Mike Leigh Double Feature

This entry was conceived for the students at my school.  The crew of bloggers I advise (I use that term VERY loosely) invited me to guest blog, so I thought I ought to just do whatever it is I do (admittedly slightly toned down in the interest of job security)...

Before we get going here, I just want to thank and congratulate my once-upon-a-time Creative Writing student, Molly Cinnamon, and her crew of H-W voices on a terrific first year.  You did it! 
It’s quite the honor to be invited to join these voices.  Since I dabble in bloggery myself (at last count I have more than half a dozen followers!), I’ll offer up the autobiographical film fandom approach I semi-regularly revisit on the blog: Q-Bump.  The purpose of the blog I share with lifelong collaborator, John Maurer, is to champion great films, films that may otherwise have slipped under the radar of the busy film buff, while noting how each impacts our admittedly stormy internal landscapes as new(ish) parents and struggling writers. 

You see, as fathers to young children (we each have a son and daughter—that’s 4 total under the age of 5), we have no social lives.  Dinner out, what?  We don’t go to shows anymore.  We don’t even go to movies.  The Cinema!  That great refuge of the imagination and psychological escape—alas, it’s now my living room and my Netflix Queue, thus the name of our blog which implies…Bump it to the top of your queue!  I don’t know if I’m convincing anyone, but darn it, I care an awful lot.

So, in that spirit, what follows is a must see double feature from a filmmaker who… yes, cares an AWFUL LOT. 

1.

Title: Secrets & Lies
Writer/Director: Mike Leigh
Year: 1996
Starring: Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Brenda Blethyn (I’m a BB fan club member), Timothy Spall, Phyllis Logan, and Claire Rushbrook’s permanent grimace. 

In the entire universe of film, there exist only three filmmakers whose planets I could inhabit indefinitely without need for food or sleep—each quintessentially American, British, and French, respectively. I’m talking about Robert Altman, Mike Leigh, and Francois Truffaut.  I could just have easily picked a double feature from Altman or Truffaut for this rant (maybe Nashville & M.A.S.H. from fellow Missourian Altman, or Small Change and Day for Night from Truffaut), but something tells me those two icons get more love and traffic than the decidedly less flashy Mike Leigh.  Despite sharing an alma mater with Altman (go tigers!), it’s Leigh who feels like my great uncle, projecting his working class Londoners onto the screen as if in a black box theater.  There is no escape, as the first title might suggest, from the psyches of the players; and for two hours, they become your family too.  You might find that cathartically appealing or completely repelling, but either way, it’s simply great filmmaking.  The dialogue crackles, the camera rests in brutal stillness, and the silence allows the actors’ expressions to drive daggers right through the rib cage. 

In Secrets & Lies, 30ish Hortense has just discovered she was adopted.  Her attempt to find her mother and reconcile her questions of personal identity is the engine of the movie, but the keys belong to Cynthia, played by the insanely brilliant Brenda Blethyn.  All roads lead to and through the nutty, lonely, wounded, obsessed, possessive, yet strangely kind hearted Cynthia.  For days afterward, you might just find yourself in conversation, for no apparent reason, adding Blethyn’s desperately cockney sweet’art! to the end of every question and declaration.  I suspect it’s not just those of us who have a “crazy English” side of our family who will find Cynthia more than familiar (and haunting).  Even if she’s not an exact match for anyone in your particular tree, chances are her combination of injured martyrdom and frenzied need for love will strike a tearful chord.  Oh Sweet’art! 

Q-Bump is not about spoiling plot, or even explaining plot at all, but rather takes the “just trust me” approach.  We can’t be sure, but we’re hopeful that we earn it with the vigor of our cheerleading.  So I’ll end this rah-rah-sis-boom-bah for Secrets & Lies by saying that any fan of the great, subtle, human performance will have to spend at least 15 minutes in some kind of “safe room” when the credits roll.

2.

Title: Happy-Go-Lucky
Writer/Director: Mike Leigh
Year: 2008
Starring: Sally Hawkins (anyone want to start a fan club—let me know), Eddie Marsan, and Alexis Zegerman

The concept of this fantastic smile and outright gut-laugh inducing film easily could have been a Hollywood rom-com from the Meg Ryan era.  I don’t know, maybe you throw Dennis Leary in there, and you’ve got 90 minutes of an entertaining, fairly schmaltzy, mostly forgettable, post-Harry/Sally affair.  Bright and cheery and cute girl meets angry and cynical but ultimately good guy. Thank goodness (in this case Mike Leigh) that didn’t happen. 

Hey, you know what, I’ll admit it, I like French Kiss.  But just you try, you film kids, just try to watch Sleepless in Seattle more than once.  Or just try to even get through You’ve Got Mail without regurgitating.  If you can do that, you are infinitely more tolerant and magnanimous than I—no great achievement, but still.

Here with a swig of Pepto Bismal and a knee-gash-sized band-aid for all of it is Poppy, played by an inspired and inspiring Sally Hawkins.  If I could guarantee that Poppy would be there on my son’s first day of kindergarten (she’s an elementary teacher in the film), instead of whoever it is that waits behind door #3, I’d snatch her up in a heartbeat.  Alas, Poppy is not for everyone in this ultra-jaded world—least of all Scott, her driving teacher, played by an equally inspired and unnerving Eddie Marsan.  You see, much to Poppy’s chagrin, her bike was lifted off the street; and now, she reasons it’s time to learn how to drive.  Though the movie floats along with effervescence for the first 15 minutes, it doesn’t begin in earnest until Poppy gets behind the wheel with Scott. 

The world hasn’t been kind to Scott, nor has Scott been kind to the world.  Poppy’s very being both infuriates and tantalizes him, as she mocks his absurd, ruthless authority as driving teacher; which, along with his indignation and bigotry, is all he has left in the world.  It’s this dynamic that separates Leigh’s approach from what we’d see in star driven fluffiness.  Where we might cringe at others’ attempts to reconcile cheerfulness vs. rage, we can trust Mike Leigh to give it to us straight, unrelenting, but always with an eye for humor. 

You know the showdown is coming between these polar opposites, and you honestly don’t know how it’s going to turn out.  To not be ahead of a movie like this, essentially a comedy, to feel actual danger—that is the beauty of Mike Leigh.  That, and his ability to pull ridiculously genius performances from every one of his actors, no matter how large or small the part. 

If ever life is just starting to feel just a tad bit phony, just not quite as authentic as you’d like, do yourself a favor and take a walk down Leigh St.  It’s not always pretty—maybe it’s rarely more than tolerable—but it’s often hilarious, and it’s always real. 

Ryan Wilson