The Films of Mike Leigh

Cambridge Film Classics

by Ray Carney

The Films of Mike Leigh is the first critical study of one of the most important and eccentric directors of British independent filmmaking. Although active since 1971, Leigh has only come to the attention of an international audience in the 1990s through films such as Secrets and Lies, and Career Girls. The authors examine Leigh's working method and films in the intellectual and social contexts in which they were created. All of Leigh's major box office successes are analyzed, interpreted, and shown to be among the finest examples of cinema.

Genres: Film, Media Tie In

304 pages, Paperback

First published June 19, 2000

About the author

Ray Carney is an American scholar and critic, primarily known for his work as a film theorist, although he writes extensively on American art and literature as well. He is known for his study of the works of actor and director John Cassavetes. He teaches in the American Studies department at Boston University and has published several books on American art and philosophy.

Reviews

[Paul Bryant]

In interviews Mike Leigh comes across as a pompous buffoon puffed up with a full and mature sense of how totally important he is as an artist, film maker and observer of humanity in all its sadness and indignity and yet indomitable can't-go-on must-go-onness ; he makes you think that if humanity had not have existed, he, Mike Leigh, would have toiled day and night for decades to invent it in order that he could film it in all its sadness and indignity and yet indomitable can't-go-on must-go-onness. This limousine liberal chump is the last person I'd be going to dinner at eight with unless I could sprinkle his foi gras starter with powdered glass.

However, he can make really great films. And perhaps unsurprisingly, he can also make really shit ones too. Here's how it pans out.

THE FILMS OF MIKE FULL OF HIMSELF LEIGH RATED OUT OF TEN

Bleak Moments (1971) - this is like an amazing caricature, has to be seem to be believed but my advice is, don't 0/10

Hard Labour (1973) - not seen

Nuts in May (BBC Play for Today, 13/01/1976) - tv play but included because it's a brillant study of cringemaking uptightness - 8/10

Abigail's Party (BBC Play for Today, 01/11/1977) - the big hit - another brilliant study of cringemaking uptightness with hideous sexual embarrassment thrown into the mix - 9/10

Kiss of Death (1977) - not seen

Who's Who (1978) - not seen

Grown-Ups (1980) - brilliant study of kids who are shacking up together before either of them know how to turn a cooker on. 8/10

Home Sweet Home (1982) - not seen

Meantime (1983) - not seen

High Hopes (1988) - sweet and so sad, this is a perfect movie to sum up life under Thatcher - 10/10

Life Is Sweet (1990) - perfect follow up - how fuckedupness can blossom forth from the happiest of families who if they're lucky can - finally - bit by bit - begin to heal the wounds. Great performances all round but that's kind of expected by now. 10/10

Naked (1993) - horrible sexist piece of shit which I haven't seen in years & don't want to, thanks; some kind of howl of political pain in which the anger seems to be directed against women - sounds familiar? yep, thought so - 0/10

Secrets & Lies (1996) - okay, this won awards - whilst i didn't buy the central casting (can a white woman give birth to a baby who inherits none of her racial characteristics at all? I don't know but it seems unlikely) - still, pretty solid stuff although not as wonderful as the previous two - 7/10

Career Girls (1997) - another drop dead gem - more sad sweet heartbreaking observations on English naffness and young people's naffness - I love this one - 10/10

Topsy-Turvy (1999) - not seen but it's about Gilbert & Sullivan, euch

All or Nothing (2002) - total miseryfest, total self parody - Mike, either stop taking the tablets or take twice as many - 2/10

Vera Drake (2004) - very solid - I was prepared to hate this one as being way too worthy (all about abortion when it was illegal) but the damn thing won me over - see it - 8/10

Happy-Go-Lucky (2008) - modest, so modest it would never look you in the eye, and practically perfect - a film about how it IS possible to life your life and have it be not horrible, even in these latter days - see it - now I'm sounding like a rabid Mike Leigh fan but I'm just telling you how it is - 9/10

Another Year (2010) - this got the critics dripping from every orifice but actually this is like Mike Leigh in his interviews, smug, self satisfied and unbearable - 0/10

There you go.

[Elena Sala · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mike Leigh is a filmmaker generally thought of as a satirist or social commentator, but it is the argument of this book that this is a limited way to understand his work.
Ray Carney loves Leigh's cinema and profoundly dislikes mainstream American films. In this critical study of Leigh's cinema, Carney focuses in its elusive quality: Leigh captures the ordinary moment, the everyday drama of interaction never shown in Hollywood films because it occurs between the "heroic" moments of the plot.
According to Carney, Americans are usually perplexed by a cinema in which nothing seems to happen. Carney argues that the Hollywood model is basically dishonest, for this reason, it does little to help understand the problems of our day-to-day lives. The perfect counter-model is embodied in the film's of Mike Leigh. In this book he brilliantly explains how the Hollywood model works and compares it to Leigh's cinema.
"Hollywood understands life as essentially a matter of competition, achievement and reward", Carney suggests. Leigh rejects struggle and competition as sources of value. He is interested in his characters' ability to interact sensitively, not in pitting them against each other
Leigh's characters, according to Carney, are not transparent, one-dimensional subjects who know exactly what they think and want and simply proceed to go about getting it. No, they are opaque to themselves and to the viewer. The model of the human subject proposed by Leigh is one much closer to the truth and one in which we can recognise ourselves.
This was the first study of Leigh's films published, so unfortunately, only his major works until "Naked" (1993) are treated. However, Carney's analysis is brilliant and it not only sheds insight into Leigh's films but also teaches you how to watch the portrayal of character in a more critical way.
This book is not only recommended for people who love Mike Leigh's films, but for those interested in Hollywood's directorial methods as well.

[Willsy Waites · Rating 4 out of 5]

He took so many shots at Hitchcock kind of loved that, but then he went after Fargo and I was like hold up fucko

[Nicole]

Carney doesn't actually cite attachment theory (Gottman), but his method of evaluating characters according to their mental flexibility seems to come straight from one of the major schools of psychology (and I don't mean the kind usually taken up by film studies folks, I mean mainstream counseling practice). This is a really fascinating approach, but I wish it were in dialogue with a lot more theory or philosophy and other writers (including Mike Leigh, who talks so much about his work). It's so heavily systematized that it ends up lacking the kind of flexibility exemplified in Leigh's directing style, which Carney praises so highly.