characters’ humanity, who have the same ‘flaws’ and ‘shortcomings’ as people in general (Carney 2000, 173). Indeed, by showing how people can become implicated in destructive behaviour patterns despite what they see as their own good intentions, Meantime downplays the possibility of a morally innocent position, and this implicates the viewer in the problems the film raises. Mark and Barbara both believe they are looking out for Colin’s interests, but the film reveals the complexity of their behaviour which emerges as both destructive and supportive. It becomes difficult to judge the characters because of this ambiguity. In foregrounding the damaging effects of derogatory attitudes towards people with learning disabilities while suggesting that these are structural and normative and by enabling an empathetic response to the characters who mistreat Colin, the film makes it difficult to judge the characters that mistreat Colin from a position of moral superiority. Indeed, Meantime draws into question the characters that judge the Pollocks in this way. The other factor that should prevent viewers from judging the Pollocks too negatively is the film’s engagement with class and the disempowerment of the working classes in Thatcher’s Britain. While Mark’s often antagonistic attitude sometimes appears negatively, at other times it emerges as more positive, for his demeanour is evidently connected to his legitimate disillusionment with their situation. Despite the cruelty of Mark’s behaviour towards Colin and Barbara, his motivations for putting a stop to Colin’s job, the perceptiveness of his banter with Barbara, and his responses to Barbara and Colin complicate any negative reaction the viewer might have. It is clear that Mark’s motivations are partly guided by his concern for his brother, even if his actions do not have a positive effect on Colin. Mark’s character is ‘loving and critical, harsh and tender, competitive and protective, threatening and caring at one and the same moment’ (Carney 2000, 169–70). Mark’s opposition is driven by an antagonism towards Barbara’s aspiring middle-class world that leads him to disregard Colin’s desires, but Meantime makes Mark’s aversion to Barbara something that the viewer is able to understand and even respect. Barbara’s job offer is not a neutral act; her charity comes from a position of power and offers only a temporary solution to the more long-term problem of Colin’s unemployment and lack of opportunity for growth. None of the power structures that keep Colin and his family in their place will be challenged

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by Barbara’s offer – in fact, her offer is testament to the power difference between them. Any negative response to Mark’s behaviour is further destabilized because as soon as he has achieved his goal, Mark’s demeanour softens and he appears to feel some remorse over his actions. As Quart points out, in the final scene at Barbara’s house a close-up shot foregrounds Mark’s ‘guilty [recognition] that Barbara is not some symbol of middle-class complacency, but an anguished woman’ (1997, 46). Mark’s behaviour towards Colin also changes completely following this event as he becomes supportive rather than aggressive towards his brother. This shift may be partly connected to a feeling of remorse, but it is also linked to a change in Colin’s behaviour. As the film progresses, Colin’s frustration with the way he is treated accumulates until he finally snaps and stands up to his overbearing parents. This appears in stark contrast to Colin’s usual quietness. Colin’s resistance clearly receives a newfound respect from Mark, who suddenly switches his derogatory nickname for Colin (‘Muppet’) to the more positive ‘Kojak’. The shift in Mark’s behaviour illuminates Mark’s earlier aggression towards Colin in a new light, suggesting that it was linked to concerns about his brother’s vulnerability. It is after Colin finds the strength to say ‘no’ that Mark and Colin begin to communicate in a more constructive way for the first time. Indeed, the supportive conversation that Colin and Mark share at the end of the film is a rare moment where the characters in Meantime communicate in a constructive way. Sterritt argues that Leigh uses ‘(inarticulate) speech and (ungraceful) movement’ to convey the effects of ‘the inhibiting, often suffocating culture that Thatcher fostered and encouraged’ (2006, 328). The optimistic note sounded at the end of the film infers the importance of solidarity, communication and collective support as one means of resisting Thatcherite individualism. While most of the film depicts the characters venting their frustrations on each other, the end is more optimistic because it reveals a more productive means of interaction as Mark shares his frustrations with Colin, projecting his anger onto a more legitimate target – the political system that traps the Pollocks (Figure 14.2). Medhurst sees this celebration of resistance as a central message of the film, arguing that Meantime ‘tentatively locates a small flame of hope [. . .] by validating the importance of refusal, of saying no, of the dignity of resistance’ (1993, 11). This is why Mark’s often antagonistic demeanour is something that is ultimately represented sympathetically in the film. In the situations where Mark behaves antagonistically towards people who behave condescendingly towards

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Figure 14.2  Colin (Tim Roth) tries to cover his head after his brother Mark discovers that Colin has shaved his head like the skinhead Coxy in Meantime (1984)

the Pollocks, the viewer is encouraged to side with Mark. Mark’s rudeness to John in the opening scene appears as a legitimate way of responding to someone who boasts about his wealth and evidently looks down upon the Pollocks from a position of class superiority.5 Similarly, Marks’s aggressive behaviour towards the dole officer appears as an articulate and dignified response to her condescending and disdainful manner. Written into the fabric of Meantime is a warning against judging the Pollocks from a superior moral height because the behaviour of the characters that do this is drawn into question. Meantime invites a critical (and comedic) response to the Left-wing housing official who is so evidently clueless about the lives of the working-class people he lectures. When he informs the Pollocks that they should think about the destructive implications of two grown brothers having to share a room, this foregrounds his complete obliviousness to their situation; having this extra room is not a matter of choice, it is a luxury the Pollocks cannot afford. Similarly, the film does not encourage us to empathize with the condescending attitudes of John or the dole officer who both embody the unsympathetic stance of the establishment towards the poorer and more vulnerable citizens of British society. Disdainful, rude and condescending to all of the Pollocks, the dole officer’s reaction towards Colin is particularly vitriolic. This encapsulates an important resonance in the film: the alliance of an ideology of self-improvement alongside radical cuts to state support and employment

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that hit the poorest the hardest leaves the most vulnerable people adrift, unable to help themselves and yet disparaged for the position they are placed within. Colin’s situation is particularly injurious because he faces more than economic oppression. His vulnerability makes him subject to social marginalization and to attacks from those around him who can momentarily assuage their own feelings of powerlessness by asserting their authority over him. Given the current British government’s draconian cuts, including cuts to incapacity benefits, Meantime has an unfortunate contemporary relevance and presents problems that will continue to beset the most vulnerable sections of British society. The constant fluctuations with which Meantime encourages viewers to respond to its characters enables the film to illuminate flaws in the way that people interact while simultaneously gesturing towards the need to understand negative behaviour patterns in their complexity and within the social context in which they unfold. Carney is right to emphasize the inherent and human ambiguity of the characters in Meantime. But this ambiguity emerges in a specific framework, and meaning is not always undecideable in the film. Meantime foregrounds the economic and social dispossession that produces a frustrated and alienated underclass, and it problematizes the ability of outsiders, particularly those from a different class or a position of power, to judge from an external position of moral superiority. This makes Meantime a valuable film to watch in the context of contemporary Britain and the riots that took place across British cities in August 2011. While the criminality of the rioters has been emphasized by many as if that were the end of the story, this response diverts attention away from the poverty, unemployment and lack of opportunities that pervade certain communities, creating an alienated section of the population that does not respect an establishment that does little for their lives. Meantime traces the kind of sympathetic understanding of alienation and disenfranchisement that is necessary for our own times.

Notes 1 A good indicator of this can be seen in two fairly recent monographs by Tony Whitehead (2007) and Garry Watson (2004) on Leigh’s films. Discussion of Meantime in these books is fleeting and largely descriptive; an overview of the plot is provided but there is little analysis of the film. By contrast, each writer devotes a chapter and detailed analysis to later films Naked and Secrets & Lies. An

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exception is Ray Carney who devotes a chapter to Meantime in his monograph (2000). Many of the characters in Meantime struggle to express their feelings of frustration directly, but their dissatisfaction is signalled more vocally than Colin’s. For other critics who have made a related argument, see Medhurst (1993), Quart (1997), Carney (2000), Sterritt (2006) and Whitehead (2007). To be fair, Whitehead does acknowledge that Mavis is permitted a moment of sympathy in the scene at the bingo hall. However, his account of the film does not capture a sense of the consistent way in which a sympathetic response always haunts the more critical response that Mavis’s ‘sourness’ encourages. This is another instance where Carney’s insistence on the undecidability of meaning misses the implicit meaning of the action. Carney suggests that the opening scenes raise a range of unanswered questions: Is Frank rude to John? Why does the relationship between the sisters appear so tense? How are we to understand Mark’s insolence? And yet, I think answers to all of these questions are implied. Mark and Frank behave ambivalently and with some hostility towards John, and this is evidently connected to their awareness of and hostility towards his sense of class superiority as he boasts to them about the picture windows he is going to install.

Works cited Andrews, Kay and John Jacobs. Punishing the Poor: Poverty Under Thatcher. London: Macmillan, 1990. Brown, Laura S. ‘Not Outside the Range: One Feminist Perspective on Psychic Trauma’, in Trauma: Explorations in Memory, ed. Cathy Caruth. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1995, 100–12. Carney, Ray. ‘Challenging Easy Understandings: Meantime’, in The Films of Mike Leigh: Embracing the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, 163–78. Coveney, Michael. The World According to Mike Leigh. London: HarperCollins, 1996. Davis, Lennard J. ‘Constructing Normalcy’, in The Disability Studies Reader, 3rd edn, ed. Lennard J. Davis. London: Routledge, 2010, 3–19. Docherty, Daniel, Richard Hughes, Patricia Phillips, et al. ‘This Is what We Think’, in The Disability Studies Reader, 3rd edn, ed. Lennard J. Davis. London: Routledge, 2010, 432–40. Giles, Paul. ‘History With Holes: Channel 4 Television Films of the 1980s’, in Fires Were Started: British Cinema and Thatcherism, 2nd edn, ed. Lester D. Friedman. London: Wallflower Press, 2006, 58–76.

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Laub, Dori. ‘Bearing Witness of the Vicissitudes of Listening’, in Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History, eds Felman, Shosana and Dori Laub. New York: Routledge, 1992, 57–71. Leach, Jim. British Film. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Medhurst, Andy. ‘Mike Leigh beyond Embarrassment’, Sight and Sound 11 (1993): 6–10. —. ‘Anatomising England: Alan Bennett, Mike Leigh, Victoria Wood’, in A National Joke: Popular Comedy and English Cultural Identities, ed. Andy Medhurst. London: Routledge, 2007, 159–87. Mishna, Faye. ‘Learning Disabilities and Bullying: Double Jeopardy’, Journal of Learning Disabilities 36:4 (2003): 336–47. Moir, Vanessa and Tony Alexander. ‘Kicking Out “Kicking Off ”: A Debate on Respectful Terminology’, Learning Disability Practice 11:10 (2008): 34–7. Mota, Miguel. ‘Mike Leigh’s High Hopes: Troubling Home in Thatcher’s Britain’, Film Criticism 32:3 (2008): 24–40. Porton, Richard. ‘Mike Leigh’s Modernist Realism’, in Rites of Realism: Essays on Corporeal Cinema, ed. Ivone Margulies. Durham: Duke University Press, 2002, 164–84. Quart, Leonard. ‘Meantime: Desolate Lives in London’, Cineaste 23:2 (1997): 46–7. —. ‘The Uniqueness of Ordinary Lives: Mike Leigh’s BBC Films’, Film Criticism 24:2 (1999): 41–53. Riding, Alan. ‘An Original Who Plumbs the Ordinary: An Interview with Mike Leigh’, in Mike Leigh: Interviews, ed. Howie Movshovitz. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2000, 98–104. Schalock, Robert, Ruth Luckasson and Karrie Shogren. ‘The Renaming of Mental Retardation: Understanding the Change to the Term Intellectual Disability’, Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities 45:2 (2007): 116–24. Sterritt, David. ‘Low Hope: Mike Leigh Meets Margaret Thatcher’, in Fires Were Started: British Cinema and Thatcherism, 2nd edn, ed. Lester D. Friedman. London: Wallflower Press, 2006, 315–31. Watson, Garry. Cinema of Mike Leigh: A Sense of the Real. London: Wallflower Press, 2004. Whitehead, Tony. Mike Leigh. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007.

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The Grotesque State of the Nation: Mike Leigh’s High Hopes and the Lessons of Cultural Studies Kevin M. Flanagan

In his essay ‘Subcultural Conflict and Working Class Community’, Phil Cohen composes a telling formula for understanding the plurality and persistence of youth subcultures. He writes, ‘it seems to me that the latent function of subculture is this: to express and resolve, albeit “magically,” the contradictions which remain hidden or unresolved in the parent culture.’1 He continues, noting that youth subcultures such as Mods or Skinheads symbolically and semiotically ‘attempt to retrieve some of the socially cohesive elements destroyed in their parent culture’ through recovery and recombination.2 One of the strengths of the set of critical tools of the British Cultural Studies tradition is its willingness to combine broad-based class and social analysis with precise interpretative critique. But, the salient lesson from Cohen’s observation on the function of youth cultures need not be limited to youth cultures as such. Rather, the marginalized or dispossessed are always striving to define themselves in relation to dominant cultural formations – or, to use Stuart Hall’s work with Antonio Gramsci, to align themselves in a productive way against hegemonic power blocs in a protracted ‘war of position’ that includes economic, cultural and (under dire circumstances) military dimensions.3 In less theoretical language, there is always a struggle for piece of mind on the part of those excluded from traditional channels of power, as well as a push back against undue social repression. Visual media  – particularly dramatic narratives for film and television  – provide a theatre for showcasing this ‘magical’ attempt to come to terms with injustices, foreclosures and repressive formations of all kinds. Often the most egregiously exploitative agents of the parent culture stand symbolic trial against

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the most denigrated. This popular and public attempt to expose dominant sites of power often uses weaponized comedy to combat perceived injustice. Moments of humour can be positioned like moments of traumatic shock. The joke, incongruity, absurdity or pratful acts like a punctuation mark, delineating precise relations between characters, important narrative events or moments of particular social relevance.4 As an aesthetic modality, comedy demands an attention to individual lived experience, placed against the pressures and weight of the wider world. Enter Mike Leigh. One recurrent fallacy in the taxonomic mapping of British cinema is to un-reflexively assign traits to films or film-makers based on commonly upheld associations. Leigh often gets lumped into discussions of social realism along with Ken Loach, another film-maker who has worked with issues of class representation and ideological struggle throughout his career. But, as Jim Leach notes, ‘they represent opposite poles of the realist tradition . . . Loach belonging to the “documentary” side and Leigh on the “theatrical”’.5 A more productive connection might be made to Pier Paolo Pasolini, a leftist film-maker from outside of the British tradition. Though noted for the poetic realism of Accatone (1961) and Mamma Roma (1962), Pasolini ventured into more adventurously ‘theatrical’ modes with his social parables such as The Hawks and the Sparrows (1964) and Pigsty (1969). Both Leigh and Pasolini developed styles that offer an organic leftist politics through exaggeration. For Leigh, the specific conditions of a given historical conjuncture work to determine the mood and provisional thesis of a given film. In Vera Drake (2004) the social factors that position Vera as a provider of abortions become manifest in the movies’ characterizations and mise-en-scène. Legal provisions against abortion, the impoverished living conditions of the film’s post-war working-class London milieu and Vera’s moral prerogative to help women all translate into Imelda Staunton’s discreet, understated performance.6 But this sense of dispossessed hopelessness does not always translate to tales of madness, dejection and death. Leigh frequently works with comedy. Edward Trostle Jones has argued that, ‘Leigh fits far more comfortably than Loach into a comic tradition long venerated in British fiction and film, including the post-World War II and 1950’s “little” Ealing comedies.’7 For Andy Medhurst, Leigh, along with Alan Bennett and Victoria Wood, is one of the most consistent comedic talents working on questions of British national character.8 Although Leigh claims that his films are not meant to be taken solely as commentary on their native national specificity, most of his films are set in Britain, either in contemporary settings or at moments of painstaking historical and geographical specificity.9 Leigh’s films

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occasionally operate in that mode in which larger-than-life individuals confront the bare conditions of their world, satirically providing commentary on the broken dreams and promises of their once positively spun national inheritance. Leigh’s second feature film High Hopes (1988) proved to be the moment to make this intervention. High Hopes coincided with a final and mature form of Thatcherism, the thoroughly neo-liberal ideology that dominated British political and social life from the late 1980s until the rise of the equally neo-liberalist ‘New Labour’ movement in the 1990s. Leigh’s timely comedy joins several other ‘state of the nation’ films from the 1980s in an angry critique of Thatcherism on a number of regional, generational and policy-based fronts. These texts wage a frustrated ‘war of position’ against the most entrenched political logic in the parent culture. Their collective sense of humour provides the ‘magical’ grounds on which to try to reconcile and unravel this unease. When placed on a longer timeline, these films join a textual tradition of questioning sovereignty through caricature, exaggerated gesture and the grotesque visualization of inequality. As I hope to show throughout this essay, British Cultural Studies  – as developed throughout the 1970s and 1980s, principally by Stuart Hall and his colleagues/ students from the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies – has provided a paradoxically underutilized set of tools for the textual analysis of such visual material. In particular, the sustained focus on economic determination, the complexities of power and ideology and ideas about cultural self-definition and articulation as a means of hegemonic refusal speak loudly to the anxieties contained in these grotesquely overstated films. That Hall made a number of interventions into the public debate about Thatcherism – as it was unravelling, mutating and making gambits for ever-more solidified rule at home and ever-more assured alliances with Reaganism in the United States – suggests a comparative kinship with Leigh, whose High Hopes is a text offered to the public from the frustrated position of structurally excluded and politically alienated socialist. High Hopes is a film about the interpersonal relationships of a small group of Londoners. Working-class Cyril (Philip Davis) and Shirley (Ruth Sheen), a politically engaged yet somewhat bohemian couple, form the core of this narrative. Although in a long-term, evidently loving relationship, they remain torn over whether or not to have children. Cyril is largely opposed to the idea. He does not want to bring a child into a broken-down and over-burdened world. Shirley holds on to the notion of having kids, albeit with dwindling hope. Cyril and Shirley act as a kind of surrogate family for strangers, though: they provide directions and temporary lodgings to Wayne (Jason Watkins), who has recently arrived in the city looking for work and provide advice and hospitality to Suzi

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(Judith Scott), an unemployed young woman at odds with her increasingly conservative family. The primary conflict in the film unfolds squarely along class lines. Cyril’s widowed mother Mrs Bender (Edna Dore) lives alone in her council home of many years. While their neighbourhood was once solidly working class it has begun to aggressively gentrify under the aggressive housing redevelopment schemes that rose in popularity under Thatcher’s tenure as Prime Minister.10 Haggard from age, physically exhausted and forgetful, Mrs Bender goes to a pharmacy to pick up a prescription only to realize that she left her purse and keys in her house. Locked out, she waits for someone to come back so that she can call her daughter Valerie (Heather Tobias). Her neighbour, the recently settled Laetitia Booth-Braine (Lesley Manville) arrives via cab. She reluctantly agrees to allow Mrs Bender inside so that one of her kids can come and let her back into her house. Aggressive social climber Valerie agrees to come, but in her attempt at beautification and her donning of gaudy, faux-riche clothing (as a means of impressing the obviously wealthy and provisionally refined sensibilities of the Booth-Braine couple), she forgets her set of keys. Cyril is eventually tracked down. He and Shirley aggressively confront the annoyed Booth-Braines, as well as a nearly hysterical Valerie. Cyril’s immediate family circumstances are further tested at Valerie’s party for Mrs Bender, who has just turned 70. This is a celebration fraught with antagonisms and ruptures. Valerie’s husband Martin (Philip Jackson) is an enterprising used car salesman who spends the day womanizing. He visits and nearly rapes his mistress (Cheryl Prime) and openly flirts with Shirley. Playing the host, Valerie attempts to impress her guests through lavish spending. She has purchased food and drink that could serve scores of people, but only five are present. Martin and Valerie question Cyril’s ambitions and work ethic. Mrs Bender appears exhausted, lost and is without appetite. She nearly collapses. Martin and Valerie get drunk. Cyril and Shirley brood. Mrs Bender eventually ends up staying the night at Cyril and Shirley’s. Cyril finally comes around to trying for children. In the morning, Mrs Bender appears in better form than she had at any previous point in the narrative. Cyril and Shirley take her up on the roof of their apartment building. In addition to showing her their garden, Cyril points to landmarks of the London skyline, including nearby St Pancras station, where Mr. Bender used to work. Given this wider perspective on London with old and new co-existing, side-by-side, Mrs Bender appears to process the scope and implications of the rapid social change of the previous few decades.

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While this plot recap might cast High Hopes as a kind of tragic melodramatic family saga, the film’s performances, tone and direct confrontation of big political and social issues position it as a comedic vehicle for examining life under Thatcherism. The depth and scope of Thatcher’s policies as Prime Minister can scarcely be overstated. According to Lester Friedman, ‘Margaret Thatcher radically changed the face of Great Britain, offering the citizens of her country a combination of economic, political, social and ideological principles that completely broke with the post-World War Two consensus and totally restructured British daily life.’11 The historical conditions that facilitated such change unfolded throughout the 1970s and included Britain’s increased insularity with regard to world-historical affairs (its decreased importance to the Cold War coupled with its reduction of imperial interests); economic stagflation, industrial decline and increased unemployment; a breakdown, more generally, of Keynesian economic principles relating to public service and political liberalism; perceived threats over continued and diverse immigration, mixed with a continued rise in far-Right fringe groups such as the British National Party; and a gradual eroding of political parties and their traditionally identified class alliances (Labour’s loss of working class support, the displacement of the aristocracy from Tory interests in place of a newer bid at the middle classes). To this can be added Stuart Hall’s summation: ‘Ideologically, Thatcherism is seen as forging new discursive articulations between the liberal discourses of the “free market” and economic man and the organic conservative themes of tradition, family and nation, respectability, patriarchalism, and order.’12 Thatcherism was successful in achieving a hegemonic relation to its opponents through its ability to wage a wide ‘war of position’, one heavily inclusive of cultural references and formulations. For Hall, Gramsci’s chracterization of hegemony highlights the importance of this cultural factor. Hegemony produces new forms of self-evidence and commonsense. It does not achieve power through pure coercion, but rather through the active solicitation of consent.13 There is a form of collusion between this kind of political programme and all aspects of lived daily experience. Culture does a kind of recruitment by interpellating subjects through its favoured channels.14 To quote Hall: As an organized ideological force, ‘Thatcherism’ has played  – long before its actual succession to power – a formative role, articulating the field of popular ideologies sharply to the right. Some of the keys to this success lie in its wide appeal and ‘common touch’; its inclusive range of reference (for example, its ability to condense moral, philosophical and social themes, not normally thought

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to be ‘political’, within its political discourse); its proven capacity to penetrate the traditional ideological formations of sections of the working class and petty bourgeoisie; its unremitting ‘radicalism’ (for instance, it buried the competing positions of the Heathite ‘respectable’ right without ceremony); its taking up of themes much neglected in competing ideologies.15

Thus, whole cultural realms become sites of ideological instruction. During times of Rightward movement, competitive sports acquire new connotations: values such as discipline, competition and exceptionalism collide with official political rhetoric. In film and television, the phenomenon of the ‘heritage’ culture can be tied to a revisionist form of Thatcherite history: quality literary adaptations dramatizing the personal lives of the middle and merchant classes, projected in a luscious milieu of country homes, gilded fabrics and patriarchal limitation, provide a displaced – though entertaining and popularly resonant – summation of what the past looked like for the current ruling class.16 Hall’s key concept with regards to high Thatcherism is its achievement of what he calls ‘authoritarian populism’, a broad mobilization of political forces in service of the law and order state, neo-liberal economic policies and a climate of belt-tightening and stern thrift. In this cultural imaginary, the central figure for emulation is the middle-class entrepreneur, the self-made capitalist focused on personal gain and family unity. Hall writes ‘this archetypal petty-bourgeois “shopkeeper” figure has a well-constituted space in traditional conservative ideologies, if not as a real social category, then certainly as a discursive subject: the enunciative subject of a whole series of conservative “philosophies”’.17 In a more comedic vein, he laments ‘the hard-faced, utilitarian, petty-bourgeois businessmen are now in charge, not the grouse-shooting, hunting and fishing classes’.18 During this period of authoritarian populism, traditional anxieties and alliances were routed through the normalization of this shopkeeping figure. Heritage and enterprise wed, projecting a seemingly robust, productive and eminently business-friendly environment, at odds with the democratic socialism that had produced the Welfare State: There would always have to be some additional, incremental, institutional force – the state, representing the general interest of society – to bring to bear against, to modify, the market [. . .] I’m talking about the taken-for-granted, popular base of welfare social democracy, which formed the real, concrete ground on which any English socialism worth the name had to be built. Thatcherism was a project to engage, to contest that project, and, wherever possible, to dismantle it and to put something new in place. It entered the political field in a historic contest, not just for power, but for popular authority, for hegemony.19

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Therefore, Hall’s discourse for uncovering Thatcherism  – his highlighting of competing positions, his use of hyperbole and comedy rooted in evident (dare one say empirical?) lived context and his general lamentations over the ineffectiveness of the old Left against the new Right – works not only to explain the historical conversation into which High Hopes is entering, but further serves as an approximation of Leigh’s aesthetic strategies. They were not alone in inhabiting this counterposition: Hall’s commentary and Leigh’s film are constituent of a wider impulse toward ‘state-of-the-nation’ discourses which provided a sustained critical voice against Thatcherism. In particular, comedies such as Lindsay Anderson’s Britannia Hospital (1982) and Peter Smith and Alan Bleasdale’s No Surrender (1985) provide a context for this mode of representation, which wields such weapons as caricatured visualizations of class struggle, narratives of social inequality, and the persistent unmasking of the failures of Thatcherite policies, as against the official rhetoric of the ruling government. Their politics are not identical nor is their sense of their anger. A quick detour through the national specificity of this use of comedy helps connect its timely flowering in the 1980s to a longer tradition. One hallmark of this mode of social comedy is the use of caricature. This, in-and-of itself, is not uniquely British. In Sigmund Freud’s meditation on humour, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious (1905), he provides a tidy definition based on historical and psychical examples. He writes: Carciature, as is well known, brings about degradation by emphasizing in the general impression given by the exalted object a single trait which is comic in itself but was bound to be overlooked so long as it was only perceivable in the general picture. By isolating this, a comic effect can be attained which extends in our memory over the whole object. This is subject to the condition that the actual presence of the exalted object himself does not keep us in a reverential attitude.20

In this formulation, the selection and exaggeration of specific characteristics (physical, behavioural, ideological) signals to the interpretative incongruities at play. That is, this caricatured social being – upended, denigrated or lampooned through accentuated mannerisms or appearance  – calls into question the relations between such beings, not just in terms of their interpersonal engagements, but also in terms of their symbolic capacity to speak for other members of their class specificity. As a generalization, we can laugh at and criticize the gluttonous, greedy banker as a complicit bureaucrat in exploitatively capitalist transactions because of the heightened appearances, the pronounced gestures. Furthermore, Freud writes ‘caricature, parody and travesty (as well as

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their practical counterpart, unmasking) are directed against people and objects which lay claim to authority and respect, what are in some sense “sublime”’.21 The hyper-pronounced appearance brought about through caricature can sometimes suggest more ambivalent responses. The more exaggerated and inhuman, the closer that figure comes to embodied abjection, to horrific unfamiliarity. In short, caricature works as means of unmasking social inequalities. Often lapsing in the grotesque, caricature has been a recurrent strategy for diverse visual media over a long history. It has thrived in popularly circulating and technologically reproducible venues.22 In Britain, this tradition is at its most pronounced in the eighteenth century. With the rapid improvement of print technologies, their concomitant reduction in acquisition and distribution costs and the rise in verbal and visual literacy, such forms as the aquatint, lithograph and mezzotint gained specific currency. Through images reproduced in periodicals or as stand-alone prints, these caricatures were able to comment upon current political and social issues. Artists such as Thomas Rowlandson, James Gillray and William Hogarth produced directed comment on events, suggesting satirical dissatisfaction while occasionally offering moral and ethical correctives.23 Contemporary attitudes and events could be examined, and fast. Although Leigh is not a moralist per se, his comedies do employ a similar toolkit. In an essayistic interview from 1988, Hugh Herbert writes that Leigh ‘cites Rowlandson, Gillray, Georg Grosz as formative influences in his early days in the graphic arts. And the cartoonist’s art is much the same as the old definition of the Fleet Street hack’s: simplify, then exaggerate’.24 Judy Stone relates that, ‘as a boy, Mike Leigh drew caricatures until his parents stopped him because they thought he was making fun of people’.25 This identification with a grandly stated modality like caricature further illuminates Leigh’s relationship to realism. John Hill’s definitional observation, which is borne out of a framework suggested by John Corner, goes some way to parsing this seeming contradiction in terms: of the two extreme poles of realism, ‘one . . . is concerned with verisimilitude (being like the real); the other with reference (being about the real)’.26 For Leigh, who professes to work on an organic and instinctual level, representational tactics that say something novel or illuminating about the world are congruent with a ‘realistic’ approach to the world. Tony Whitehead has usefully commented upon how this material gets reconciled: In Leigh’s films, the ‘real’ can be said to be the worlds the characters inhabit, which are highly recognizable and constructed with great care and commitment to authenticity. The ‘unreal’ is the heightened comedy, the stylisation and comic

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excess, with which Leigh and his actors portray many of the characters and the situations in which they find themselves.27

Samantha Lay calls this tendency both ‘heightened realism’ or ‘social surrealism’, two oxymoronic monikers that approximate the tone of films like High Hopes.28 Point is, the tone and general approach of Leigh’s project (to use film as a platform for assessing questions of nation, family and politics) has historical precedents. This comedic exploration of macro-level social issues through an intensive focus on the family unit ties to an older impulse in the history of British cinema. Despite its reputation as a conservative national cinema serving an insular and largely indifferent home audience, some genres were nonetheless malleable in relation to important political and social trends. For example, Marcia Landy has discussed the rise of the ‘Family Comedy’ in the 1950s as the result of a ‘convergence of factors: official and media encouragement of familialism in images designed to strengthen family relationships; sociological concerns about crime and juvenile delinquency traced to inadequate family bonds and the care of the young; a concern about broken homes – more generally, a retreat from the public arena into the home; the rise of television as a form of family entertainment; and the film industry’s attempt to woo straying audiences’.29 In films such as Young Wives Tale (1951) and Raising a Riot (1955), the family unit is charged with negotiating social expectations (the role of husband and wife, the responsibilities of children to their parents, the maintenance of a facade of respectability), both in terms of historical precedent (the way families ‘ought’ to be) and contemporary insistence (the way families really are).30 Crucially, Landy notes a kinship between the themes expressed in these ‘family comedy’ films (‘marital conflict, youthful disaffection, generational conflict and domestic entrapment’) and other relevant production cycles such as social problem films and melodramas both in Britain and the United States.31 Although these films are curiously complacent in that they do not represent radical upheavals in the structure (or in assumptions about the function) of the family, they still provide a partial genre resource that frames Leigh’s intervention. Families approximate the body politic through their predetermined assignment of roles and relations. A family unit can be thought of as functioning like an extremely condensed microcosm for a larger social body. Dramatizing the struggles of related but irreconcilably differing people suggests a manageable means of projecting, and projecting onto, the social landscape. An even more appropriate antecedent tendency, fully functional by the late 1940s, is the ‘state-of-the-nation’ film. John Hill sees this sort of movie as thriving

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in the 1980s, as initially related ‘to a longstanding tradition of socially critical cinema in Britain’.32 For Landy, this tendency is best related through comedies, especially ones with carnivalesque qualities that materially relate the populace to sites of dominance and contestation. Of the Ealing comedies of the 1940s and 1950s, as well as the comedies of Sidney Gilliat and Frank Laudner, she writes ‘they focus on dominant social institutions – the public school, the world of commerce and industry, political parties – and turn them on their head. In these narratives, the complacency of the status quo and the rigidity of social structures is threatened by eruptions of physical and psychic energy’.33 State-ofthe-nation comedies focus on the functional use of institutions, inclusive of nebulous formations such as church, family and the Welfare State. They almost implicitly ask: ‘given the demands of a precise historical conjuncture, who does an institution serve? Does it do so effectively? How might it be improved?’ As an historical phenomenon unto itself, the profusion of state-of-the-nation films seems to be linked to precise moments of national self-definition (or, to abuse a thoroughly shopworn word, ‘crisis’). That is, an Ealing Comedy such as Passport to Pimlico (1949) – in which an explosion of a live piece of World War II ordinance reveals documents that connect a group of London residents to Burgundy, causing them to declare independence from Great Britain  – relates to problems of national sovereignty in the immediate post-war world. It rehearses a national crisis on a localized level as a means of organizing a large set of sociopolitical concerns into a resonant (and quite funny) narrative. Or, in the case of the little-seen The Sandwich Man (1966: an episodic narrative chronicling a day in the life of a London man who wears a sandwich board advertisement), a traditionally working-class man is put into contact with representative (recognizably caricatured) individuals from a range of social types. The film visualizes, in an undisciplined and comically picaresque way, the contested social attitudes of a nation whose longstanding sense of class immobility are beginning to show nominal cracks.34 These films mainly work with ensemble casts (anchored by privileged subjectivities, such as a provisional main character), explicitly tie ideological observations to the individualized demands of favoured characters (characters who continue to function as ‘types’ as much as nuanced and unique people) and foreground the concerns of specific geographical or regional areas to questions of national importance. For John Hill, the 1980s cycle of state-of-the-nation films cannot totally be tied together through a particular aesthetic modality such as realism, spectacle or ‘grit’. Rather, state-of-the-nation films offer a shared set of ideological concerns

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that are critical of Thatcherism. These films, which range from the comedic to the deadly serious, all use an approximate form of ‘national allegory’ in presenting their concerns.35 Thus, Lindsay Anderson’s Britannia Hospital (1982)  – which revives the trope of eighteenth-century caricature that uses doctors and medical imagery as a kind of diagnostic corrective to a sick and broken system – distills an entire generation of social unrest and political malfeasance into one tense day at a hospital.36 Anderson and writer David Sherwin consider a wide range of social groups and iconic types – striking hospital workers, Tory geriatrics, anti-colonial protestors, fascist riot police and mad scientists  – in relation to Thatcherite policy. For them, points that have been singled out for criticism by commentators such as Hall receive particular scrutiny: the inequalities engendered through corporate privatization, the paradoxical reliance on nostalgic modes of history as tied to contemporary moral issues (in the film, the hysteria over the visit of the Queen Mum) and the breakdown in effectiveness of the ‘old Left’. Further, for Chris Lippard and Guy Johnson, ‘Anderson’s hospital functions as a clear allegory for a sick, deluded country, one strangled by a useless monarchy, and cruel and insensitive Prime Minister and a work-shy labour force.’37 Anderson’s curiously dystopian Britain, despite its grounding in recognizably contemporary world events, offers no concrete alternatives, liberating practices or solutions. This may have as much to do with the film’s complicity to the moral panics associated with the conservative media agenda of the late 1970s as it does with the unpopularity of Anderson’s dwindling inhabitation of leftist politics.38 In John Hill’s words, ‘the film, and its portrait of a social world more redolent of the 1970s than the 1980s, appears to give voice to a number of the discontents to which Thatcherism had already begun to offer its own solutions’.39 Anderson and Sherwin use their allegorical vehicle to draw attention to problems, but their inability to offer a productive way beyond their anger limits the direct social relevance of their vision. One artist whose work mutated in ways parallel to Leigh’s was Alan Bleasdale, who had achieved critical renown with his writing of the television series Boys from the Blackstuff (1982). A dramatic series about the unemployed and dispossessed of Liverpool enduring the worst of Thatcherite policy, it prefigured Leigh’s move from recognizable realism to something more exaggerated.40 In positioning its importance for the allegorical and quasi-fantastic 1980s state-ofthe-nation films on the whole, Hill writes ‘an influence upon British realism of the 1980s, in this respect, was the BBC’s television serial Boys from the Blackstuff which, while clearly within a tradition of British social realism, displayed a certain

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readiness to go beyond its conventions and make use of a degree of stylization and fantasy’.41 In this vein, Bleasdale wrote his debut feature No Surrender to further investigate the plight of Liverpool in the 1980s, yet did so through an explicitly condensed allegorical framework. A state-of-the-nation comedy that borrows liberally from gangster movies and that long tradition of films about the dispossessed working classes, Bleasdale’s story is about the double booking of the seedy Charleston Club on New Year’s Eve. Two groups of Irish old age pensioners – one sympathetic to Republicanism, the other stalwart Orangists – confront one another amidst terrible entertainment (a post-apocalyptic punk band, a lousy magician played by Elvis Costello) and a ‘fancy dress’ costume party. That the club is also visited by its third group consisting of a number of infirm or special needs men and women whose bus breaks down en route and is that night harbouring a fugitive terrorist from Ulster only adds to the pandemonium. Thus, a host of social panics come to be symbolically and literally rehearsed during that one ill-fated New Year’s celebration. No Surrender posits the Club as a kind of institutional framework through which these resolutely opposed binaries – rich versus poor, entrepreneurial/enterprising versus governmentally dependent, Irish Protestant versus Irish Catholic, old versus young, criminal versus legal – can be worked through (recall: a kind of magical unmasking of marginal positions in relation to the remote, Thatcherite parent culture).42 The film’s grotesque figurations of excessive drinking, sloppy fighting and the homologous relationship between old age and urban decay play directly in the movies’ social urgency. While No Surrender ultimately urges a form of forgiveness and familial reconciliation as opposed to revolutionary coming-to-consciousness, it does so as a counter-hegemonic strategy for weathering a grim situation. With his second feature film, Mike Leigh makes a similar move to Bleasdale’s: his small screen alliance to some form-or-other of social realism is recast to best accommodate the hegemonic aspirations of Thatcherism. A bare realism predicated on verisimilitude and its attenuate host of documentary/cinéma vérité tropes might be able to re-present the grimy inequalities of life, but it might not be equipped to do anything about them. Thus, understanding High Hopes as a state-of-the-nation film (curiously, a move that John Hill does not make despite his productive use of the term) in which the institution of the family becomes a site of resistance, a locus of definitional power and a figure of aspiration (‘hope’) helps break it away from any moribund associations with uncritical realism, or any unproductive rehearsal of auteurist purity. In general terms, High Hopes responds to what Ewa Mazierska and Laura Rascardi have identified as ‘the

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deep social polarization of London’ that took place throughout the 1980s.43 The conflict is played out through the gentrification of Mrs Bender’s street, whose habitus now better reflects the yuppie lifestyle of the Booth-Braine couple than the ancestral terrain of the urban working class (Figure 15.1). As a critical project about history and national identity, British Cultural Studies is uniquely positioned to make sense of High Hope’s characterizations and struggles. Given the historical outmodedness of the Old Left throughout the 1970s, British Cultural Studies developed a critical vocabulary that had to deal with a protracted ‘war of position’ against an even-more entrenched form of global capitalism. According to Stuart Hall, it learned to cope with such painful things as failure and the tendency for the neo-liberal political agenda to articulate itself through an incorporation of disparate elements.44 Hall’s brand of Cultural Studies married traditional Marxist analysis with a flexible understanding of ideological significations. During the 1980s, he wrote about Thatcher and Thatcherism with a rare understanding. Throughout his career, Hall appeared more content to write about contemporary social and political events than to harness his polemic gift in service of textual analysis. His guttural instinct for semiotic analysis  – such as his essays on the meanings of Thatcherism in The Hard Road to Renewal – illustrate a brand of deft analysis, precision and methodological novelty missing from less theoretical considerations of the period. However, without citing Hall specifically, Ray Carney has lambasted attempts to marry Cultural Studies to

Figure 15.1  Cyril’s mother, Mrs Bender (Edna Doré) is looking for her son and Shirley in High Hopes (1988)

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the films of Mike Leigh. In his analysis of Meantime, Carney offers that Leigh’s characterizations are too fluid, ‘multivalent and changeable’ and natural to be subsumed to Cultural Studies’ penchant for labels.45 However, the bibliography to Carney’s book reveals that this defence of Leigh against the perceived threat of Cultural Studies is something of a phantasm: he cites no Cultural Studies scholarship, nor does he directly engage with any of the key thinkers in the discipline.46 While it is true that the specialty vocabulary of British Cultural Studies is cursed by the sweeping theoretical abstraction characteristic of difficult (Carney might say obtuse) Marxist thought, it does offer a remarkably useful set of tools for corresponding Leigh’s organic narrative and its characters to a more allegorical reading of the legacy of Thatcherism. While Carney’s method may be to read characters in their wholeness and presumed psychological depth, their schematic side likewise reveals much about Leigh’s social relevance. This cultural studies vocabulary unlocks a great deal about the critical project of High Hopes. Each of the three couples – Cyril and Shirley, Martin and Valerie and Laetitia and Rupert  – is recognizable as a symbolic dyad with a different investment in this ascendant form of the Thatcherite agenda. As nearly every commentator on the film has pointed out, the more contemptible the character, the less three-dimensional they appear. Thus, Laetitia and Rupert affect hilarious accents of heightened ‘received pronunciation’ and wear clothes whose primary signification is ‘wealth’.47 Valerie, a working-class women whose husband Martin has provided enough money for a caricatured version of class mobility – upward movement through conspicuous consumption  – comes across as vulgar and hysterical. She constantly seeks the approval of Laetitia and Rupert in that they currently inhabit the economic terrain (with associated cultural capital) that she desires. Martin, who has a mistress and who compulsively drinks as a coping mechanism for his dire marriage, embodies working class attitudes about entrepreneurial success combined with the Thatcherite mentality of profit through portfolio diversification. By contrast, protagonist couple Cyril and Shirley both have blue collar jobs (of a service, and not manufacture, nature) and are allowed a spontaneous sense of humour. Their easy-going lifestyle and comfort in their relationship reads as a ‘good’ embodiment of family values. Sympathetic Mrs Bender, who seems to endure most person-on-person encounters with a stupefied gaze, is figuratively tied to the traditional working-class mother as proudly related in Richard Hoggart’s The Uses of Literacy: her home is punctuated by hearth and knitting, and the only space in which she appears to have any comfort is in the

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curiously unchanged atmosphere of her longtime residence.48 Suzi’s fashion accoutrements – leather jacket, casually assembled accessories and jewellery – are associated with the punk and post-punk sensibilities which correlates to her nihilism and somewhat underdeveloped Left-anarchism.49 The quiet, timid and thoroughly confused Wayne, a recent arrival from the North who sees London as a prime place for employment, germinates a relation to Great Britain’s capitol that can be read as parallel to the London/regions gap that was further exacerbated by Thatcher’s policies. Wayne regards London with almost comic incomprehension. The city’s prestige, opportunities and standing as a metropolis of international renown practically blind him. The bittersweet scene in which he is sent back home on a bus after several days of baffled wandering further enforces the lopsided impenetrability of London: it is a city whose ability to offer work and personal wealth are not open to all. But Stuart Hall’s movement to ‘articulation’ as a mode of analysis in the 1980s adds further layers to this rather stereotyped reading of Leigh’s film. As developed through the thought of Louis Althusser, Antonio Gramsci, and, most importantly Ernesto Laclau, ‘articulation’ is a kind of short-circuiting of reductionist cultural analysis. Jennifer Daryl Slack has usefully noted that ‘in the concept of articulation, Laclau brings into focus a non-reductionist view of class, the assertion of no-necessary correspondence among practices and the elements of ideology, the critique of common sense of contradictory ideological structures, and a commitment to analysing hegemony as process of articulating practices of discourse’.50 In Hall’s turn to articulation, we get rid of easily reducible correspondences between economic status, class and cultural life. This goes back to a long-standing problem in the discourse of British Cultural Studies over the centrality of economic determination in assigning cultural correspondences: are the cultural opportunities possible to working-class subjects determined – rather like a base/superstructure formation from orthodox Marxism – solely by their economic means, or is there something like a ‘relative autonomy of the cultural sphere’ that is separate from a material groundwork?51 With articulation, Hall and other Cultural Studies practitioners can look at the precise allegiances mobilized in a protracted war of position. Thus, we cease to read the Booth-Braines as a wholly at-ease and triumphant cypher for yuppiedom and Thatcher’s favoured model of bourgeois capitalism.52 While Thatcherism unceremoniously did away with the rituals and values of the aristocracy, the newly ascendant entrepreneurial middle class kept many of its mythologies alive.53 Laetitia and Rupert vulgarly affect a form of cultural upward

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mobility just as much as Valerie. To begin with, their hyphenated surname suggests inflated social standing. As neither seem especially progressive in their politics, the assumption is that both felt that their family names were worth preserving, as if they came from the great ancestral families of legend. When we are first introduced to the Booth-Braines, they return to their home having just been on a vacation in the country: as evidenced by his gun bag and form of dress, Rupert has obviously just gone on a hunt, a previously rarefied form of leisure reserved for an aristocracy with sufficient land and staff to enable such an involved ritual. Later in the film, Rupert and Valerie attend an opera, a musical form whose complex cultural literacies and divisive mode of storytelling are at odds with traditional bourgeois values. In his massive study of class and taste, the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu writes that, ‘the opera or exhibitions are [. . .] the occasion or pretext for social ceremonies enabling a select audience to demonstrate and experience its membership of high society in obedience to the integrating and distinguishing rhythms of the ‘society’ calendar’.54 What Bourdieu stresses in his study, a trait that we can read as also present in some forms of British Cultural Studies analysis, is the degree to which economic status, class and culture do determine taste. What Leigh’s film (and Hall’s theory of articulation) show is that there is ‘no necessary class belongingness’ related to these tastes and traits.55 As the new ruling class, the Booth-Braines advantageously inhabit a position pioneered by the old ruling bloc. In doing so, they fortify their symbolic capital. Leigh’s decision to present them in a caricatured way accentuates these choices: Rupert’s blatant indifference to opera reveals their interest in it to be a mere tactical ploy. He dons his hunting accoutrements not out of function, but almost like a Halloween costume. But the disarticulation of class traits can backfire. In Valerie’s case, she has disarticulated ‘conspicuous consumption’ from the professional-managerial middle classes and integrated it into her daily life (note her constant references to shopping, her gaudy dress sense and the state of her home). In her case, this is revealed to be a false means of cultural and social success. The most telling sequences are those in which Valerie attempts to impress her party guests with the no-expense-spared spread of food and drink at Mrs Bender’s birthday party. Cyril and Shirley appear indifferent, even scornful, of this display of wealth. Mrs Bender herself is confused and seems to not care at all. Martin consumes out of boredom and duty, though does not appear to be enjoying it. A drunk Valerie eventually flees her own party finding solace in a bubble bath while nursing a bottle of champagne. Her ostentatious (and no doubt expensive) hat remains on her head.

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Cyril and Shirley, the film’s most dynamic characters, can also be read as tactically articulating certain traits that do not necessarily correspond to their working-class jobs. While their humour  – particularly in relation to their naming their cacti after ‘pain in the arse’ public figures, like Thatcher – can be read as a coping mechanism (what Jeff Nuttall and Rodick Carmichael see as the ‘survival humour’ of the working classes), it likewise represents the most astute and erudite means through which any of the characters in High Hopes assess the social reality of their world.56 Their discussions of politics, family and cultural history are populated by humourous moments. As Tony Whitehead notes, they ‘share’ jokes as a kind of barometer for the health of their relationship.57 Even during the film’s most reverential set piece – when Cyril takes Shirley to Karl Marx’s grave in Highgate Cemetery as a kind of nostalgic and rhapsodic eulogy for Old Left political sensibilities – Shirley is unafraid to use humour to cast a critical eye on the great man’s life and legacy. Despite their conventionally lowly social station, Cyril and Shirley have disarticulated tools for social analysis from a confidently ascendant ruling bloc: they are able to ‘read’ inequalities through their comedy and wit, which is not of a stereotypical Cockney kind. Rather, they can be understood as approximating the Gramscian ideal of the ‘organic intellectual’.58 Despite their conventional class ties, they act as an outsider critical voice. Their apartment is full of books and posters for political advocacy. At one point, Cyril rolls a joint atop the book Lenin for Beginners. They give advice to Suzi, the young, frustrated punk who initially seems to regard them as gurus. Cyril and Shirley are quick to point out the flaws, assumptions and moribund beliefs of each of the other characters (Figure 15.2). In his final assessment of High Hopes, John Hill criticizes Leigh for resorting to ‘familialism’ (Cyril and Shirley eventually decide to have a child) instead of any critical/collective solution for combating Thatcherism: ‘in celebrating the virtues of the privatized family as a kind of escape route from political impotence and passivity, the film, for all its apparent “socialism,” appears to end up reinforcing the very skepticism about more collective (or “socialist”) forms of political action that was already such a feature of the era’.59 There is no denying the bleak irreconcilability that the film exposes between socialism and Thatcherite neo-liberalism. But perhaps this retreat into the family, however unsatisfactory, is the kind of ‘magical’ solution that Phil Cohen reads as characterizing the coping mechanisms between the marginalized and the dominant culture. Stuart Hall’s work in Cultural Studies – particularly his engagement with the various hegemonic strata

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Figure 15.2  Cyril Bender (Phil Davis) and Shirley (Ruth Sheen) admire the gravesite of Karl Marx in High Hopes (1988)

of Thatcherism, as well as his embrace of articulation as a means of sociopolitical analysis – at least adds nuance to an historical conjuncture at which leftists (like Mike Leigh, and his creations Cyril and Shirley) needed to think about their relation to the ruling bloc, and not just in an imaginary relation.

Notes The author would like to thank Jane Feuer for her initial comments on this essay. 1 Phil Cohen, ‘Subcultural Conflict and Working Class Community’, Culture, Language, Media, ed. Stuart Hall et al. London: Routledge, 2006 [1980], 82. 2 Ibid., 83. 3 For a distilled version of Stuart Hall’s ‘turn to Gramsci’, see Graeme Turner, British Cultural Studies: An Introduction, 3rd edn. London: Routledge, 2003, 172–5; Stuart Hall (with Bill Schwarz), ‘State and Society, 1880–1930’, in The Hard Road to Renewal: Thatcherism and the Crisis of the Left, ed. Stuart Hall. London: Verso, 1988c, 100. 4 In particular, I am thinking of Todd Berliner’s use of research in humour to understand how viewers accept the incongruities and incoherent moments of films. See Todd Berliner, Hollywood Incoherent: Narration in Seventies Cinema. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2010, 30–1.

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5 Jim Leach, British Film. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004, 59. 6 For a discussion of the issue of abortion in 1950s Britain, see David Kynaston, Family Britain: 1951–1957. London: Bloomsbury, 2009, 564–5. Kynaston cites testimony to the fact that many midwives who provided abortion services did so as a means of making money rather than as a moral imperative. 7 Edward Trostle Jones, All or Nothing: The Cinema of Mike Leigh. New York: Peter Lang, 2004, 7. 8 Andy Medhurst, A National Joke: Popular Comedy and English Cultural Identities. London: Routledge, 2007, 167–9. 9 Ibid., 167–8. 10 In broad terms, this moment can be understood in relation to the weakening or abolishing of regional or local governmental bodies (e.g. the liquidation of the Greater London Council in 1986) combined with an aggressive, widespread policy of privatization. See Nirmala Rao, ‘Local Government’, in Britain since 1945, ed. Jonathan Hollowell. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2003, 198; Stephen Broadberry, ‘Economic Policy’, in Britain since 1945, 396. For another general reading of High Hopes in relation to Thatcherism, see Miguel Mota, ‘Mike Leigh’s High Hopes: Troubling Home in Thatcher’s Britain’, Film Criticism 32:3 (2008): 1–17. 11 Lester Friedman, ‘Preface to the First Edition’, Fires Were Started: British Cinema and Thatcherism, 2nd edn. New York: Wallflower Press, 2006, xii. 12 Stuart Hall, ‘Introduction: Thatcherism and the Crisis of the Left’, in The Hard Road to Renewal, 2. 13 Stuart Hall, ‘Popular-Democratic vs Authoritarian Populism: Two Ways of “Taking Democracy Seriously”’, in The Hard Road to Renewal, 133, 138–9. 14 Ibid., 139. 15 Ibid., 141. 16 For a discussion of the ‘heritage’ phenomenon as relates to art, design and preservationist bodies such as the increasingly prominent role of the National Trust, see Robert Hewison, The Heritage Industry. London: Methuen, 1987. For a thorough discussion of this cultural form in film and television – which, it should be noted, is not always/wholly in service of a Thatcherite, or even conservative, agenda – see Andrew Higson, English Heritage, English Cinema: Costume Drama since 1980. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. 17 Hall, ‘Popular-Democratic’, 141. 18 Hall, ‘Gramsci and Us’, 163. 19 Ibid., 164. 20 Sigmund Freud, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, trans. James Strachey. New York: Norton, 1960, 249. 21 Ibid., 248.

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22 My usage of ‘grotesque’ – a moniker reserved for sublimely ruinous, monstrous or destructive figures – derives from Ralf E. Remshardt, Staging the Grotesque God: The Grotesque in Performance. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2004, 4–5. 23 In particular, consult Roy Porter, Bodies Politic: Disease, Death, and Doctors in Britain, 1660–1990. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001. Porter’s book relates this impulse towards caricature to the rise in the medical profession. Rowlandson and others made images that explored quackery, issues of access and charges of profiteering. 24 Hugh Herbert, ‘The Private Hopes of a Prophet of Gloom’, in Mike Leigh: Interviews, ed. Howie Movshovitz. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2000, 9–10. 25 Judy Stone, ‘Mike Leigh’, in Mike Leigh: Interviews, 26. 26 John Hill, British Cinema in the 1980s. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999, 135; John Corner, ‘Presumption as Theory: “Realism” in Television Studies’, Screen 33:1 (Spring 1992): 98. Accessed via Oxford Journals – NERL, 30 July 2012. 27 Tony Whitehead, Mike Leigh, British Film Makers. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2007, 8. 28 Samantha Lay, British Social Realism: From Documentary to Brit Grit, Short Cuts. London: Wallflower Press, 2002, 84. 29 Marcia Landy, British Genres: Cinema and Society, 1930–1960. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991, 381. 30 Ibid., 381–4. 31 Ibid., 381. 32 Hill, 134. 33 Landy, 333. 34 For a rather counter-intuitive assessment of the continued status of class recognition during this historical period, see Dominick Sandbrook, Never Had it So Good: A History of Britain from Suez to the Beatles, 1956–1963. London: Abacus, 2005; and Dominick Sandbrook, White Heat: A History of Britain in the Swinging Sixties, 1964–1970. London: Abacus, 2007. 35 Hill, 136–7. 36 Porter, 19. 37 Chris Lippard and Guy Johnson, ‘Private Practice, Public Health’, in Fires Were Started, 303. 38 In Britannia Hospital, unions, immigrants and colonial subjects become targets of a whole set of anxieties dealing with the desired stability of the nation. For a long analysis of how such moral panics function and work to redefine the parameters of crime, see Stuart Hall et al. eds, Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State, and Law and Order. London: Macmillan, 1978.

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39 Hill, 141. 40 David Monaghan, ‘Margaret Thatcher, Alan Bleasdale, and the Struggle for Working-Class Identity’, Journal of Popular Film and Television 29:1 (2001): 2–13. Print. Thatcher’s policy of unmaking civic governance bodies (via the Local Government Act of 1985) is illustrative of her regime’s view that a centralized ruling body, located in London, could effectively make decisions of regional necessity. On the gradual decline of Liverpool, see Chris Couch, City of Change and Challenge: Urban Planning and Regeneration in Liverpool. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003, 20. 41 Hill, 135. 42 Cohen, 82–3. 43 Ewa Mazierska and Laura Rascardi, From Moscow to Madrid: Postmodern Cities, European Cinema. London: I.B. Tauris, 2003, 167. 44 See Colin Maccabe, ‘An Interview with Stuart Hall, December 2007’, Critical Quarterly 50:1–2 (2008): 26. Accessed via Wiley Online Library, 30 July 2012. Note that incorporation can also be understood as empowering, such as the tendency within youth subcultures to claim (via bricolage) a variety of visual items in the construction of a distinctive style. See Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London: Routledge, 1987 [1979], 102–6. 45 Ray Carney (with Leonard Quart), The Films of Mike Leigh: Embracing the World. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000, 177. 46 Carney, 283–5. 47 David Sterritt, ‘Low Hopes: Mike Leigh Meets Margaret Thatcher’, in Fires Were Started, 321–2. 48 Richard Hoggart, The Uses of Literacy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1970 [1957], 32–47. 49 Hebdige, 62–70. 50 Jennifer Daryl Slack, ‘The Theory and Method of Articulation’, in Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, ed. David Morley and Kuan-Hsing Chen. London: Routledge, 1996, 120. 51 Turner, 51–4. 52 For a discussion on the discourse around yuppies and the professional-managerial class of post-war elites, see ‘The Yuppie Spectator’ chapter in Jane Feuer, Seeing Through the Eighties: Television and Reaganism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995, 43–59. 53 David Cannadine, The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990, 638. 54 Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, trans. Richard Nice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984, 272.

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55 John Fiske, ‘Opening the Hallway: Some Remarks on the Fertility of Stuart Hall’s Contribution to Critical Theory’, in Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, 216. 56 Jeff Nuttall and Rodick Carmichael, Common Factors/Vulgar Factions. London: Routledge, 1977, 5. 57 Whitehead, 63. 58 Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. and trans. Quentin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith. New York: International Publishers, 1975, 3–23. 59 Hill, 198.

Works cited Berliner, Todd. Hollywood Incoherent: Narration in Seventies Cinema. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2010, 30–1. Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, trans. Richard Nice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984, 272. Cannadine, David. The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990, 638. Carney, Ray (with Leonard Quart). The Films of Mike Leigh: Embracing the World. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000, 177. Cohen, Phil. ‘Subcultural Conflict and Working Class Community’, in Culture, Language, Media, ed. Stuart Hall et al. London: Routledge, 2006 [1980], 82. Corner, John. ‘Presumption as Theory: “Realism” in Television Studies’, Screen 33:1 (Spring 1992): 98. Accessed via Oxford Journals – NERL, 30 July 2012. Couch, Chris. City of Change and Challenge: Urban Planning and Regeneration in Liverpool. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003, 20. Feuer, Jane. Seeing Through the Eighties: Television and Reaganism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995, 43–59. Fiske, John. ‘Opening the Hallway: Some Remarks on the Fertility of Stuart Hall’s Contribution to Critical Theory’, in Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, ed. David Morley and Kuan-Hsing Chen. London: Routledge, 1996: 216. Freud, Sigmund. Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, trans. James Strachey. New York: Norton, 1960, 249. Friedman, Lester. ‘Preface to the First Edition’, Fires Were Started: British Cinema and Thatcherism, 2nd edn. New York: Wallflower Press, 2006, xii. Gramsci, Antonio. Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. and trans. Quentin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith. New York: International Publishers, 1975, 3–23. Hall, Stuart. Policing the Crisis. London: Macmillan, 1978.

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— . ‘Introduction’, in The Hard Road to Renewal: Thatcherism and the Crisis of the Left, ed. Stuart Hall. London: Verso, 1988a, 2. — . ‘Popular-Democratic vs Authoritarian Populism: Two Ways of “Taking Democracy Seriously”’, in The Hard Road to Renewal: Thatcherism and the Crisis of the Left, ed. Stuart Hall. London: Verso, 1988b, 133, 138–9. — (with Bill Schwarz). ‘State and Society, 1880–1930’, in The Hard Road to Renewal: Thatcherism and the Crisis of the Left, ed. Stuart Hall. London: Verso, 1988c, 100. Hebdige, Dick. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London: Routledge, 1987 [1979], 102–6. Herbert, Hugh. ‘The Private Hopes of a Prophet of Gloom’, in Mike Leigh: Interviews, ed. Howie Movshovitz. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2000, 9–10. Hewison, Robert. The Heritage Industry. London: Methuen, 1987. Higson, Andrew. English Heritage, English Cinema: Costume Drama since 1980. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Hill, John. British Cinema in the 1980s. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999, 135. Hoggart, Richard. The Uses of Literacy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1970 [1957], 32–47. Jones, Edward Trostle. All or Nothing: The Cinema of Mike Leigh. New York: Peter Lang, 2004, 7. Kynaston, David. Family Britain: 1951–1957. London: Bloomsbury, 2009, 564–5. Landy, Marcia. British Genres: Cinema and Society, 1930–1960. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991, 381. Lay, Samantha. British Social Realism: From Documentary to Brit Grit, Short Cuts. London: Wallflower Press, 2002, 84. Leach, Jim. British Film. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004, 59. Lippard, Chris and Guy Johnson, ‘Private Practice, Public Health’, in Fires Were Started: British Cinema and Thatcherism, 2nd edn, ed. Lester Friedman. New York: Wallflower Press, 2006, 303. Maccabe, Colin, ‘An Interview with Stuart Hall, December 2007’, Critical Quarterly 50:1–2 (2008): 26. Accessed via Wiley Online Library, 30 July 2012. Mazierska, Ewa and Laura Rascardi. From Moscow to Madrid: Postmodern Cities, European Cinema. London: I.B. Tauris, 2003, 167. Medhurst, Andy. A National Joke: Popular Comedy and English Cultural Identities. London: Routledge, 2007, 167–9. Monaghan, David. ‘Margaret Thatcher, Alan Bleasdale, and the Struggle for Working-Class Identity’, Journal of Popular Film and Television 29:1 (2001): 2–13. Print. Mota, Miguel. ‘Mike Leigh’s High Hopes: Troubling Home in Thatcher’s Britain’, Film Criticism 32:3 (2008): 1–17. Nuttall, Jeff and Rodick Carmichael. Common Factors/Vulgar Factions. London: Routledge, 1977, 5. Porter, Roy. Bodies Politic: Disease, Death, and Doctors in Britain, 1660–1990. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001.

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Remshardt, Ralf E. Staging the Grotesque God: The Grotesque in Performance. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2004, 4–5. Sandbrook, Dominick. Never Had it So Good: A History of Britain from Suez to the Beatles, 1956–1963. London: Abacus, 2005. — . White Heat: A History of Britain in the Swinging Sixties, 1964–1970. London: Abacus, 2007. Slack, Jennifer Daryl. ‘The Theory and Method of Articulation’, in Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, ed. David Morley and Kuan-Hsing Chen. London: Routledge, 1996, 120. Sterritt, David. ‘Low Hopes: Mike Leigh Meets Margaret Thatcher’, in Fires Were Started: British Cinema and Thatcherism, 2nd edn, ed. Lester Friedman. New York: Wallflower Press, 2006, 321–2. Stone, Judy. ‘Mike Leigh’, in Mike Leigh: Interviews, ed. Howie Movshovitz. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2000, 26. Turner, Graeme. British Cultural Studies: An Introduction, 3rd edn. London: Routledge, 2003, 172–5. Whitehead, Tony. Mike Leigh, British Film Makers. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2007, 8.

16

‘I Spy’: Mike Leigh in the Age of Britpop (A Critical Memoir) David Sweeney

During the Britpop era of the 1990s, the name of Mike Leigh was invoked regularly both by musicians and the journalists who wrote about them. To compare a band or a record to Mike Leigh was to use a form of cultural shorthand that established a shared aesthetic between musician and film-maker. Often this aesthetic similarity went undiscussed beyond a vague acknowledgement that both parties were interested in ‘real life’ rather than the escapist fantasies usually associated with popular entertainment. This focus on ‘real life’ involved exposing the ugly truth of British existence concealed behind drawing room curtains and beneath prim good manners, its ‘secrets and lies’ as Leigh would later title one of his films. I know this because I was there. Here’s how I remember it all.

Jarvis Cocker and Abigail’s Party To achieve this exposure, both Leigh and the Britpop bands he influenced used a form of ‘real world’ observation that some critics found intrusive to the extent of voyeurism, particularly when their gaze was directed, as it so often was, at the working class. Jarvis Cocker, lead singer and lyricist of the band Pulp  – exemplars, along with Suede and Blur, of Leigh-esque Britpop – described the band’s biggest hit and one of the definitive Britpop songs, ‘Common People’, as dealing with ‘a certain voyeurism on the part of the middle classes, a certain romanticism of working-class culture and a desire to slum it a bit’. As has been well documented, ‘Common People’ was inspired by an encounter Cocker had with a wealthy Greek art student who expressed a fascination for what she perceived as the ‘authenticity’ of working-class life but which he considered to

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be ‘slumming’; however Cocker also found inspiration in ‘a recent proliferation of Mike Leigh video box sets’ which suggested that ‘the song’s sentiments might have a wider resonance.’1 Cocker is a self-confessed voyeur: ‘I like to watch’, he intones over footage of his native Sheffield in the opening sequence of John Dower’s 2003 documentary Live Forever: The Rise and Fall of Britpop, and one of Pulp’s best songs is entitled ‘I Spy’. This song recalls Abigail’s Party (1977) probably Leigh’s best-known work (particularly in the United Kingdom where it is considered to be a modern classic). In the film a suburban couple, Lawrence and Bev, invite their neighbours over for drinks on the same night their teenage daughter, the eponymous Abigail, is having her birthday party in another house nearby. Lawrence is a successful but over-stressed estate agent who has pretensions towards being cultured, as evidenced by his leather-bound collection of the complete works of Shakespeare, which he proudly displays to the guests but also admits he hasn’t read, and his professed passion for classical music and fine art. Lawrence’s tastes clash with those of his wife, a former beautician who prefers popular music and art, particularly if it has an erotic dimension. Bev is a much more sensual being than Lawrence whose attention is focused on his job which, as he reminds her, is not ‘9 to 5’. It is easy to imagine her as the woman with whom Cocker’s narrator has an affair in ‘I Spy’ and Lawrence as the husband to whom the song is addressed. The narrator tells the husband to take him very seriously. He brags about drinking his booze, smoking his cigarettes, and having sex with ‘Bev’ for four months on the bed she and her husband picked out together. Indeed, the last line seems a conscious echo of Leigh’s film, in which Bev complains to their guests that she was not involved in selecting their car even though when they bought the house she and Lawrence chose the furniture together (Figure 16.1). ‘I Spy’ is not just about voyeurism or adultery, it also deals with a form of class warfare: Cocker sings that he wishes the husband would come home unexpectedly and catch them one afternoon in the living room. Revenge, he tells us, is his specialty as he takes what the husband loves most. This cuckolding is a skirmish in an endless class struggle, the conflict between the haves and have nots. Cocker has been protected from charges of the kind of cultural tourism he raises against the Greek student in ‘Common People’ partly by his ‘outsider’ status as proudly proclaimed in the song ‘Misshapes’, but also by his Northern working class background. The narrator of ‘I Spy’ may claim to have been ‘dragged up’ but in Live Forever Cocker’s mother points out that the singer enjoyed a ‘privileged’ childhood in a bohemian household, an upbringing, she

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Figure 16.1  Beverly (Alison Steadman) dances with her neighbour Tony (John Salthouse) in Abigail’s Party (1977)

says, he likes to pretend didn’t actually take place. And indeed, the fame that the success of ‘Common People’ and the subsequent Pulp album Different Class (1995) brought Cocker severely impaired his ability to write. Made highly visible by his new celebrity, Cocker was no longer able to lurk in the margins, observing and taking notes on the sordid behaviour of others. As a result, on Pulp’s next album, This Is Hardcore (1998), Cocker turned his gaze inward to focus on that most audience-alienating of pop music topics, the unpleasantness of fame. With This Is Hardcore Cocker made his new fans into voyeurs of his own mental and spiritual collapse; unsurprisingly, it sold a fraction of the amount of A Different Class and effectively ended Pulp’s career as bona fide, charting pop stars. Nevertheless, history has shown that Cocker was correct in his diagnosis of the revival of interest in Leigh’s work in the early 1990s: Britpop was very much about looking at Britain, its people and their pursuits – and, just as importantly, being looked at. Certainly, I remember Britpop as a visual phenomenon as much as a musical movement: Britain changed visibly, most obviously in the clothes young people started to wear. And this ‘new’ style involved looking back, most obviously to the ‘Swinging ’60s’ which functioned as Britpop’s main stylistic source. However, the 1960s were not the only source. Even before the Britpop

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explosion, Pulp, along with Suede and, to a lesser extent St Etienne and Denim, had been grouped together by the British music press as part of a Seventies revival, apparent as much in the clothes they wore – satin, corduroy, nylon and other man-made fabrics typical of that decade’s fashions (Pulp even had a song titled ‘Acrylic Afternoons’) – as in the music they made. And in the video for ‘Girls and Boys’ Blur drew on the styles of 1980s football ‘casuals’ (particularly singer Damon Albarn in his Sergio Tacchini tracksuit top). Musicians, and their fans, looked back not only to the clothes worn by earlier bands and singers, but also to the films and television programmes of the previous three decades. And this, I will now argue, was another key role Leigh’s oeuvre served for Britpop: as a reservoir of signs and images, iconography and style.

Graham Coxon and Meantime Colin in Leigh’s TV film Meantime (1983, played by Tim Roth), with his heavy rimmed glasses, short, tufty hair and drab, scruffy clothes may seem an unlikely source on which to base one’s dress sense, but his resemblance to one of the major style icons of Britpop, Blur guitarist Graham Coxon, is striking. And the resemblance is not only sartorial: Colin’s shy, introverted, socially awkward personality, which contrasts sharply with that of his caustic tongued and verbally aggressive brother, Mark (as played by Phil Daniels who would himself become a Britpop icon for his contribution to the Blur hit ‘Parklife’ and performance in its promotional video2), recalls Coxon’s own, in music critic Garry Mulholland’s phrase, ‘childlike public image’ (which may or may not be a contrived persona: as Mulholand as remarked, ‘I’ve interviewed [Coxon] and frankly have no idea whether he’s putting us on’3) and his relationship with Damon Albarn, Blur’s much more gregarious and outspoken (particularly in the band’s Britpop heyday) singer. However, Coxon’s resemblance to/imitation of Colin is less surprising if we place the guitarist’s appearance and demeanour in the context of the British ‘Indie’ music scene from which Blur emerged (even though their nominally independent record label, Food, operated in partnership with EMI, eventually being fully acquired by the major label in 1994, the year Blur released their breakthrough album, the Britpop classic Parklife). As Simon Reynolds has convincingly argued, Indie music in the 1980s fetishised childhood imagery and clothing as a response to, and a form of protest against, the contemporary ‘body

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culture’ of mainstream pop music with its emphasis on ‘a hypersexuality foreign to most Indie fans’ experience’4. Reynolds writes: An idea of innocence pervades and possesses the scene. A huge proportion Indie groups have pictures of children or childish things on their record sleeves. You can see this innocence in the way fanzines privilege naïveté and enthusiasm and mess (and use graphics from old annuals and children’s books). A multitude of desires crystallise in the fantasy of being like a child again.5

In Coxon’s case, this is most evident in the video for Blur’s number one single, ‘Country House’ which features the glamour model Jo Guest, famous in the United Kingdom in the 1990s for her regular topless appearances in tabloid newspapers, and three other scantily clad young women being chased by a lecherous older man in a pastiche of the notoriously sexist comedian Benny Hill. In the face of all this bawdiness, Coxon appears sullen and removed, moodily strumming his guitar which he holds almost like a shield as if sulking over, and attempting to limit, his participation in events. Reynolds goes on to state that ‘style is where the Sixties and childhood converge’,6 which perfectly describes Coxon’s dress sense. A regular during the 1990s at 1960s themed London club night ‘Blowup’ (named after the 1966 Antonioni film, set in the ‘Swinging’ London that was the touchstone for 1990s ‘Cool Britannia’), Coxon’s wardrobe was the most obviously, and authentically, Mod influenced of the four members of Blur. However, his style also betrays the fetishism of childhood identified by Reynolds, as exemplified by his regular wearing, at the time, of a ‘snake belt’, a hole-less, elasticated strap with a snake-shaped clasp rather than a buckle, produced in brightly coloured stripes and intended as a kind of ‘training’ garment for children. As Reynolds observed, ‘[m]any [’80s] Indie fans adopt the kemptness and austerity of an “ordinary person” of the Fifties or Sixties’,7 which was certainly true of Coxon with his fondness for tweed jackets and fair-isle patterned pullovers, although he also had a tendency towards scruffiness which would have been unacceptable to either an ‘ordinary person’ of that era or to a Mod but which is perfectly consistent with Indie’s fetishism of childhood, children not being renowned for their sartorial neatness. Reynolds points out that the Indie aesthetic combines ‘overtly childish things’ with the ‘ordinary person’ look, listing ‘dufflecoats, birthday-boy shirts with the top button done up, outsize pullovers’ as essential items for a male fan’s wardrobe, and ‘bows and ribbons and ponytails, plimsolls and dainty white ankle socks, floral or polka-dot frocks’

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for Indie females.8 Having attended Blowup myself, and as a former regular at its Glasgow equivalent, Divine, I can confirm that this look was still very much in evidence in the early 1990s, with the Riot Grrrl band, and Blowup habitué, Huggy Bear, which included female and male members, sporting virtually all the items Reynolds lists with a clearly Mod-influenced style (Coxon dated their guitarist Jo Johnson; their relationship, which coincided with the release of ‘Country House’, may also partly explain Coxon’s demeanour in the video, Huggy Bear being militant feminists). The Indie look Reynolds describes changed in the late 1980s and early 1990s with the rise of ‘baggy’ bands like the Stone Roses, Happy Mondays and, slightly later, the first incarnation of Blur. These bands fused 1960s derived melodies with beats inspired by funk, hip hop and house music. A 1960s influence was also evident in their look, particularly the hairstyles of the Stone Roses (singer Ian Brown and guitarist John Squire had once been Mods) and Blur (particularly Coxon and Albarn), but Baggy’s wardrobe of oversized t-shirts, loose, often flared, jeans and Kangol hats owed more to American rappers and British soccer ‘casuals’. Baggy prepared the ground for Indie’s encounter with dance music, as exemplified by Primal Scream, previously paragons of Indie’s 1960s fetishism, and their acid house inspired album Screamadelica (1991). This record endorsed club culture for many Indie fans who started attending ‘raves’, taking Ecstasy, and, inspired by the band’s lead singer Bobby Gillespie’s own sartorial transformation from a black leather clad rocker into a luminous, E-addled ‘starchild’, started wearing clothes inspired by clubwear. White denim became particularly fashionable as did brightly coloured t-shirts. Many female Indie fans began to dress more glamorously, albeit by still drawing on influences from the 1960s and 1970s in their adoption of fake fur coats and hats, short gold and silver lamé skirts and dresses, hot-pants, go-go boots and artificial eyelashes. In terms of both visuality and mood, Indie’s ‘dance’ phase made the scene suddenly much brighter. When this phase gave way to grunge, ushered in by the massive and unexpected success of Nirvana’s album Nevermind (1991), with its sartorial repertoire of checked flannel shirts, faded blue jeans and trucker caps, Blur were largely dismissed by the Indie cognoscenti as baggy also-rans, or worse, opportunists lacking in ‘authenticity’ – a quality of metaphysical importance to Indie fans. As Mulholland has observed ‘the early Blur were only one step away from a manufactured band’ – who had jumped on the dance band-wagon with their singles ‘She’s So High’ and ‘There’s No Other Way’ and their, rather slight, debut album Leisure (1991). Although it sold less than its predecessor the band earned critical respect with

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their ‘British’ themed second album Modern Life Is Rubbish (1993), presaged by a London-referencing single, ‘For Tomorrow’, their Mod/Skinhead-influenced new image, and their tour of small provincial British towns. As Blur grew in credibility, the Coxon/Colin look began to manifest at Indie clubs with snake belts, ‘National Health’ glasses and parkas – of the kind worn by British schoolchildren in the 1970s and 1980s and by Colin in Meantime rather than the cooler Mod type sported by Phil Daniels in Quadrophenia and occasionally by Coxon himself – becoming desirable fashion items. As, indeed, did Mike Leigh films. I vividly remember attending Divine one evening shortly before the Britpop explosion that followed the success of Blur’s ‘Girls and Boys’ and Oasis’s ‘Supersonic’ and both bands’ appearances on the influential ‘youth TV’ programme, The Word, having watched Meantime for what must have been the sixth or seventh time with my then girlfriend and several of our friends and being momentarily thrown when I encountered a dead ringer for Colin who I almost knocked over on my way into the toilets. Not only did this fail creature look exactly like Roth’s character, he acted like him too, cowering back then skulking away with a hunted look behind his thick rimmed spectacles, mumbling apologetically as he went. As the club filled that night, I noticed at least another two similarly attired attendees. Of course, they may have been attempting an imitation of Coxon, but nevertheless it felt very much like Colin had taken on a new relevancy, had even become cool. And I remember too that the insults directed against Colin by Daniels’ character Mark – ‘dobbin’ and, particularly, ‘muppet’ – and Colin’s deadpan response, ‘Don’t call me that’, became catchphrases not only amongst my immediate group of friends but also by new acquaintances we made through attending Divine. It seemed that Meantime had become a (sub)cultural touchstone for this new phase of the Indie scene in the same way that 1960s films like A Taste of Honey or Saturday Night and Sunday Morning had in the 1980s.

Suede and Naked This may seem odd, as Meantime’s drab palette of greys and browns and its themes of long-term unemployment and, as a consequence, stultifying boredom is at odds with the ‘day-glo’ brightness of Britpop as exemplified by the videos for ‘Parklife’ or ‘Common People’. Indeed, Meantime appears to have more in common, thematically, with Nevermind, Kurt Cobain’s home-town of Aberdeen,Washington having experienced high levels of joblessness in the 1980s. However, Leigh’s film also speaks to the resurgence in an avowedly British

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aesthetic that emerged just before, and gave birth to, the Britpop explosion, from bands like Blur, Pulp (who, it is important to remember, had been active since 1978), the Auteurs and, particularly, Suede. The latter’s song ‘Animal Nitrate’, released in 1993, a year before Blur’s ‘Girls and Boys’, with its lyrical reference to a ‘council home’ and its video filmed on a London high rise housing estate similar to the setting for Meantime, seems particularly Leigh-esque. The band’s singer, Brett Anderson, would later remark that, at the beginning, Britpop had ‘the charm and intelligence of a Mike Leigh film’ but by 1996 ‘it had become a Carry On movie’.9 Like Cocker, Anderson came across as something of a voyeur, obsessed with the seedy and the seamy aspects of British life: sexual repression and perversion, suicidally bored housewives, hooliganism and vandalism. Sartorially, Suede’s image referenced the 1970s, particularly glam rock which was also a major influence on their sound, particularly the music of David Bowie, although they replaced glam’s gaudiness with a darker palette of blacks, browns and greys similar to that of Meantime (Anderson even wore a large parka similar to Colin’s) or to Leigh’s Naked, also released in 1993. The apocalyptic concerns of Naked are recalled in, and perhaps were an influence upon, Suede’s second album Dog Man Star (1994), which was a much bleaker affair and less commercially successful than their eponymous debut (1993), just as the harsh, often violent Naked was itself a radical stylistic departure by Leigh. Their third album, Coming Up (1996), consisting largely of upbeat pop songs such as the hit single ‘Trash’, was more compatible with the ‘feel good’ sensibilities of Britpop and became their most commercially successful release in a period where record sales for ‘Indie’ music were higher than ever before or since. However, the band did not significantly change their image and avoided any use of the patriotic and/or 1960s themed iconography that had become practically de rigueur for British guitar bands (which is understandable given that Anderson had been the cover star for the issue of music magazine Select which championed the pre-Britpop wave of British music mentioned above, superimposing a picture of Anderson over a large Union Jack and the headline, ‘Yanks Go Home’, making him look like, in the words of the Auteurs’ singer Luke Haines, ‘a ninny’10 (Gillen and McKelvie 2007, np)).

Blur and Naked Naked itself seems incompatible with the almost cartoonish brightness of Britpop, but its darkness, visually and thematically, gives it much in common with the

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drum ‘n’ bass and trip-hop music which emerged in parallel with the rise of Blur, Oasis and others. This was a different type of British music, influenced by Jamaican dub and reggae and American house, techno and hip-hop, reflecting the country’s ethnic mix, particularly in urban areas, much more accurately than Britpop. Aesthetically, Naked sits comfortably next to albums such as Massive Attack’s Protection (1994), which addresses Britain’s homelessness problem, also tackled in the film, Goldie’s Timeless (1995) which, like Naked, is influenced by the tensions and pressures of inner city life, and Tricky’s Maxinquaye (1995) and Pre-Millenium Tension (1995) which share the films’ apocalyptic themes and imagery. Indeed, it’s easy to imagine an alternative version of Naked, sound-tracked by these artists. However, Blur’s follow up to Parklife, 1995’s The Great Escape, shares some of Naked’s darkness: even the jaunty ‘Country House’, which topped the charts and allowed Blur to defeat Oasis in the so-called Battle of Britpop that occurred when both bands released singles on the same day, contains references to depression in its mention of Prozac and the refrain ‘Blow, blow me low/I am so sad I don’t know why’, while the ballad ‘The Universal’ presents a dystopian future in which the whole of society is pacified by the titular anti-depressant drug and subject to constant surveillance (‘No-one here is alone/Satellites in every home’). The theme of surveillance is also present in Naked in Johnny’s encounter with Brian, the security guard who mans a bank of monitors in the ‘postmodernist gas chamber’ of an office building which sits, empty and unused, in a city full of people desperate for shelter. ‘The Universal’s’ video references another film director, Stanley Kubrick, and his adaptation of A Clockwork Orange (1971). The band perform in a space similar to the film’s Korova Milk Bar, dressed in all-white outfits which recall the overalls worn by its thuggish Droogs; outside,on a high rise estate, ‘ordinary’ people, many of them elderly, dressed in drab greys and browns, are subjected to manipulation by a mind control device. In the video, Coxon again seems disengaged, playing his guitar sitting on the floor as he did in the ‘Country House’ promo, but this time his demeanour seems appropriate for the themes of both the video and the song. Despite these dark elements, ‘The Universal’s’ lush orchestral arrangement and comforting melodic warmth (it was a Christmas single and sound-tracked a television advertisement for British Gas) ensured the song became another top ten hit. The Great Escape’s other singles, ‘Charmless Man’ and ‘Stereotypes’, which feature perhaps Albarn’s most caustic lyrics ever, also made the top ten.

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‘Stereotypes’ is particularly scathing, its depiction of middle-class suburbanites involved in sexual ‘swinging’ (‘Wife swapping is the future/You know that it’ll suit you’) resembling a dark remake of Abigail’s Party filtered through Johnny from Naked’s misanthropic worldview, while the single’s cover image of two monkeys in a tree is indicative of Albarn’s attitude towards his subject matter: unlike Cocker in ‘I Spy’, Albarn’s narrator does not justify his scorn on a class basis with the result that he comes across as simply contemptuous. The song’s video was unremarkable, merely featuring some (rather pedestrian) live footage of the band edited to fit the studio version of the song. The ‘Charmless Man’ promo, on the other hand, has a narrative: the opening sequence features a desperate looking man running down a dark, rain soaked street at night recalling the beginning of Naked. In the video, the band have abandoned the brightness and sharpness of the Parklife era, opting instead for a darker, scruffier wardrobe which points both back to their early 1990s ‘baggy’ roots and forwards to the American ‘alt rock’ look and sound they would adopt for their next album (Blur, 1997). Without any of his Mod ‘cool’ on display and dressed in a bright blue, padded vinyl, hooded jacket resembling an anorak – which Reynolds describes as the ‘[o]ne garment above all [which] has come to represent the [’80s Indie] scene’11 – baggy, washed out jeans and a drab, grey shirt, Coxon is particularly Colin-esque in this video. While he does not appear sullen as in the ‘Country House’ promo, Coxon nevertheless seems somewhat removed from the proceedings, avoiding the camera and offering up a rather aloof, pedestrian performance (his demeanour also makes him look like he needs to blow his nose, heightening the resemblance to the perpetually congested Colin). In his essay on Indie style, Reynolds quotes fellow music journalist David Stubbs’ phrase ‘ostentatious absenteeism’, used to describe Morrissey, another British Indie icon who regularly deployed images of ill health or physical disability including wearing a hearing aid and, like Coxon, large rimmed ‘National Health’ spectacles. Reynolds compares Morrissey’s ‘incendiary forays into the domain of pop TV’ to the behaviour of ‘those gauche adolescents who insist on attending parties, only to parade a chaste disdain’12 for the event. This last phrase, ‘chaste disdain’, perfectly describes Coxon’s demeanour in both the ‘Country House’ and ‘Charmless Man’ videos, and his attitude generally towards Britpop (which John Harris described, in the title of his book on the subject, as the ‘Last Party’13): among, but not of, it.

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Damon Albarn and Life Is Sweet Morrissey, Reynolds claims, ‘represents those who fail to live as the young are now expected, fail to have sex/fun/style’.14 Those who succeed in these expectations are the ‘herd’ of ‘battery thinkers’ Albarn sings of disdainfully in ‘Girls and Boys’, the single which rescued Blur’s career and, as Mulholland observes, ‘begat Britpop’. The song both ‘sneered at and celebrated our irresponsible ’90s hedonism over a decayed rock-disco that oozed sarcasm’, he writes, but also became a ‘singalong knees-up anthem’ for the very people it targeted.15 I’ve always imagined David Thewlis’s unnamed character in Leigh’s 1991 film Life Is Sweet to be one of Albarn’s hedonistic ‘herd’, although he comes across more as an opportunistic cynic than a ‘battery thinker’. In fact, he rather resembles Albarn himself, with his sarcasm, ‘wedge’ haircut and football casuals swagger (however the always vain Albarn would never have worn the hideous shell-suit Thewlis’s character sports, even ironically). There’s even an element of romanticism to the character in his reluctance to continue merely having sex with his lover, Nicola, and his professed desire for ‘intelligent conversation’ so he can get to know her as a ‘real person’ rather than a ‘shag-bag’, which is also discernible in Albarn, particularly in post-Britpop songs like the decidedly mawkish ‘Tender’ and the far superior, genuinely wounded, ‘Beetlebaum’ (from the albums 13 (1999) and Blur respectively). Significantly both songs deal with his breakup from former girlfriend, Justine Frischmann, leader of Blur’s contemporaries Elastica. Indeed, Life Is Sweet, which I also watched repeatedly during the Britpop era, is inextricably linked in my mind to Parklife, to the extent that I tend to misremember its title music as being closer to the Parklife instrumental track, ‘The Debt Collector’, than the inane euro-pop song, ‘Happy Holidays’ that actually does open the film. Life Is Sweet’s score, by Rachel Porter, does recall ‘The Debt Collector’, and certain other instrumental passages by Blur, while the title music is precisely the kind of vacuous ‘sun and fun’ anthem the group parodied with ‘Girls and Boys’. The film’s suburban setting (Enfield, a northern borough of London and part of Middlesex, one of the Home Counties, like Blur’s native Essex) also recalls the video for the single ‘Parklife’ which takes Life Is Sweet’s palette of primary colours and turns up the contrast to create a cartoonish version of ‘ordinary’ Britain, peopled with grotesques.16

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Writing about the 1980s in Britain, Reynolds observed: ‘Youth’ has been co-opted, in a sanitised, censored version, as a key component of the burgeoning culture of health and self-improvement. Desire is no longer antagonistic to materialism and self-improvement.17

Both Life Is Sweet and ‘Girls and Boys’ are 1990s texts, however, and present rather different versions of youth. Thewlis’s character in the film does not appear to be well-off: his car is an old clunker, his shell-suit lacks a designer logo and his Nikes (which are similar to those worn by Albarn in the ‘Charmless Man’ video), are far from ‘box-fresh’. Nicola, with her bulimia and neuroses, is hardly a picture of health (although she does, as her lover points out, have plenty of ‘self-improvement’ books: a small library of feminist tomes which she appears not to have actually read18). Albarn’s ‘battery thinkers’ on the other hand are ‘avoiding all work/’Cos there’s none available’, and participate instead in a consolatory hedonism involving drugs, alcohol and casual sex, often as part of cheap foreign holidays of the kind offered by the travel agent Club 18–30 – carousing clients of which are featured in the ‘Girls and Boys’ video – which was typical of British working class youth’s experience during the recession of the 1980s and early 1990s. Life Is Sweet’s Aubrey, however, does resemble Reynolds’ description of 1980s youth, in his entrepreneurship – a form of self-improvement championed in that decade, with its exhortations to ‘Just Go For It’ and ‘Be All You Can Be’ – and also in his clothes and speech, both of which, significantly, are influenced by American culture: he wears a baseball cap and a San Francisco Giants’ jacket and delivers ‘hip’ phrases like ‘no sweat’ and ‘megaconfident’ in the kind of ‘Mid-Atlantic’ accent adopted by ‘cool’ disc jockeys on British mainstream radio at the time. America functioned as a powerful cultural touchstone for Britain during the Thatcher 1980s representing, as Reynolds writes, ‘the supreme incarnation of the modern, of the coming health-and-efficiency culture: a hyper-technical superabundant society’,19 and continued to do so into (at least) the early 1990s, after which Britpop’s, and New Labour’s, myth of ‘Cool Britannia’ made the United States seem rather vulgar. This is the ‘Magic America’ that Albarn sings of in the Parklife track of the same name, where ‘the air is sugar free/And everyone is very friendly’. When I listen to this song I always see its character, Bill Barrett, as a version of Aubrey particularly after he has holidayed in America and ‘bought and ate/Until he could do neither any more’, Aubrey, of course, failing to fully meet the healthy and efficient ideal by being overweight (Figure 16.2).

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Figure 16.2  Andy (Jim Broadbent) discusses the purchase of a hot dog wagon with Aubrey (Timothy Spall) as Wendy (Alison Steadman) and Patsy (Stephen Rea) look on in Life is Sweet (1990)

Aubrey speaks and dresses the way he does because, under Thatcherism, as Reynolds observes, ‘we get the following paradox: what’s most British is the aspiration to be like the Americans’.20 As a result, ‘what’s marginal, dissident, practically unpatriotic, is the Indie scene’s defensive Englishness, a patriotism located in the past, a nostalgia for a never-never Britain, compounded from Sixties “social realist” films and the golden age of British pop’.21 This is the kind of patriotism espoused by Morrissey who has a tendency to languish in his fantasy of a past, perfect Britain (which is why he can appear to be xenophobic or even racist). Albarn’s innovation with Blur, his master-stroke, was to take the Indie scene’s nostalgia and insularity as personified by Coxon – and both update and weaponize it, using Britain’s cultural history to assault its Americanized present. Leigh’s films, I believe, helped Albarn to do so by providing him with a model for a way in which to observe and satirize contemporary – which is to say, Americanized – British culture. (Suede’s Brett Anderson may claim that he had the idea first, but he lacked Albarn’s populist touch, particularly the latter’s facility for slogan-friendly lyrics.) However, the Albarn of the Britpop era is much more scathing than the Leigh of Life Is Sweet: ‘Magic America’ is a rather one-dimensional jibe at an easily impressed naif rather than a nuanced character study, and as already discussed, ‘Girls and

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Boys’, ‘Charmless Man’ and, particularly, ‘Stereotypes’ seem driven by contempt (although I accept that the brevity of the pop single format means there is less space for nuance than with a feature film). With Life Is Sweet, on the other hand, Leigh is remarkably fair to all of his characters, even Aubrey who, even though he suffers like Bev in Abigail’s Party from bad taste evidenced in the revolting options on his restaurant’s menu, nevertheless demonstrates an impressive degree of culinary knowledge. Nicola does receive a withering critique of her personality delivered by her Albarn-alike lover, but then she treats her family in the same way although she is, as he tells her, a ‘fake’ (just like the similarly superficial Lawrence who owns, but does not read, Shakespeare’s complete works). This scathing treatment is, then, ultimately for her own good, as is his refusal to continue to have sex with her, Nicola’s insistence on involving chocolate in their lovemaking being an extension of her bulimia, itself rooted in her self-loathing.

Oasis and Nuts in May Damon resembles Nicola’s lover visually and in personality, and his acerbic, even aggressive, intelligence also recalls another Leigh character played by Thewlis, Johnny in Naked, who is similarly predisposed to expose the personality flaws of others, although he lacks the redeeming desire for genuine engagement evident in both the lover and in Albarn himself. Johnny is a Northern ‘gobshite’ and we might imagine him, in a David Thomson-esque way, as the lover’s Mancunian cousin who perhaps hoped to seek shelter from his relative after fleeing to London following his rape of a prostitute at the beginning Naked. Manchester is, of course, the home-town of Blur’s arch-rivals during the Britpop era, Oasis. I must admit, I can’t identify any trace of Leigh’s influence in Oasis’s music, their image or their videos. The band’s two Britpop albums, Definitely Maybe (1994) and (What’s the Story) Morning Glory (1995), share some of Blur’s 1960s influences (most obviously, the Beatles, the Kinks and the Who) but lyrically songwriter Noel Gallagher tends to deal in traditional rock ‘n’ roll themes of hedonism (‘Cigarettes and Alcohol’, ‘Supersonic’, ‘Champagne Supernova’), escape (‘Live Forever’), perseverance (‘Roll With It’) and romance (‘Wonderwall’), although the records do contain a few vignette-based tracks such as ‘Digsy’s Dinner’ and ‘She’s Electric’ which look at the fine details of ‘ordinary’ British life. Sartorially, the band initially had a Baggy-meets-soccer fan image – jeans, trainers, waterproof jackets  – which avoided any second-hand apparel,

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perhaps because of an aversion to ‘hand-me-downs’ born out of working class pride, and referenced the 1960s only indirectly via the the look of the Stone Roses, particularly the hairstyles of Brown and Squire (the band was also a major musical influence, although Oasis eschewed their rhythmical versatility in favour of straightforward rock time-keeping). Oasis’s visual referencing of the 1960s became more pronounced with the success of Morning Glory when they began to deploy the Union Jack just as the Who had before them, and associated themselves with Paul Weller former lead singer of 1970s Mod revivalists the Jam, known affectionately in Britain as ‘the Modfather’. I can make one (very) tangential connection to Leigh, however, via his television film Nuts in May (1976). In the film, Keith and Candice Marie, an uptight, Southern English, middle-class couple, embark on a camping holiday in the peaceful English countryside only to have their bucolic tranquillity disrupted when another couple, Finger and Honky, from Birmingham, in the North, arrive on a motorbike and proceed to violate various articles of the ‘Country Code’, of which Keith is a strict adherent. The Northern couple are obviously working class – Finger, is a plasterer by trade but currently unemployed due to a housing shortage – and see their own camping trip as an opportunity for hedonism – as a consolation for Finger’s situation and the bleakness unemployment has brought to Birmingham – rather than the opportunity for contemplation that Candice Marie and, particularly, Keith seek. Inevitably, Keith and Finger clash. Watching Nuts in May as I did during the Britpop era, it was easy to draw comparisons with the ‘class war’ going on between bourgeois Southerners, Blur, and Northern proles, Oasis, although Blur were every bit as hedonistic as their rivals, particularly with the rise of the phenomenon of the ‘New Lad’, which allowed middle-class males to participate in homosocial activities – heavy drinking, football hooliganism, the objectification of women – typically, if not necessarily accurately, associated with their working-class counterparts (Figure 16.3). Even more tangentially, I was recently reminded of Nuts in May while watching Stanley Long’s Bread (1971)22 in which a bunch of scruffy working class rock fans first camp on, then attempt to stage a music festival in, the grounds of a run-down country estate. With their leather jackets, flared jeans and feathered hair, they look exactly like the kind of gormless interlopers who started attending, and, with their risible displays of Liam Gallagher-esque ‘attitude’, ultimately ruined clubs like Divine when Morning Glory took Oasis firmly into the mainstream and facilitated the careers of musically conservative ‘dad-rock’ bands like Cast and Ocean Colour Scene.

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Figure 16.3  Candice (Alison Steadman) and Keith (Roger Sloman) wait out a rain storm while camping in Nuts in May (1976).

Conclusion Blur followed The Great Escape with their eponymous album (1997) that drew on American lo-fi and hardcore punk; Oasis followed Morning Glory with the musical bombast and lyrical banalities of Be Here Now (1997); Pulp followed A Different Class with the musically discordant and lyrically bleak This Is Hardcore (1998). And Mike Leigh followed Naked with Secrets & Lies (1996), an intimate, character-driven drama about an adult adoptee attempting to locate her birth parents which deals with themes of race and class and is as different from Naked as that film was from Life Is Sweet. I must confess, I lost interest in all of them after these releases. Apart from singles, I haven’t heard any new music by Blur, Oasis or Pulp since, nor have I watched a new film by Leigh. I greatly enjoyed my experiences in the Britpop years  – it was an exciting time to be in one’s early twenties – but I wasn’t sad to to see it die, particularly as its decline had been so ugly, audibly and visually. Almost as ugly, in fact, as the farcical attempt at a revival that occurred in Britain in the ‘Naughties’ with derivative bands like the View and the Kooks and, particularly, the Kaiser Chiefs whose pallid imitation of Blur extended to titling their debut album Employment (Blur’s was called Leisure). There is no room here to go into the look or sound of

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these bands so ‘derivative’ will have to suffice, but it does appear that, sartorially, their influences reached back only as far as the expansion of Mod-associated labels like Ben Sherman and Fred Perry into high street fashion retailing, a move stimulated by the phenomenal success of Britpop. Several of these ‘Britpop 2’ bands appear on the soundtrack to the BBC comedy series, Gavin and Stacey (2007–10), co-written by and featuring James Corden who played a prominent role in Leigh’s All or Nothing (2002). The series also starred Alison Steadman who played Bev in Abigail’s Party (and who was once married to Leigh), in the similar role of Pam, a suburban housewife living in an affluent part of Billericay, a town in Blur’s homeland, Essex. As well as containing some of the best performances and scriptwriting in a mainstream British comedy for years, Gavin and Stacey also provides a useful insight into the enduring legacy of Britpop, particularly in the clothes worn by the titular Gavin and his best friend Smithy (Corden). Gavin’s wardrobe and hairstyle in particular show a distinct Mod influence while Smithy often resembles an overweight version of Albarn circa ‘Girls and Boys’. Neither character seems particularly interested in music however, although both are passionate about football which experienced a massive increase in popularity during Britpop and the rise of the ‘New Lad’. Popular television sports programs like Sky’s Soccer AM (1995-) – very much the epitome of New Laddism with its bawdy humour and appearances by glamour models in football strips – and the BBC’s longrunning Match of the Day (1964-) – revamped in the ‘90s to fit the new cultural climate – pushed music aside as the focus of popular attention by relegating it to sound-tracking football and the attendant lifestyle of its fans. Gavin and Smithy are also interesting because of their class status: Gavin works in an office while Smithy, like Finger in Nuts in May, is a plasterer, although Smithy is self-employed (if not particularly successful). In their early twenties, there is no evidence of either being university educated. Both still live with their parents, and while we never meet Smithy’s family, we know Pam and her husband, ‘company executive’ – of his own business – Mick, are well-off, living in a large detached home similar to how I’ve always imagine Lawrence and Bev’s house to look, and to the images of Essex that introduce Blur in Live Forever. All of these characters speak with an ‘Estuary’ accent which has many similarities to the Cockney accent often adopted by Britpop musicians (particularly Albarn) but is not solely associated with the working class. We can safely conclude, then, that Gavin and his family are (new) middle-class, and comfortably speculate that

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Mick and Pam have become wealthy under Thatcherism, Essex having embraced the entrepreneurial Tory ethos of that era (which is probably why Mick owns his own business). Gavin’s Welsh girlfriend Stacey is more obviously working class. she too lives in her parental home, which is a much smaller, terraced house, and also works in an office but in what appears to be a relatively low level, clerical capacity. Her tastes, however, are similar to Gavin’s: on their first date they acknowledge a shared enthusiasm for River Island, a high street fashion chain which sells its own less expensive versions of designer garments, including those by the labels associated with the Britpop revival, and they both display a penchant for ‘binge’ drinking and for fast food, although Gavin balks at Stacey’s insistence on smothering her chips in condiments. In established sitcom tradition, Gavin and Stacey relies upon the tension created by the cultural differences between the two leads. Significantly, these differences are presented as being caused by nationality rather than class: Stacey’s and her friend Nessa’s ‘Welshness’ (peculiar phrases and sayings, the aforementioned aversion to ‘dry’ chips) frequently baffles Gavin and the other English characters who think of themselves as normal (as, of course, do the Welsh characters). Class is not tackled in any real depth, although we do see that Gavin’s family are wealthier than Stacey’s – his parents break tradition by paying for the couple’s wedding and offer them a substantial down-payment on a house – and that Stacey finds renting accommodation an acceptable compromise when she and Gavin are having difficulty house-hunting, whereas Gavin, in typical Tory fashion, is adamantly opposed to the idea as a waste of money. Additionally, on two occasions Pam, when angry and intoxicated, makes racist comments about the Welsh, labelling them ‘Gypos’, a derogatory term for Romanies who are often viewed as an underclass in Britain. The Welsh characters’ response to these outbursts is to invoke the cultural stereotype of ‘Essex Girls’, ‘dumb blondes’ infamous for their hedonism and revealing outfits. Although the term is regionally specific it is often associated with working-class women who have attained a degree of upwards social mobility, as exemplified by Victoria Beckham (aka ‘Posh Spice’) and also by the character Tracey in the BBC’s ‘class differences’ themed sitcom Birds of a Feather (1989–98)23 – whose name, along with that of her less well-off sister, Sharon, became a pejorative slang term for working-class females in the 1990s  – who echoes Bev from Abigail’s Party and is echoed in Gavin and Stacey’s Pam (although Tracey’s incarcerated husband has acquired his wealth through less legitimate means than Mick: by robbing banks).

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Such outbursts are short-lived in Gavin and Stacey with apologies being quickly proffered and accepted and the characters learning to compromise in the name of love, another sitcom convention. However, the absence of any real discussion of class in the series is significant and speaks volumes about British culture since New Labour: the idea of social class being constructed largely around one’s economic situation and relationship to the factors of production is considered old fashioned and has been replaced by the concept of a ‘meritocratic’ society which rewards individual effort regardless of class background and allows us all to consume the same good quality commodities, as long as we have the wherewithal to do so. The reality, of course, is less straightforward, as the demonization by the tabloid press of Romanies as ‘thieving Gypos’ and of unemployed working class youth as delinquent ‘Chavs’ (in England) and ‘Neds’ (in Scotland) demonstrates, as does the continuing problem of homelessness. Gavin sand Stacey has its flaws. Its characters are almost exclusively white heterosexuals, and the treatment of its sole gay character, Stacey’s brother Jason, borders at times on the homophobic. But it is a far superior response to Leigh’s oeuvre than the Britpop revival was to that of Blur, Pulp or Oasis. And it has been extremely popular across a wide audience demographic, moving from the youth-oriented digital channel, BBC3, to mainstream BBC1 via the more ‘arts’ orientated BBC2. It is my hope, then, that Steadman’s presence might encourage viewers, particularly the youth it was initially aimed at, to look back at Abigail’s Party and Life Is Sweet and perhaps as a result to investigate the rest of Leigh’s work and maybe discover there evidence of the ‘secrets and lies’ that lie behind the myth – which started with the social mobility of the Swinging 1960s, continued with the Thatcher administration’s policies of privatization and deregulation in the 1970s and 1980s, flourished in the 1990s with New Labour’s emphasis on consumption, and which still persists at the time of writing (2012) under a Tory-Liberal Democrat coalition government which has introduced severe cuts in public spending including in the areas of health and education – that Britain has become a ‘classless’ society.

Notes 1 Andrew Smith, ‘Pulp TV’, The Face 82 (July 1995): np. 2 Daniels was already something of an icon for his performance as the Mod Jimmy in Quadrophenia (Franc Roddam, 1979) based on the ‘rock opera’ of the same name by

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5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

17

Devised and Directed by Mike Leigh the Who (1973). Along with the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Small Faces, the Who were once of the ‘canonical’ 1960s groups during the Britpop: Coxon regularly acknowledged them as one of his favourite groups; Oasis covered their anthemic single ‘My Generation’; and their use of the Union Jack in their stage wear and record art was a major influence on the Britpop look with supermodel Kate Moss wearing a Union Jack dress and Oasis’s Noel Gallagher playing a guitar emblazoned with the flag. Garry Mulholland, This Is Uncool: The 500 Greatest Singles Since Punk and Disco. London: Cassell Illustrated, 2002, 426. Simon Reynolds, ‘Against Health and Efficiency: Independent Music in the 1980s’, in Zoot Suits and Second Hand Dresses: An Anthology of Fashion and Music, ed. Angela McRobbie. Hampshire, London: Macmillan Education, 1989, 246. Ibid., 247. Ibid., 250; my emphasis. Ibid. Ibid., 151. Interview, http://ie.7digital.com/features/interviews/suede, accessed 30 July 2012. Luke Haines, foreword to Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie, Phonogram Volume 1: Rue Britannia. La Jolla, CA: Image Comics, 2007, np. Reynolds, ‘Against Health’, 251. Ibid., 254. John Harris, The Last Party: Britpop, Blair and the Demise of English Rock. London: Fourth Estate, 2003. Ibid. Mulholland, Uncool, 356. This may well have been an influence on the hugely successful television series Little Britain (2003–6), which was co-created and starred Matt Lucas who played the molester character in the ‘Country House’ video, and deals in a similarly grotesque form of humour that has seen Lucas and creative partner David Walliams accused of condescension and contempt, particularly in the series’ depiction of the working class, accusations which were also raised against Albarn during the Britpop era. Personally, I am no fan of Little Britain, and based on the few episodes I have seen the criticisms of the series do seem justified. However, in the interest of rigorous scholarship, I feel I should point out that Lucas and Walliams also parodied Blur mercilessly in the second season of their earlier series, Rock Profile (episode 12, 2002), depicting Albarn as a faux-Cockney who has confused his actual childhood with the musical Oliver, and Coxon as a mentally disturbed musical incompetent with a penchant for starting fires. Reynolds, ‘Against Health and Efficiency’, 254.

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18 In my fantasy sequel to Life Is Sweet, Nicola, who, as the posters on her bedroom wall suggests, is, or at least has been, a keen music press reader, is inspired by Melody Maker’s cover story on Huggy Bear, to form her own Riot Grrrl band and finally start to actually use the books she has acquired. Ideally, her twin, Natalie, would also be in the band and would come out as a lesbian. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid., 253. 21 Ibid., original emphasis. 22 Included as an extra on the BFI’s 2010 DVD release of Lindsay Shonteff ’s Privilege (1970). 23 Remade for American television as the short-lived Stand by Your Man (1992) starring Rosie O’Donnell.

Works cited Books and articles Gillen, Kieron and Jamie McKelvie. Phonogram Volume 1: Rue Britannia. La Jolla, CA: Image Comics, 2007. Mulholland, Garry. This Is Uncool: The 500 Greatest Singles since Punk and Disco. London: Cassell Illustrated, 2002. Reynolds, Simon. ‘Against Health and Efficiency: Independent Music in the 1980s’, in Zoot Suits and Second Hand Dresses: An Anthology of Fashion and Music, ed. Angela McRobbie. Hampshire, London: Macmillan Education, 1989. Smith, Andrew. ‘Pulp TV’, The Face 82 (July 1995).

Films by Mike Leigh Nuts in May (1976) Abigail’s Party (1977) Meantime (1983) Life Is Sweet (1991) Naked (1993) Secrets & Lies (1996) All or Nothing (2002) Another Year (2010)

Films by others A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick, 1971) Bread (Stanley Long, 1971)

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Devised and Directed by Mike Leigh

Quadrophenia (Franc Roddam, 1979) Live Forever: The Rise and Fall of Britpop (John Dower, 2008)

Television series Birds of a Feather (created by Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran, BBC, 1989–98) The Word (Channel 4, 1990–5) Rock Profile (created by David Walliams and Matt Lucas, UK Play/BBC, 1999–2009) Little Britain (created by David Walliams and Matt Lucas, BBC, 2003–6) Gavin & Stacey (created by James Corden and Ruth Jones, BBC, 2007–10)

Music Blur. Parklife, Food/SBK, 1994 —. The Great Escape, Food/Virgin, 1995 —. Blur, Food, 1997 Goldie. Timeless, FFRR Records, 1995 Massive Attack. Protection, Circa/Virgin, 1995 Nirvana. Nevermind, DCG, 1991 Oasis. Definitely Maybe, Creation, 1994 —. (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?, Creation, 1995 —. Be Here Now, Creation, 1997 Pulp. Different Class, Polygram/Island, 1995 —. This Is Hardcore, Island, 1998 Suede. Suede, Nude, 1993 —. Dog Man Star, Nude, 1994 —. Coming Up, Nude, 1996 Tricky. Maxinquaye, Island, 1995 —. Pre-Millenium Tension, Polygram/Island, 1996

About the Contributors Editors Bryan Cardinale-Powell is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Moving Image Arts at Oklahoma City University. Prior to his teaching appointment he worked for Panavision, a worldwide supplier of motion picture production equipment, and as a freelance writer, producer and cinematographer for documentaries and other short subject films. He is the recipient of a Southeast Region Emmy Award and a Georgia Association of Broadcasters Award. Marc DiPaolo, an Assistant Professor of English and Film at Oklahoma City University, has written the books War Politics and Superheroes: Ethics and Propaganda in Comics and Film (2010) and Emma Adapted: Jane Austen’s Heroine from Book to Film (2007). He is editor of Godly Heretics: Essays on Alternative Christianity in Literature and Popular Culture (2013) and Unruly Catholics from Dante to Madonna: Faith, Heresy, and Politics in Cultural Studies (2013). He has written essays for A Century of the Marx Brothers, Beyond Adaptation, and Generation X Professors Speak, and is co-editor of The Conscious Reader. He has a PhD in English from Drew University

Authors Sharon E. Cogdill, Professor of English at St Cloud State University, earned her PhD in English from Michigan State University. Her areas of specialization as a teacher-scholar include nineteenth-century British and American literature, writing and composition theory and the intersections of pedagogy and new media, specifically related to MOO online virtual reality communities. Andrew Crowther was educated at Bradford Grammar School and Lancaster University. He is the author of Contradiction Contradicted: The Plays of W.S. Gilbert (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 2000) and Gilbert of Gilbert

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About the Contributors

and Sullivan: His Life and Character (Stroud: The History Press, 2011), and he is the Secretary of the W. S. Gilbert Society. Kevin M. Flanagan is a PhD student in the Critical and Cultural Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh, where he teaches film and composition classes. He is editor of Ken Russell: Re-Viewing England’s Last Mannerist (2009). His essays and reviews on post-war British cinema and culture have been published in Framework, Film & History, the Journal of British Cinema and Television and Modern Language Studies. Derek Gladwin is a Vanier Canada Graduate Scholar at the University of Alberta in the Department of English and Film Studies where he focuses on Irish studies, visual culture and ecocriticism. His recent articles have appeared in Irish Studies Review, Photography and Culture and Asian Cinema, and he is currently co-editing two anthologies: Eco-Joyce: Space, Place, and Environment in the Writings of James Joyce and Unfolding Irish Landscapes: The Spatial Identities of Tim Robinson. Sarah Godfrey is a Lecturer in Film and Television Studies at the University of East Anglia. Her research interests are predominantly around gender in British and American television and cinema, British media culture and the body. She teaches across a range of associated areas including gender and race in popular culture, cinema history and contemporary media cultures. She has written on fatherhood in Mamma Mia!, masculinity in the films of Nick Love and resurgent paternalism in post-9/11 popular culture. She is the co-editor of Shane Meadows: Critical Essays (forthcoming). Stella Hockenhull is a Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Wolverhampton (UK). She specializes in British Cinema and has published widely in that field. Her PhD entitled Neo-Romantic Landscapes: An Aesthetic Approach to the Films of Powell and Pressburger was published in 2008, and her second book, Aesthetics and Neo-Romanticism in Film: Landscapes in Contemporary British Cinema is due out 2013. Christopher Jordan, PhD, is Associate Professor of Film Studies at St Cloud State University. He is the author of Movies and the Reagan Presidency: Success and Ethics and other publications on film and television.

About the Contributors

351

Robert Marchand is an Australian-based film director, whose credits include Fields of Fire, Come in Spinner, Sun on the Stubble and The Potato Factory. He has won four AFI Awards and received numerous other award nominations. Robert devised the Character-based Improvisation workshop for actors and directors and has now run over 50 of them for drama schools and universities throughout Australia. He gained his BA at the Australian Film and Television School, and is currently engaged in further research into the process for his PhD at the Flinders University Drama Centre. Christopher Meir is Lecturer in Film at the University of the West Indies, St Augustine in Trinidad and Tobago. He has edited a special issue of The Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television on film marketing and has published work on the marketing of Scottish cinema, film producer Jeremy Thomas and other subjects. He is currently completing a book tentatively titled Scottish Cinema: Texts and Contexts for Manchester University Press and working on a comparative study of the film industries of the nations of the Commonwealth. Ana Katherine Miller teaches literature and film at Manchester Metropolitan and Edge Hill universities. She is an organizer of the TRAUMA Group’s film series, which is affiliated with Manchester Metropolitan’s Institute of Humanities and Social Science Research. Steven Morrison is currently an independent scholar, having previously worked for over ten years as a visiting lecturer at Royal Holloway, University of London. Co-editor of Joyce’s ‘Wandering Rocks’ (2002), he has published on James Joyce, Stanley Kubrick and the literature of the Cold War. Frances Pheasant-Kelly is MA Award Leader and Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Wolverhampton. Her research areas include abjection and space, which form the basis for her book Abject Spaces in American Cinema: Institutional Settings, Identity, and Psychoanalysis in Film (2011). Leonard Quart is Professor Emeritus of Cinema Studies at the College of Staten Island and at the CUNY Graduate Center. He is a Contributing Editor of Cineaste, writes a biweekly column for The Berkshire Eagle and has written essays and reviews on film and other subjects for many magazines and newspapers,

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About the Contributors

including: Dissent, Film Quarterly, The Forward, London Magazine and New York Newsday. His major publications include American Film and Society since 1945 and How the War Was Remembered: Hollywood and Vietnam (both co-authored with Albert Auster) and The Films of Mike Leigh (co-authored with Ray Carney). David Sweeney is a graduate of both the University of Glasgow and the Glasgow School of Art and is currently a lecturer in the latter’s Forum for Critical Inquiry. His PhD thesis concerned the relationship between fictional worlds and copyright law and is currently being revised for publication. His first book, a critical guide to the novels of the British science fiction writer Michael Marshall Smith, will be published by P.S. Publishing in June 2012. William Verrone teaches film and literature at the University of North Alabama, where he founded and chairs the film studies minor. He is the author of Adaptation and the Avant-Garde: Alternative Perspectives on Adaptation Theory and Practice and The Avant-Garde Feature Film: A Critical History. He has published essays on different aspects of film and culture and in 2009 served as the Executive Director and Convener of the Conference on Global Film. Brenda Wentworth has three degrees in theatre: BA, Fredonia State University, New York; MA, University of South Carolina; PhD, University of Missouri. She currently teaches at St Cloud State University. A former costume designer, she continues to research and publish in clothing history and theory.

Index Abigail’s Party (1977)  5, 18, 20, 133, 138, 328–9, 336, 340 Jarvis Cocker and  327–30 abortion film  9, 83–9 see also Vera Drake (2004) actors, meeting and formulation of story with  42 Alexander Korda BAFTA Award for Best British Film  4 All or Nothing (2002)  1, 3, 23, 27, 92, 139, 220 and big bodies  91–6 casting, intelligent  92 costumes in  93–6 first scene  92–3 London Film Critics Circle Award  134 Mike Leigh and Fickle Finger  215–26 transgression and transcendence  163–5 vulnerability of character  219 ambiguity,  28 American viewers  5 Another Year (2010)  1, 20, 22, 28, 45, 133, 182 improvisational and collaborative approach  26 institution of, family  188 melodrama and tradition in  173–4 class distinctions  178–80 family tensions  187–9 family values  178–80 melodramatic form  174–6 ordinary and extraordinary  181 social realism  174–6 structure and regularity  182–3 success and failure as melodramatic excess  183–7 narrative  182–7 tradition  173–4 class distinctions and family values  178–80 family tensions  187–9 ordinary and extraordinary  181 social realism and melodramatic form  174–6

structure and regularity  182–3 success and failure as melodramatic excess  183–7 unconnected opening sequence  182 ‘answers,’ refusal to give interviewers  28 ‘articulation,’ movement to  317 aspects of Leigh’s film-making career  2–3 auteur/auteurship/auteurism  16, 24 evoking  24–30 film-makers  20–1 films  27 importance of producers in  16–17 industry and/of  15–30 Leigh’s as auteur director  30 awards and acclaim  4 All or Nothing (2002)  1 Another Year (2010)  1 Career Girls (1997)  1, 4 Happy-Go-Lucky (2008)  1 Life is Sweet (1990)  1 Naked (1993)  1, 134, 143 Secrets & Lies (1996)  1, 4, 143, 193 Topsy-Turvy (1999)  1, 143 Vera Drake (2004)  1 Battleship Potemkin, The (Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein)  1 BBC Arena documentary  50 Be Here Now (Oasis, 1997)  342 Bicycle Thieves (Vittorio De Sica)  1 Bleak Moments (1971)  4, 9, 17, 19, 29, 133, 136, 138 close-up shots  138 conflict between articulation and retention  139 masculinity  134–43 Boys from the Blackstuff (Alan Bleasdale, 1982)  313 Britannia Hospital (Lindsay Anderson, 1982)  308, 313 British Cultural Studies  303, 305, 315–18 British Screen  21

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Index

British Screen/UK Film Council  20 Britpop  329–30, 340–1 Damon Albarn and Life Is Sweet  337–40 Graham Coxon and Meantime  330–3 Jarvis Cocker and Abigail’s Party  327–30 Mike Leigh in age of  327 Oasis and Nuts in May  340–1 Suede and Naked  333–4 carciature  309 Cardinale-Powell, Bryan  3–4 Cardullo, Bert  6 Career Girls (1997)  1, 4, 21, 26, 231 caricaturing of British class system  5–6 Carney, Ray critique of Leigh  5–6 casting  41–4 personality assessment  42–3 Cathy Comes Home (Ken Loach, 1966)  129 Channel 4  20 ‘character actors’  42 character-based improvisation (CBI) process  38–44, 48, 53 characters  consistency as desired outcome  52 creation of  44–51 Leigh’s characters  9 real and movie characters  7 revelation with costumes  81 seeing themselves  130 seeing the unconscious of  48 seemingly frozen in time  2 ‘spontaneous’ manner,  53 ‘structuring’  52 successive improvisation  52 Cinema of Mike Leigh, The  7 class, social  distinctions  178–80 family values  178–80 fluctuating identifications  291–9 Cocker, Jarvis  327 and Abigail’s Party  327–30 ‘common people’  327 Different Class (1995)  329 ‘I Spy’  328 Pulp album  comedy  304–5, 309 see also ‘Family Comedy’ and caricatured social being  309–10

comic-realist cinema, politics and poetics of  1–11 commercial contexts of Leigh’s career  15–16 conservative ‘philosophies’  308 contemporary realism in Naked  99 context frequent in Leigh’s films  2 Corrigan, Timothy  24–5 costume choices  79–81 All or Nothing and  91–6 audience noticing costumes  80 Happy-Go-Lucky  89–91 historical costumes  81–2 reinforcing class divide  85 revealing characters  81 role in characters  92 in Secrets & Lies  96–8 Vera Drake’s costume  86–7 ‘Country House’ (Blur’s single)  331 Coxon, Graham (Blur guitarist)  11, 333, 335–6 Meantime (1984)  330–3 style/wardrobe  331 creative control over films  27 creative impulse  40 cultural realms  308 cultural stillbirth  107–14 curiosity, Leigh’s inherent  51 Death Proof (Quentin Tarantino, 2007)  3 deformation professional  50 detractors of Leigh  4 devised and directed, concept of  3, 8–9, 37–40 rise and fall of the label  3 director’s role in film creation  27 domestic comedy-dramas, Leigh’s inspiration of  1 D’Oyly Carte Opera Company  63 Draughtsman’s Contract, The (Peter Greenaway, 1982)  19 ‘drop anchor’  52 Durran, Jacqueline  85, 87, 89 Ealing Comedy  312 early works, Leigh  47 Ebert, Roger (critic)  3–4 ‘enduring personality dispositions’  46 erasing silence  261–4 evoking auteurship  24–30

Index Fahrenheit 9/11 (Michael Moore, 2004)  114 ‘Family Comedy’  311 family tensions  187–9 family unit  311 features constant in Mike Leigh’s films  37 female roles  135 Fickle Finger, Mike Leigh and  All or Nothing  215–26 filmic techniques  8 filming sectarianism as outsider  252–5 film-making, Leigh’s aspects of  15 film-making awards  4 Films of Mike Leigh : Embracing World The (Carney)  6 formalistic set design and photographic framing  10 Four Days in July (1985)  19, 28–9, 270, 278 reproduction and nationalism  251–2 erasing silence  261–4 filming sectarianism as outsider  252–5 gendered nationalism  257–61 realism of unfolding  255–7 viewing gender and nationalism in real  264–9 Garnett, Tony  17 Gavin and Stacey (BBC comedy series, 2007–10)  342–5 gendered nationalism  257–61 gendered troubles on screen  251–2 erasing silence  261–4 filming sectarianism as outsider  252–5 gendered nationalism  257–61 realism of unfolding  255–7 viewing gender and nationalism in real  264–9 Gilbert, W. S.  64 see also Sullivan, A. and Gilbert, W. S. operas and Leigh’s films cynicism of  67 Gilbert Murray description  73 Mikado, The  68–70, 83 Wicked World, The  67 Great Escape, The (Blur, 1995)  335–6, 342 grotesque state of Nation  303–20

355

Grown-Ups (1980)  19, 27, 119–31 action restricted within neighbourhood houses  120–1 choreography,  124 depicted scenes  121, 125 Gloria’s character,  124 life of protagonists  120–1 narrative  120–2 setting  120 Gurdon, Meghan Cox  112 Happy-Go-Lucky (2008)  1, 9, 26, 133, 167, 231 costume choices  89–91 and focus  89–91 lack of sociability, traits showing  143 transgression and transcendence  165–7 Hard Labour (1973)  3, 133 heroes, Leigh’s  1 High Hopes (1988)  6, 19–20, 26–7, 29, 120, 131, 136, 138, 278, 305, 309, 314–15, 320 characterizations  315 analysis of  316–17 caricatured  318 Gramsci’s characterization of hegemony  307 and lessons of cultural studies  303–20 narrative  305–6 resorting to ‘familialism’  319 Thatcherite agenda  316 as tragic melodramatic family saga  307 uncritical realism  314 Hollywood and History: Costume Design in Film (Edward Maeder)  80 Home Sweet Home (1982)  119–31 bleakness of film’s sexual relationships  122–3 dark and mordant humour  123 Dave’s character in  130 depicted scenes  126, 128 gripping scene  125–6 hopeless domestic lives  122 narrative  122–3 setting  120 ‘hook’ in marketing  26 Howards End (James Ivory, 1993)  22

356

Index

identifications and class, fluctuating  291–9 improvisations, Leigh’s  51–4 and collaborative approach  26 ‘industrial process’ of theatrical production  81 industry and/of auteur  15–30 influential theorization of art cinema  28 initiating idea, creating fictional character  40–1 Jewish director, Leigh as  7 Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious (Sigmund Freud, 1905)  309 The Kiss of Death, The (1977)  18 ‘kitchen sink’ realism  79 Ladybird, Ladybird (Ken Loach, 1994)  129 laughter in Leigh’s films  7 learning disability  class and fluctuating identification  277–81 unsettling attitudes towards  281–91 Life Is Sweet (1990)  1, 6, 20, 157, 337, 339 climax  244 Damon Albarn and  337–40 ‘little’ Ealing comedies  304 Loach and Leigh, Ltd.: The Cinema of Social Conscience (Bert Cardullo, 2010)  6 Made in Britain (Alan Clarke, 1983)  119 Making Plays (BBC Arena documentary)  45 Manville, Lesley,  28, 91, 92, 120, 144, 178, 182, 184 marketing  15–16, 24–30 discourses  24 masculinities  134–43 in All or Nothing  143–9 and male identities from Bleak Moments to Happy-Go-Lucky  133–4 mealtime encounters, Leigh’s humour  2 Meantime (1984)  5, 19–20, 28–9, 139, 283, 298, 333–4 Colin in Leigh’s TV film  330 fluctuating identifications and class  291–9 fluid characterizations  316 Graham Coxon and  330–3 wardrobe of  331

learning disability, class and fluctuating identifications in  277–81 unsettling attitudes towards learning disability  281–91 aggressive actions  288, 289 dehumanizing treatment  281 derogatory labels  289 negative treatment  289 psychological implications  287 social environment  282, 290 Thatcherite ideology  291 melodrama and tradition  173–4 class distinctions and family values  178–80 family tensions  187–9 ordinary and extraordinary  181 social realism and melodramatic form  174–6 structure and regularity  182–3 success and failure as melodramatic excess  183–7 Memoirs of a Cynic, The (William Gilbert’s novel)  74 methods and modes  158–60 Mike Leigh (Sean O’Sullivan, 2011)  6 mise-en-scène  80–4, 103, 174, 189, 194–7, 202–3, 206, 285, 304 Modern Life Is Rubbish (Blur, 1993)  333 Morning Glory (Oasis, 1995)  340–2 My Beautiful Laundrette (Stephen Frears, 1985)  19 Naked (1993)  1–3, 6, 21, 23, 28–9, 101, 129, 133, 158, 239–40, 244, 334, 336, 340 Best Director award at Cannes Film Festival  134 Blur and  334–6 Great Escape, The  335 Parklife  335 and bruised  99–102 contemporary realism in  99 Johnny  136, 141–2, 149 and something rotten in early 1990s  231–45 Suede and  333–4 transgression and transcendence  160–3 widespread echoes of Hamlet  242

Index narrative, crafting  2 nationalism in Mike Leigh’s Four Days in July  251–2 erasing silence  261–4 filming sectarianism as outsider  252–5 gender  257–61, 264–9 gendered nationalism  257–61 realism of unfolding  255–7 reproduction  251–2 national themes, British films  119 ‘nature versus nurture’ divide  47 Nevermind (album title, Nirvana’s, 1991)  332–3 New Laddism  343 No Surrender (Alan Bleasdale, 1985)  10, 308–9, 314 Nuts in May (1973)  5, 18, 20, 28, 135, 341–2 Oasis and  340–1 ordinary and extraordinary  181 organic leftist politics, style of  304 Parklife (Blur, 1994)  330, 337 Passport to Pimlico (Henry Cornelius, 1949)  312 Pathé Pictures  22 persona, Leigh’s  26 Piano, The (Jane Campion, 1993)  21 Play for Today, The (BBC television anthology drama series)  5, 17–18 point-of-view (POV) shot  217–18 Potter, Dennis  4 practitioner observations  51–4 preoccupations and predispositions  41 prints and advertising (P&A) costs  25 process, Leigh’s filmmaking  37 producing Mike Leigh  16–24 promotional materials, films  critical ‘word of mouth’  25 encouraging ambiguity  28 featuring director’s name  25 interviews  25–6, 30 Pulp (band)  327 Different Class (1995)  329 ‘I Spy’  328 This Is Hardcore (1998)  329 Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994)  22

357

Quart, Leonard  17, 105, 119, 123, 129 reaction, identity creation through  52 real and movie people, characters  7 realism  Leigh’s style of  5 viewing gender and nationalism  264–9 Rose, David  18 Sandwich Man, The (Robert HartfordDavis, 1966)  312 Sarde, Alain  23 Screamadelica (Primal Scream, 1991)  332 script writing technique  2 Secrets & Lies (1996)  1, 4, 6, 20–2, 29, 99, 138, 200, 212, 342 Alexander Korda BAFTA Award for Best British Film  4 best Original Screenplay for  4 cinematic spaces  209–11 constumes revealing character  96–8 film’s plot  197 Palme D’or (Best Picture) and Best Actress (Brenda Blethyn)  193 as profitable films  22 reframing  193–5 shots conveying chaos and complexity  97 sociocultural spaces of  197–205 space and  195–7 spaces of loss and trauma  205–9 self description  39 self-promotional discourses,  30 Short and Curlies,The (1988)  19 Singing Detective, The (Dennis Potter)  119 social class  49 social realism  1, 7 Leigh and Ken Loach  304 and melodramatic form  174–6 Spall, Timothy  91, 92, 98, 122, 138, 143–4 staged performances  50 ‘state-of-the-nation’ film  311–12 Steadman, Alison  41, 83, 137, 143, 329, 339, 342–3, 345 story formulation  42 StudioCanal  23 subcultures  239, 303

358

Index

Sullivan, A. and Gilbert, W. S. operas and Leigh’s films  anti-realistic confections of  62–3 characterization  61–2 letters between and its depiction in Topsy-Turvy  69 Pirates of Penzance, The  63 Princess Ida  69–70 Trial by Jury, first successful collaboration  65 O’Sullivan, Sean  6–7 ‘symptomatic text’  107 Television series of Leigh,  see The Play for Today (BBC television anthology drama series) Thatcher, Margaret  5, 8, 105, 235, 307 Thatcherism  236, 305, 308–9, 312–13, 317 in Hard Road to Renewal, The  323 theme, frequently used  2 themes  154–8 Thin Man Films  21–4, 26 Topsy-Turvy (1999)  1, 22–3, 27–9, 64, 83, 231 art and truth in  61–2 contrivance and  61 design of mise-en-scène  81–2 finance source and issues  22–3 historical costumes  81 Madame Leon (Alison Steadman)/ Leonora Braham (Shirley Henderson), costumes for production of The Mikado in  83 old-fashioned values and radical anarchy  62–4 period costumes  82 reality in  62 Sullivan and Gilbert  anti-realistic confections of  62–3 characterization  61–2 conflict and Leigh regret of film’s only howler  62–3 Gilbert’s internal creative conflict  68 letters between and its depiction in Topsy-Turvy  69 tension between reality and artifice  72 tradition  173–4 class distinctions and family values  178–80

family tensions  187–9 ordinary and extraordinary  181 social realism and melodramatic form  174–6 structure and regularity  182–3 success and failure as melodramatic excess  183–7 transcendent rebellion  9–10 transference theory  43 transgression and transcendence  153 films  All or Nothing  163–5 Happy-Go-Lucky  165–7 Naked  160–3 Leigh’s methods and modes  158–60 themes  154–8 UK Film Council  21, 23–4 unconscious processes  48–9 uniqueness of ordinary lives  119–31 Vera Drake (2004)  1, 23, 27–8, 83, 86, 179, 231, 304 abortions, issues of  83–4 Academy Awards nomination for  108 costumes of the protagonist in  86 and costuming choices  85–8 examination of reactions to  107–14 Conservative columnist Meghan Cox Gurdon view  112 Guardian column stating medical inaccuracy  112 Human Life Review, The  113 National Catholic Reporter review  111 Steinem’s defense  109 U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), praise  110 medical inaccuracy  112 melodrama and tradition in  173–4 class distinctions and family values  178–80 family tensions  187–9 ordinary and extraordinary  181 social realism and melodramatic form  174–6 structure and regularity  182–3 success and failure as melodramatic excess  183–7

Index melodramatic and Hollywood tradition in  176–8 mise-en-scène in  83 moral ambiguities  111 New York the Golden Lion prize from Venice Film festival  108 tradition  173–4 class distinctions and family values  178–80 family tensions  187–9 ordinary and extraordinary  181 social realism and melodramatic form  174–6 structure and regularity  182–3 success and failure as melodramatic excess  183–7 viewers  5–6 American  5

359

visual imagery  7 visual media  303 Wagner (Tony Palmer, 1984)  20 ‘watermark’  41, 44 Watson, Garry  7 Welcome to the Dollhouse (Todd Solondz, 1995)  22 Who’s Who (1979)  2, 135 Williams, Simon Channing  17, 19–23 Withnail and I (Bruce Robinson, 1987)  248 Word, The (‘youth TV’ programme)  333 working-class characters  127 see also Grown-Ups (1980) Home Sweet Home (1982) W.S. Gilbert: Appearance and Reality (David Eden)  73