Nuts in May - made for TV

 

Director Mike Leigh

Leigh with Alison Steadman and Roger Sloman

NUTS IN MAY – made for TV                    B+                                                                           Great Britain  (81 mi)  1976  d: Mike Leigh        episode of BBC “Play for Today”

You’re breaking the laws of the campsite and the laws of the country code.                                —Keith Pratt (Roger Sloman)

Basically the template for Ben Wheatley’s hilariously dark road trip spiraling out of control in Sightseers (2012), as after making his film debut with Bleak Moments (1971), Leigh took a 17-year hiatus from feature filmmaking and instead worked exclusively for British television filming his own plays, mostly for the BBC English Regions Drama department (ERD) when it was led by the renowned producer, David Rose, during what is often described as the ‘golden age’ of British television.  Having studied acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London during the early 1960’s, his interest in writing and directing led him to switch schools several times, ultimately graduating from the London School of Film Technique (now the London Film School) in 1965.  About that time he began developing a method for creating narratives that relied upon extensive rehearsals and actors’ improvisations to manufacture characters and conflict in an organic manner, where instead of focusing on a traditional storyline, his films rely intensely on characters, explored with as much detail as possible, which would become a signature feature of Leigh’s working method for the rest of his career, Mike Leigh Arena Making Plays The Life And Work Of Mike ... YouTube (1:20:44).  This is almost certainly the best known of the low-budget, BBC Pebble Mill’s Plays for Today, along with Abigail’s Party (1977), a taped version of the pre-existing stage production, where the subtlety and uniqueness of these films have long been overlooked, seemingly made on a shoestring budget, small in scale, dealing with daily domestic life and relationships, yet never given the same critical attention as his features, though some of Britain’s best directors made a significant portion of their films for television, most shot very quickly on 16mm, which would include Stephen Frears, Ken Loach, Peter Greenaway, Alan Clarke, and Richard Eyre.  Mike Leigh’s first television drama for ERD was a half-hour studio piece called Permissive Society in 1975, which led to this film, both notable for having no musical score.  At first, a lot of BBC staff were rather dubious of Mike Leigh’s improvisatory way of working, with the crew suggesting there’s a guy down there in the studio and they’re making it up as they go along, but what they were missing is Leigh’s careful observation of the actors interacting as the characters and developing storylines from those interactions.  David Rose originated from Dorset and wanted to depict the region, offering a sense of place, reflecting the life and culture outside of London. There seemed to be few writers from the South West and therefore Leigh was invited to make a film set around the Isle of Purbeck.  Focusing on the suburban south, Leigh’s ability to create chillingly convincing middle-class monsters emerges here, and while this is the lighter side of Mike Leigh, it has darker implications, filled with wicked humor, funny and painful at the same time, featuring characters who are hilariously unlikeable, offering observations on class and society in a more humorously imaginative yet still coherent and meaningful way, perhaps the only straightforward comedy Leigh has ever made, arguably the definitive work about the British camping holiday, where a pleasant journey into the countryside seeking a quiet refuge from the noise and industrial pollution in London produces catastrophic results.  As he has often insisted, there is no “them” in Leigh’s work, where we are always meant to see ourselves in every calamity, as Hell is never reserved for other people, yet tolerating them may feel like it.

With the great outdoors beckoning, this film captures the Back-to-the-land movement of the 1970’s as a backdrop, with substantial numbers of people migrating from cities to rural areas, associated with hippie communes and the Summer of Love, The Whole Earth Catalog, and Mother Earth News in the USA, while in the UK it was rooted in a desire for self-sufficiency and reconnecting with nature with an increased ecological awareness, encompassing various aspects, including organic farming, homesteading, and a search for a simpler life, where it was viewed as a countercultural response to the perceived ills of modern urban life and industrial society.  This film reminds us that 1970’s television was much more progressive and thought provoking, more welcoming to unorthodox ideas, freed from objectionable restrictions, allowing greater experimentation, and was actually a breeding ground for budding artists.  Ordinary lives are given dimension and complexity here because Leigh has a gift for using the close-up, speech patterns, and the silence of his characters to explore under the surface in order to capture the essence of who they are.  Like Ken Loach, an avowed socialist, both are independent filmmakers known for portraying the working class experience, yet Leigh’s films often have a comic and satiric edge, not as overtly political as Loach, accentuating the personal, creating a world too ambiguous and rife with contradictions to offer political alternatives or easy answers, focusing instead on a depiction of dramatic interactions and behavior, more intent on raising questions and possibilities rather than offering any political or social solutions.  While extending his deepest sympathies for his working class characters, many behave badly, victimize themselves, and live pathetic, constricted lives.  In a Mike Leigh film nothing comes easy, as his characters’ flaws never disappear, continuing to grate on the nerves of the audience, where this film follows the path of liberal do-gooders who narrow-mindedly flaunt their moral superiority, immersed in a fantasized Walden utopia that turns their social consciousness on its ear in this blistering satire of British middle class attitudes and manners, becoming a study of class antagonism and the insecurities of masculinity.  The young married couple at the center of this drama are Alison Steadman (married at the time to the director, also in Abigail’s Party) and Roger Sloman as Candice Marie and Keith Pratt, a maddeningly self-righteous and opinionated couple from Croydon going car-camping in the English countryside, where one thing that’s undeniably clear is that the characters are etched so vividly that they lived on in the memories of the audience for many years afterwards, so they really stand out.   Candice Marie, who works in a toy store, is that shy and submissive, artsy type who spends her time drawing, painting, or collecting shells from the shoreline of the Jurassic Coast, while also composing inane songs that sound more like goofy jingles, always playing second fiddle to her obsessional, anal retentive husband Keith, a patronizing, pompous, and domineering control freak who always treats her like a child and is what we commonly call a know-it-all, having organized their 10-day journey with great precision, refusing to budge from the itinerary, where his reasoning is “What’s the point of having a schedule if you don’t stick to it?”  Inexplicably, his reading material at bedtime is The Guinness Book of Records.   

Listed at #63 from Time Out’s list of Best British Movies | 100 Best British Films of All Time, the drama is generated simply by being who they are as opposed to arising out of actions, where Keith is a doofus, yet the interest lies not in anything he does in any given moment, but who he remains throughout, a mirror image of the snobbish and deeply repressed John Cleese in Fawlty Towers or Monty Python skits with its devastatingly awkward humor.  The first thing that stands out is their car, which they have packed to the gills, a 1961 Morris Minor 1000 convertible, known for its iconic design and “Englishness.”  Right from the outset there is drama in how they interact with each other, as we see them traipsing around Corfe Castle with its numbered landmark spots along the way, where we see them absurdly arguing over who should hold the castle’s guidebook, with Keith refusing to relinquish control, always rushing ahead, leaving Candice Marie behind as she struggles to keep up, totally dependent upon whatever information he’s willing to share, usually shouted from a distance, so immediately we’re aware of the imbalance of power.  While they’re folk-singing vegetarian types, the kind who lecture other people on the evils of eating meat, also non-smokers, but the kind who enjoy describing tar-caked lungs to anyone they see smoking, with Keith swearing that food needs to be chewed 72 times before swallowing, as if that’s a proven scientific fact, while also jotting down every expenditure in his ledger, their vacation idyll is interrupted by another vacationer, Ray (Anthony O’Donnell), who has set up his tent right next to theirs, blaring the transistor radio, even though he’s not really listening to it.  When they ask him to turn it off, he simply refuses, leaving Keith fuming, as if betrayed by the commoners, so they move their tent farther away.  On an excursion to Stair Hole and Durdle Door, a famous natural limestone arch that can be seen standing erect along the coastline, they end up getting drenched by the rain, stopping their car for a pedestrian who turns out to be Ray, with Candice Marie taking a friendly interest while Keith simply refuses to speak to him.  Her attempts to be social infuriate Keith, whose dogmatic obstinance is nothing less than jealous outrage, so when she invites him over afterwards for a cup of tea, Keith bullies him into joining them for a singalong, which couldn’t be more absurdly irritating, where that tortured expression on Ray’s hapless face is priceless, Zoo Song - Nuts in May[Mike Leigh] YouTube (3:30).  Disinterest is something that Keith clearly doesn’t notice or care about.  When an even noisier couple from the Midlands arrives on their motorbike, Finger (Stephen Bill) and Honky (Sheila Kelley), chaotically sharing the same space, refusing to go to bed quietly, with alcohol flowing freely leading to loud, boisterous sexual activity, Keith simply loses it.  Flouting the “country code,” he attempts to make a citizen’s arrest the next day when they have the unmitigated gall to build a fire, which is forbidden, of course, as tempers flare, where his embarrassing frustration boils over into Monty Pythonesque hysteria, quickly becoming the butt of their jokes, which only pisses him off even more, causing them to leave altogether, completely fed up with all these horrible people, yet in reality they cannot escape the horror of other people, which may as well be a prescient metaphor for Brexit.  Nothing earthshaking happens here, where Americans are often perplexed by a cinema in which nothing seems to happen, though Leigh’s drama of transformation is rooted in the layered rehearsal of interpersonal dynamics observed with the patience of Japanese director Yasujirō Ozu, but it’s impossible to forget just how easily the characters continually get under our skin, making this a small gem of a movie that continues to impress even after all these years.  Rare and hard to find, but well worth the effort.    

Nuts In May (1976) : Mike Leigh  YouTube (1:20:58)

Nuts In May (1976) with commentary by Mike Leigh  YouTube (1:20:58)

Far From the Madding Crowd (2015)

FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD                B+               
Great Britain  USA  (119 mi)  2015  ‘Scope  d:  Thomas Vinterberg             Official site

Far From the madding crowd’s ignoble strife
Their sober wishes never learn’d to stray;
Along the cool sequester’d vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.

"Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard", by Thomas Gray, 1751 (excerpt)

An epic and sweeping romantic story of long-repressed love, based on the 19th century Thomas Hardy novel set in the Victorian period of the 1870’s, his fourth and first successful novel, listed at #10 in a 2007 Guardian poll (Emily Brontë hits the heights in poll to find greatest love story) of the greatest love stories of all time, which follows the exploits of a feisty, determined, and extremely independent woman, Carey Mulligan as Bathsheba Everdene, initially seen confidently riding a horse galloping through the English countryside of rural Dorset, supposedly 200 miles from London, where the idyllic pastoral beauty of south and southwest England is described in the book as Wessex, based on the real locations of the author’s birthplace but given a somewhat fictionalized and dreamlike embellishment.  Hard to believe this is the same director whose “vow of chastity” forsook the indulgences of special effects, musical scores, props or sets, special lighting, post-production modifications and other technical wizardry as one of the original founders of the short-lived Dogme 95 movement, the maker of THE CELEBRATION (FESTEN) (1998), one of a small cadre of artists insisting upon naturalism, accentuating the artistry of the performers instead of the influence of the studio.  While authenticity was the goal then, this film has all the Hollywood grandeur and style of big budget spectacles made during the height of the studio era, though made for a fraction of the cost.  Nonetheless, the look of the film is spellbinding, all shot on actual 35 mm film (and it shows!), beautifully captured by the luminous and vividly textured cinematography of Charlotte Bruus Christensen, who also shot Vinterberg’s previous film The Hunt (Jagten) (2012).  As Hardy’s most pastoral novel, a good portion of the book consists of detailed descriptions of the landscape and farming techniques, expressed in the movie through the visuals of green rolling hills and an attachment to the land that is everpresent throughout, paying homage to Dovzhenko’s EARTH (1930) with utterly spectacular shots of peasants working in the fields, yet captured here in glorious color, where the painterly images of harvest scenes are perhaps only exceeded by Terrence Malick’s gloriously filmed masterpiece DAYS OF HEAVEN (1978).  While adapting Jane Austen novels may be the preferred pre-Victorian author to grace the cinema screens, usually given a more modernist, feminist perspective, Thomas Hardy has hardly been shortchanged, as Michael Winterbottom’s JUDE (1996), an ultra bleak adaptation of Hardy’s final 1896 novel Jude the Obscure, starring a hauntingly beautiful 20-year old Kate Winslet, remains one of the extraordinary romantic tragedies on record.  Hardy novels don’t typically result in upbeat, feelgood movies, as it’s clear Victorian women had fewer choices, so those that actually made the best of their limited options were seen as stronger and more aggressive, making excellent role models for the women of today, and while this may not have the awesome visual power of Roman Polanski’s TESS (1979), whose majestic agricultural scenes are also compared to Malick ("Girl, interrupted; Roman Polanski's Tess (1979)"), Mulligan’s fiercely winning performance is far more likely to produce smiles rather than tears. 

Without providing any backdrop for the story, Bathsheba is educated, self-aware, and essentially a modern young woman living on her own with her aunt, having a chance meeting with a neighboring sheep farmer, the introverted, muscular, and hardworking Gabriel Oak (Matthias Schoenaerts) who is taken by her somewhat out-of-character, bold and proudly defiant manner.  They develop a quick friendship, where he makes a surprisingly blunt proposal of marriage, claiming the farm he leases could easily become their home.  While flattered, she’s afraid to give up her independence, something she values more than a husband.  The winds of change offer each of them a unique twist of fate, where Bathsheba inherits a mammoth estate in Weatherbury from her uncle, one of the largest farms in the region, making her instantly wealthy, while in a dreamlike sequence a crazed and inexperienced sheep dog drives Gabriel’s sheep over a high cliff, a scene made especially dramatic over the rugged coastline of the Golden Cap, killing them all while leaving him penniless.  Traveling the roads, looking for a job, he comes upon a blazing fire in the night, where he immediately pitches in and actually saves the barn almost singlehandedly by daringly putting out the fire on the roof.  In the aftermath, when asking the owner for a job, he’s surprised to learn it’s Bathsheba, their positions now reversed.  She hires him as the foreman in charge, while she is almost never seen again without her own trusted maidservant Liddy (Jessica Barden), from whom she learns all the latest gossip and news.  Together they form a female alliance against a bartering monopoly of men, who customarily do all the buying and selling of crops along with the various necessities, including her neighboring landowner William Boldwood (Michael Sheen), a prosperous farmer who is proud and aloof and likely more than twice her age.  Despite this difference, he is smitten by her playful and zestful charm, stirring emotions he felt were altogether lost.  Offering to combine their estates through marriage, she views it more as a business decision than a matter of the heart, stringing him along while she seeks better offers, which arrives on her doorstep in the form of a gallant soldier, Sergeant Francis Troy (Tom Sturridge), who fits the bill as a dashing Prince Charming.  While Gabriel sees through the young man’s veneer and warns Bathsheba not to get too interested, she’s aroused by his charm and masculinity, and perhaps his scarlet red uniform, which he displays in an erotic display of swordsmanship.  Knowing little to nothing about him, she loses all self control and finds herself lost in her sudden euphoria, marrying him on the spot, an impulsive act she lives to regret, discovering the pain and humiliation of realizing she can’t control the repulsive actions of others, as Troy quickly leaves her in debt with excessive drinking and gambling problems.  When a woman from his past suddenly reappears, but just as quickly dies in childbirth while carrying Troy’s child, he shuns his new wife, brazenly telling her “This woman is more to me, dead as she is, than ever you were, or are, or can be.”

When her husband puts an end to his misery, leaving his uniform onshore and swimming out as far as the fates would have him, his death is considered no loss to anyone.  Boldwood renews his interest in pursuing Bathsheba, willing to pay off all her husband’s debts, even agreeing to allow Gabriel to run both farms, as his closeness to Bathsheba is evident, loyal, overprotective, always looking out for her interests, usually expressed in furtive glances, where they are likely the subject of scandalous rumor that Boldwood is too remote from hearing.  After a particularly successful harvest, the entire staff has a dinner party, celebrating with drink and song, where Boldwood unexpectedly drops in, hoping for an answer, while Bathsheba is persuaded to perform a song, singing Let No Man steal Your Thyme - Carey Mulligan (From "Far ... YouTube (2:57), a traditional British and Irish folksong that lyrically warns young people of the risks and dangers of taking false lovers.  While promising him nothing, Boldwood is emboldened, feeling the time is right, that she will finally accept his offer.  Making all the necessary arrangements, he holds a lavish Christmas Eve party sure that he will win her heart, but Bathsheba feels even more suffocated, prematurely walking out of the party when she suddenly encounters her husband, not dead after all, but drunk, broke, and in a ragged state, rudely ordering her about, grabbing her arm, claiming her as his property, causing her to scream in fright.  Boldwood shoots him dead on the spot, just as Gabriel had earlier shot his deranged sheep dog.  Spared the death penalty, calling it a crime of passion, he’s nonetheless imprisoned and out of her life forever.  Despite her best intentions, she realizes she has an impact on the lives of others, even unintentionally.  While she’s initially seen as carefree and irresponsible, seduced by her own ideas of freedom, but later becomes more ruthlessly aloof, deluded by her own power, caught up in a battle of wills, completely unaware of the suffering she brings others, who are themselves consumed by thoughts of her that amount to little more than male fantasy, often languishing for years in a state of emotional paralysis, waiting for the right opportunity that never comes.  Using Craig Armstrong’s musical score to capture emotions that the characters themselves are unable to express, Bathsheba utters one of the most eloquent lines late in the film, “It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs.”  Much of this picture reveals the gulf that lies between the words that are never spoken, the hopes, the desires, the repressed dreams, and the unintended consequences that often haunt people to their graves, all shown in a choreography of body language and facial expressions.  The Victorian era did not allow straightforward honesty, as people were defined by their class status and social standing, where thoughts were expressed through the power of suggestion.  While the lower classes could speak freely amongst themselves, it was considered impudent to speak frankly and openly to one’s employer, unable to cross the class barrier, where it was required to hold one’s tongue.  Is it really any different today?  The social divide between Bathsheba and Gabriel effects every conversation they ever have, becoming an insurmountable obstacle throughout most of the film, a long-suffering open wound that can only bleed and fester, but concealed and out of sight from everyone else.  It was a private world one lived in, lost in their own reveries and rhapsodic thoughts, where any thoughts of reaching a connecting understanding is more of a mirage that rarely intrudes into their actual lives.  The liberating, feminist sentiment is provided by our own, modern day vantage point, knowing full well that even under today’s more open circumstances, true communication is a lost art, where people continue to drown in their own repressed and often agonizing sorrows and regrets, unable to change those few haunting and fateful moments that seem to forever define our lives.