#890: LEIGH, Mike: Meantime (1984)

LEIGH, Mike (United Kingdom)
Meantime [1984]
Spine #890
Blu-ray

A slow-burning depiction of economic degradation in Thatcher's England, Mike Leigh's Meantime is the culmination of the writer-director's pioneering work in television. Unemployment is rampant in London's working-class East End, where a middle-aged couple and their two sons languish in a claustrophobic public-housing flat. As the brothers (Phil Daniels and Tim Roth) grow increasingly disaffected, Leigh punctuates the grinding boredom of their daily existence with tense encounters, including with a priggish aunt (Marion Bailey) who has managed to become middle-class and a blithering skinhead on the verge of psychosis (a scene-stealing Gary Oldman, in his first major role). Informed by Leigh's now trademark improvisational process and propelled by the lurching rhythms of its Beckett-like dialogue, Meantime is an unrelenting, often blisteringly funny look at life on the dole.

107 minutes

Color
Monaural
1:66:1 aspect ratio

Criterion Release 2017

Director/Writer

Mike Leigh was 41 when he devised and directed Meantime.

Other Leigh films in the Collection:

#659: Life Is Sweet (1990)
#307: Naked (1993)
#1070: Secrets & Lies (1996)
#558: Topsy-Turvy (1999)

The Film

A

Film Rating (0-60):

60

The Extras

The Booklet

Twelve-page wraparound featuring an essay by film scholar Sean O’Sullivan.

Commentary

None.

Conversation 1

Between Leigh and musician Jarvis Cocker.

Conversation 2

Between actor Bailey and critic Amy Raphael.

Interview

From 2007 with actor Roth.

Extras Rating (0-40):

39

60 + 39 =

99

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