Even in the context of succesful followers, Mike Leigh remains unique by his
genial ability to travel within the same film from deep anxiety to sparkling
humor.

Often called the 'Ionesco from the working class', British director Mike
Leigh (1942) managed to synthetize, in a very personal way, the British
tradition of social film on one hand, and the tradition of modern literature of
absurd on the other. Developing his creative method, he skillfully evolved from
humor, across tragedy, to melodrama. In the course of three decades, Leigh
imposed himself as one of the most fascinating contemporary European filmmakers.
Honestly speaking, if today's European film has any great directors, Mike Leigh
is one of them, one of the few – shoulder to shoulder with Almodovar, Von Trier,
Haneke, or Bel Tarr.

Mike Leigh's career is typical for British directors of his generation. He stood
out already with his first film, a disturbing family drama, Bleak Moments,
from 1971. Similar to Loach and Frears, during the next decade he worked mostly
for television. Like many other British authors, his true success came in the
Margaret Thatcher era, when Leigh and many other filmmakers stood up against
injustice and commonness of the Thatcher era. Ever since the 1960s to Billy
Elliot, British social filmmakers imbued the notion of working class with
romanticism; Leigh had no such illusions. As an observer of life, he was
uncompromising enough to state the reality of affairs. Degradation of his
marginal characters does not occur only on economic level, it happens on both
the civilization and human levels. His working classes are not just short of
money; their material scarcity also generates another form of deprivation: lack
of humanity. Bitter and dissatisfied, his working class Brits bite each other,
accuse and torture each other. They spurt their unhappiness on their siblings in
accordance with Sartre’s saying ‘Hell is other people’.

Moving from such ruthless analysis, over the following three decades, Leigh
elegantly evolved from the angry radical to an intelligent mainstream author.
His early films such as Bleak Moments or Hard Labour were almost
non-narrative, extremist, and indescribably black. The crowning work of this
phase was Meantime (1983), a film that launched three wonderful actors:
Tim Roth, Gary Oldman, and Alfred Molina. At the beginning of 1990s, at the
Cannes festival, Naked (1993) brought Leigh the award for best director.
It was a film in which social level stepped aside in favor of existentialism and
the drama of ‘the surplus man’ in the manner of Great Russian romanticists. At
that point, Leigh was a world-renowned director. Without making any crucial
changes in his interests or methods, in the nineties he got closer to the
mainstream and introduced a ray of sentiment in his dark worlds. Secrets and
Lies and All or Nothing were in that sense probably best contemporary
European melodramas. Leigh’s characters in those films were equally bitter and
estranged from authentic togetherness. But – Leigh bestows upon them a flicker
of catharsis, offers them a solution through the blessing of communication and
affirmation of family. Timothy Spall became Leigh’s trademark and hero,
portraying in his films vulnerable good-hearted fellows craving for the warmth
of their siblings.

Once, at a Cannes festival, a journalist asked Mike Leigh how, after so many
decades, his films still appeared credible and authentic. Leigh answered: ‘…
because I do not live in California, in a grand house with a pool. I still live
in London. I still take the underground every day. And believe me, if you rode
in that train every day, you would see tens of film stories revolving before
your eyes on daily basis.’ Although true, Leigh’s answers present only a
fragment of the truth. Destructive feeling of truthfulness we feel emanating
from Leigh’s films is not simply a result of director’s choice of
transportation. It is primarily product of specifically Leigh’s creative
methods. In Leigh’s films actors do not simply scream out text of the
screenplay. As in some alternative theatrical troupe, screenplay of Leigh’s
films builds itself through weeks and weeks of rehearsals, and the creative
synergy of the director and the cast which improvises and explores until they
finally find words that are true extensions of the characters and situations.
The method demands extensive use of time and an engaged cast. But when the
method comes to life, the result is that Leigh-like impression of realism,
unattainable by any contemporary filmmaker: the impression that you have entered
someone’s dining room, that you are actually peeping over someone’s shoulder
into his TV program, or that you are listening the neighbors fighting through a
thin wall. It is no wonder that Leigh’s no-script method infected many young
filmmakers, often eliciting excellent results. Michael Winterbottom’s
Wonderland, Andreas Dresen’s Halbe, or Nataša Rajković and Boba
Jelčić’s theatrical shows are only some of the examples how this method can
achieve a similar effect of amazing credibility. Even in the context of
successful followers, Mike Leigh remains unique for his genial ability to travel
from deep anxiety to sparkling humor, from rigorous social analysis to the slow
music worthy of paper tissues. As some have objected – it may be that Leigh is
always making one and the same film, but it varies in so many different
registers that it is never boring or monotonous. It may sound strange coming
from a strict art-filmmaker, but the author of this text simply has to allow
that some of Mike Leigh’s films present, apart from everything else, the
ultimate in film fun. (Jurica Pavičić)