- Life Is Sweet
Tomorrow night at the Tivoli in Downers Grove, the After Hours Film Society hosts a screening of Mike Leigh’s latest film, Mr. Turner. In many ways, Leigh’s unique process is just as famous as his work: He and his actors go to prepare extensively in preproduction, working on characters and scenarios even before a script is written, often utilizing improv techniques to give the story a more spontaneous nature. As such, the movies have a life of their own, but the vibrancy of Leigh’s filmography goes deeper than just the kitchen-sink realism he’s come to perfect. Leigh is often labeled a humanist filmmaker, and though that’s certainly true, he refuses to romanticize, idealize, or politicize the nature of being human. His films are only political insofar as the characters in them often discuss politics, but there’s no agenda to serve, no party line to toe, just the notion that human beings are as tied to challenge as they are reward, as attached to suffering as they are to comfort. In many cases, Leigh presents such paradoxical notions as one in the same. In an interview with the critic David Sterritt, the director said, “life is abrasive for a lot of people, and there’s no getting round it. I think the 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.” Below, you can find my five favorite Mike Leigh films.
- Mr. Turner (2014) Actor Timothy Spall has appeared in most of Leigh’s films, but he’s never been better than he is here, playing English painter J.M.W. Turner. Rich in immersive period detail, the film is both a brilliant re-creation of 19th-century England and one of the most richly filmic representations of an artist’s work. Working with Pope yet again, Leigh wrangles light and landscape with his camera in the same the way Turner did with his canvas, and the results are consistently stunning. Easily the best of the director’s recent films.
