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)

Hard Truths

 

Writer/director Mike Leigh

actress Marianne Jean-Baptiste

Jean-Baptiste with the director

cinematographer Dick Pope

HARD TRUTHS                    B-                                                                                                Great Britain  Spain  (97 mi)  2024  d: Mike Leigh

My films aspire to the condition of documentary.                                                                          —Kenneth Turan interview from The LA Times, September 22, 1996, The Case for Mike Leigh 

The inverse of Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky (2008), which features an endlessly cheerful Sally Hawkins, whose instincts are to face everything with a smile, yet she’s assaulted by a stream of incendiary verbiage from one of the more disturbingly angry characters in Eddie Marsan, a gloom and doom guy who takes exception to her sunny outlook, where the unanswerable question asked throughout is “Are you happy?”  This film instead seems infused by the relentlessly downbeat emotional whirlwind of a female version of that Eddie Marsan character, with little opportunity to take a breath of fresh air, where it’s something of a chore to put up with a protagonist with a lifetime worth of built-up anguish and resentment, a tortured soul who is undone by a condition that is completely debilitating, leading to a deeply unsatisfying mental outlook, railing against everything, constantly belittling people, as she seems to dislike everyone, thinking the whole world is against her, viewing everything as a perceived slight.  There’s simply no room for happiness here, featuring one of the most deeply unsympathetic figures in memory, who constantly quarrels with everyone around her, whose endless diatribes are soul crushing, spewing vitriol in all directions, with the film continually shining a light on Pansy, Marianne Jean-Baptiste from Secrets and Lies (1996), a performance that earned her a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination, the first-ever black British actress to do so, and also wrote the musical score for Career Girls (1997), where it’s been nearly 30 years since they last worked together.  In what has to be regarded as one of the more suffocatingly bleak outlooks, she simply sucks the air out of the room, determined to take everyone else down with her, like an unleashed tornado hell-bent on widespread destruction, wiping out everything in its path.  She exerts a supreme effort to keep a meticulously spotless home that is immaculately clean, yet sterile and cold, like a doctor’s office, with kitchen counters that have no clutter, and a barren back yard with nothing in it that she refuses to step into, fearful of the “squirrel doodoo and rancid bird droppings,” which seems to reflect a crying out for help, where the outward physical manifestations mask her inner turmoil.  Pansy is an angry, bitter woman who continually lashes out at others, seen in long takes, and long conversations around the kitchen, where you have to see it to believe it, with a nonstop enraged monologue over dinner that’s an exhausting ordeal, Hard Truths | Official Clip | Bleecker Street YouTube (1:46), yet there’s not a false note anywhere to be found, as it’s an unending barrage of exploding trauma wherever she goes, with her own family typically feeling the brunt of her punishment, including her overly passive husband Curtley (David Webber), who appears browbeaten and quiet, and her layabout adult son Moses (Tuwaine Barrett) who is emotionally shut down, completely withdrawn from life, where you really feel for those who have to put up with her.  Not a pleasant watch, a grueling experience that will try your patience, but it’s an uncompromising immersion into full-on obsessive-compulsive depression mode (OCD and Depression) from a wildly unhappy character, where mental health services are noticeably absent, which is part of the larger black cultural experience, yet there is simply no relief from the unending havoc she causes wherever she goes.  This kind of thing is simply not seen elsewhere, yet Mike Leigh has carved a lifetime of drama with this no bullshit approach, creating memorable characters that are part of his unique theater, and this is no different, but even this feels extreme within the parameters of his entire output, bearing a resemblance to the Clint Eastwood “get off my lawn” attitude in GRAN TORINO (2008).  Eastwood was a disgruntled war veteran, whose ingrained prejudices were part of his less than cheery disposition, yet there is no explanation for what’s happening here.        

With no editorial razzle dazzle or cinematic trickery, working with only a skeleton for a plot, where everything evolves organically, Leigh has cut a path of his own in the cinematic universe and staked out his own territory since the early years of Bleak Moments (1971), getting his start in theater, where his first several productions began as plays, which he then filmed for the BBC on television in the 1970’s and ’80’s before unleashing a string of social realist films beginning with HIGH HOPES (1988) and Life Is Sweet (1990), the latter notable for the first time working with cinematographer Dick Pope, who worked on all of the director’s subsequent films until he died shortly after completing this film, collaborating across period pieces and contemporary working class dramas that have documented the evolution of Britain into its post-Brexit era.  Returning back to an intimate chamber piece following his recent venture into period historical dramas, his first film in more than a decade set in contemporary times, where the interjecting music, like connecting threads between an episodic series of events, is a highbrow, Masterpiece theater style string composition from Leigh’s longtime collaborator Gary Yershon, this film may reflect the disgust that many people currently feel, filled with angst, inexplicable hopelessness, and unending despair, finding themselves living a life they never envisioned, as they’ve lost all sense of balance and independence, instead feeling the brunt of the day-to-day grind of living, completely overwhelmed by circumstances they can’t control.  This is also a story of generational trauma, with Pansy passing that trauma onto her son Moses, where at the heart of it is not being able to do anything about it.  It’s clear she’s not a bully, but the heightened level of terrifying fear she suffers from is likely the consequence of someone who was bullied.  The exaggerated nature of her inflammatory rhetoric can also be weirdly and awkwardly amusing, as it’s just too ridiculous, beyond belief, and incredulously disorienting, where comedy and tragedy are intertwined.  Yet what initially seems funny is also deflating, stopping us dead in our tracks when we understand the full extent of just how out of control she is, with Jean-Baptiste effortlessly exhibiting an astonishing range of emotions, contrasting moments of quiet with long, explosive outbursts that are verbally dense, voicing her displeasure by incessantly antagonizing people, a condition that was likely made worse from the isolation of the pandemic lockdown. The character of Pansy may be the poster child for post-Brexit uneasiness, a woman wracked by anxieties, tormented by inexplicable afflictions, and prone to raging tirades against her husband, son, and anyone who crosses her path, a character so real that it hurts.  At the other end of the spectrum is her easygoing younger sister, Chantelle, played by Michele Austin from Another Year (2010) in her fourth film with Leigh, a single mother whose life working as a hairdresser couldn’t be more drastically different from Pansy’s, brimming with warmth for her salon clients and two grown-up daughters, Clip from HARD TRUTHS - Directed by Mike Leigh, starring Marianne Jean-Baptiste and Michele Austin YouTube (1:29).  This film follows the adage, “Hurt people hurt people,” talkative enough to be a stage play, performed with the same amount of passion and intensity, yet dysfunction is at the heart of the matter, as Pansy wakes up in a fright, anxiously undone by frightening dreams, with things never improving as the day progresses, as every little thing is a source of irritation.  Rather than keep it to herself, however, she unleashes her frustrations at every turn, with her hard working husband and morbidly silent son typically the butt of her insults, passively avoiding any confrontation, or even eye contact, as it will only prolong the aggravation, instead meeting her volcanic eruptions with an emotionally numb wall of silence, where if they could crawl under a rock, they would, just to get away from her. 

Through a process of extensive rehearsal and improvisation, always trying something new, the actors in Mike Leigh films actually build their own characters, an essential part of the collaborative process, fervently believing in what they’ve created, with audiences sharing that same sense of belief.  The first of Leigh’s films led by a black ensemble, where it’s rare to see black mental health given any space onscreen, and even the title seems to suggest a clever retort to Secrets and Lies, yet viewer reaction may differ, as you might wonder why anyone would create such a compulsively miserable, openly antagonizing misanthrope, who has nothing but hatred for the people and the world around her, especially those closest to her, who can’t escape the relentless assaults on their character.  But this is not a film that asks viewers to sympathize with such a contemptible person, or even understand what’s behind it, yet by keeping her as the central focus of the film, Leigh offers an astonishingly humane portrait of a troubled soul, perhaps a reflection of the world gone wrong, where if she had cancer or radiation sickness, you might feel differently about her, but Leigh provides no clues.  She’s certainly intelligent enough to contemplate an awareness of the damage she inflicts, completely insufferable to be around, where the psychological ramifications are enormous, yet she’s excruciatingly lonely, actually hating what she’s become, expressing a deep dissatisfaction that she has experienced since she was a child, forced to endure her own mother’s incessant criticisms while taking care of her little sister when she was way too young, leaving her filled with self-loathing and disgust, but she simply can’t stop herself.  Growing more vulnerable as the film evolves, she’s seemingly running on fumes, as it all happens automatically, without intent or free will, literally driving herself into the ground, emotionally depleted and utterly exhausted, completely engulfed by things she can’t understand, the victim of her own revved-up anxieties and fears, where she can’t even visit a doctor without inflicting this same pattern of abuse on them, inevitably keeping her at arm’s length, not really able to help, so it’s a neverending cycle.  Perhaps the unsung hero of the film is Chantelle, who doesn’t understand what’s happening to her, but nonetheless loves her, as she’s family and wants to stay close, knowing she needs a friend, someone who won’t turn away or make any judgments, even as she aggressively turns on everyone she meets.  There’s no magical elixir offered, but Chantelle treats her as she would herself like to be treated, continually being there for her, offering loving support, which is a herculean effort, to say the least, as many in the audience will likely lose patience and tune out, fed up with this flabbergasting stream of unending insults, most coming with no provocation whatsoever, so whatever triggers these outbursts are internal, unseen, undiagnosed, yet lethal.  Few directors would have the courage to make a movie like this, but Leigh has a history of taking risks, and is currently 82 years of age, beholden to no one, free to do as he pleases, but unfiltered miserablism has always been at the core of British Kitchen sink realism, accentuating flaws and the complexities of life, where frustrations and disillusionment are human attributes, never a pretty sight to endure, but it’s a significant part of British cinema history, and Leigh’s own postwar upbringing, blurring the lines between theater and cinema, carving a path for new directors like Andrea Arnold, Lynne Ramsay, and Clio Barnard, while greatly admired by a younger generation of American filmmakers, including Sean Baker, the Safdie brothers, and Kelly Reichardt.  Expect the unexpected may be his mantra, as he’s been delivering a cinema of discomfort his entire career, but none more unsparingly depressing and bleak as this, trapped in your own body with no hint of escape. 

Mike Leigh and Marianne Jean-Baptiste’s Closet Picks   Criterion, YouTube (5:04)