The Mike Leigh Poll

I loved it, y'all should watch it. I cried at the end.

Now on Amazon Prime (in the UK at least). I think it's fair to say that Jed's is the majority opinion.

Yeah, I saw the comments.

"a lesser Topsy-Turvy" was all I heard

uh, the tone is rather different....

I could've done with a little less hyperventilating by the villains (that one spitty guy in partic), but he delivered the goods with that climax (never thought I'd see that many extras in a Leigh picture). Also liked the vanity and ego of the Rory Kinnear reform star, and moments like the maid asking "Am I in the picture?" No, you are not.

I can't believe Amazon funded it.

when the two shrews in the doorway yelled "GO 'OME TO YER 'USBANDS!" one can't help but mutter "Trumpists"

i'm sure Amazon will get the National Guard to take care of their packers in a pinch.

one of my top five films of 2019

https://humanizingthevacuum.wordpress.com/2020/02/01/the-best-films-of-2019/

I agree re: Rory Kinnear's performance/character is a wonderfully drawn and played classic melt poseur arsehole! The aftermath scenes are so hard hitting, it's quite a powerful finish. It really stayed with me did this.

it's terrible. full of people explaining what they are going to do, v. embarrassing exposition. Leigh at his worst when he's allowing the upper classes to be utterly ridiculous (as long as he's imagined/written the text) - I'm sure they were, fwiw. There was one scene that made me laugh out loud where one of the magistrate reads a letter to a maid and she says "oh dear" (or something) then walks offscreen, never to be seen again. She's only in the film to listen to the speech. also, the cgi is utter shit.

lol

you laughed at that scene as well?

no no I'm just startled we disagree so hard

me too man! I'm confused!

when he is good, he is very very good.
But when he is bad he is awful.

I'm not sure his good ones are not awful either, fwiw. Secrets and Lies and Vera Drake have some awful stuff about them. Abigail's Party does but it was written as a play so the too-big-stuff about it is excusable. Some people like Nuts in May, after al and I'll never understand that. Career Girls, same. I know Katrin Cartlidge died tragically young but still.

Didn't notice any bad CG, don't be such a fucking gearhead tosser.

I still own a Career Girls t shirt.

in life, people explain what they are going to do quite often

While okay and great Leigh is hard to distinguish, it's hard to think of awful in the last 20 years. Can you give me, jed, examples of awful writing or direction?

(Not an assignment, just genuinely curious!)

Career Girls and Nuts in May are two films I will never tire of.

when he is good, he is very very good.
But when he is bad he is awful.

Ken Loach

Career Girls and Nuts in May are two films I will never tire of.

Nuts in May is untouchable. I wonder why jed hates it – maybe because it's too broad a caricture too caricatured – but God it doesn't matter in this case. But talking of caricature, CG is bad ML imo.

As for Peterloo, for some reason I'm reminded of Americans liking Match Point. I haven't seen either!

Nuts in May should've had a Brexit remake

lol I can't stand Match Point. Someone should've clubbed Allen to death with a tennis racket.

Match Point is awful.

Can well imagine people disliking Nuts In May tbh. Not me though.

I get why some people don't like Career Girls, it has the conspicuously affective performance ramped up to 11, but it's all-time for me, really captures a place and a time in a unique way, and has so many brilliant moments - I kind of see it as a companion piece to Naked.

I apologise for tarring Alfred and Eric with the Match Point-appreciating brush.

I was reading this thread on my phone and thinking have I gone through some wormhole where Mike Leigh directed the godawful Match Point. Was very relieved after a frantic IMDB check.

Ha ha. Sorry fo polluting the whole thread.

jed otm itt. Watched this last night and it was sortof enjoyable in a deadeyed bbc way with loads of semi-recognisable actors hamming it up but was complete antithesis of everything I like about topsy turvy (its baggy improvisatory feel, its digressary construction).

worst things:
the score! twee and saccharine and overbearing.
maxine peake and her exposition-spouting family (I usually like maxine peake, although I'm starting to get sick of her playing the exact same character and wearing the exact same hat). There are a number of these 2-dimensional 'noble' characters (such as the guardian journalists excitedly founding theguardian.com at the end) prattling on flatly throughout. They sortof appear every now and then, as if Leigh has been reminded that he needs to connect the plot more explicitly to historical context and often results in tritely presented scenes like the egg bartering at the beginning (we do not remain interested in the household accounts of the maxine peakes, this single egg-buying experience is supposed to account for quite a bit here.). The film seems as bored of these characters as I was but prefers to snigger at the hammy 'characters' in a way I found pretty repulsive and boring.
casual mysogyny: unless you are a saintly pragmatic female main character, you are likely to be an imbecile or a shrew. I find this to be the single most damning thing in leigh's films, and doubly weird that he made such a complex film about the politics of abortion (vera drake) considering how frequently his characterisations of women are so hateful. in this one the 'dimwit maid' character really stood out. How can someone insert characters like that and still be considered (a) interested in realism and (b) to be some sort of figurehead of progressivism in britain*?

Its disappointing because the historical events are interesting, and the contemporary resonances many (the spying on progressive movements, the authoritarianism and paranoia of the british ruling class etc) and at the very least the film seems to have somewhat restored the events to more mainstream knowledge in the uk (hopefully somewhat durably).

*don't answer this one

Fascinating, and I couldn't disagree more strongly.

I suspect that some of the things I find most egregious about Leigh might not be so legible if you haven't spent much time in the UK (especially England), although I think his weird women issues would be obvious to an alien.

Just watched Career Girls for the first time, having seen most of his other films. This seem quite poor. The student year scenes I found excruciatingly bad and the mature years were ok - but not just enough chemistry between Hannah and Annie to make it interesting. The 'coincidences' or meeting former college acquaintances just seemed to be mostly a mess (or a miss).

The acting in the "young" scenes in Career Girls must be some of the worst (or most misguided) ever done by talented actors. I literally could not understand why they were talking and gesturing in such contrived ways. 20 years later, I'm no wiser. Was it meant to show how precocious they were? Were the viewers meant to hate the characters as much as I did?

Didn't expect to read Mr. Turner as an idiosyncratic exegesis on creativity, depression and the anguish that runs through them but by the end I was kinda wrecked by it.

Really need a supercut of Spall's variety of grunts - whether as exclamation, criticism, joy, sadness, or all the nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, and conjunctions.