HAPPY-GO-LUCKY - CRITERION CHANNEL

This review as originally written for DVDTalk.com in 2008.

Happy-Go-Lucky is one of th more lauded filmes from British director Mike Leigh, who is known for telling stories of the working class that chronicle their fancies and their doldrums in a modern style that resembles the Kitchen Sink cinema from the 1960s. In this latest offering, Leigh could have easily adopted Charlie Chaplin's "Smile" as the movie's theme song, as it seems to be what he's encouraging his audience to do: smile, even when it's not that easy to do.

Sally Hawkins, last seen as Colin Farrell's girlfriend in Woody Allen's Cassandra's Dream [review], stars as Poppy, a kindergarten teacher with a relentlessly upbeat outlook on life. Practically a child herself, she's equally at home in the classroom or on the dancefloor. Like any single young woman at age 30, she still likes to go out drinking with her girlfriends, but she's also slightly adventurous, booking weekly trampoline sessions and joining a co-worker for flamenco lessons because it sounds like fun. At the beginning of the movie, Poppy's bike is stolen, and instead of lamenting over it, she decides to learn to drive instead.

Poppy's driving instructor is one of the first of several challenges to Poppy's worldview. Scott (Eddie Marsan, Hancock [review]) is an angry little man with a lot of pent-up issues. He takes his job way too seriously, and he is easily provoked. Thus, he and Poppy get on like paper and a match, since she seemingly can't take anything seriously. In fact, she's often exhausting to watch, so I can't imagine what it must be like to be around her. Poppy can't let any comment pass without tossing out a silly joke, and she rarely answers a serious question with a serious answer. Honestly, I found her to be extremely annoying at first, and I was dreading spending two hours in her company.

Then came the first flamenco lesson. My whole attitude changed watching her interact with the class. Regardless of how stern the lead dancer's demeanor, Poppy always maintains her smile and her gung-ho attitude. She doesn't necessarily follow instruction, instead looking around the room at the other students and trying to elicit a reaction from them. Watching her pantomime amongst the group, a silly grin on her face and a knowing look in her eyes, it occurred to me that Poppy was like other clowns in motion picture history, characters like Chaplin's Tramp or Tati's Hulot. Though she is clearly more vocal than these mostly silent characters, she is like them in that she realizes that the rest of the world is too uptight and is doing her level best to keep from letting it grind her down.

Happy-Go-Lucky is Mike Leigh's study of this kind of figure. The movie is the writer/director's way of deconstructing the clown in order to see what makes her function. Throughout the film, he continually disarms Poppy, tossing her challenges she can't get out of by cracking wise. Her driving instructor, an abused student in her class, the recriminations of her middle sister (Caroline Martin), the prodding of her long-suffering roommate (Alexis Zegerman)--all of these people pick at the clown's mask and question if her brave face is real. It's to Poppy's credit that she is able to dial it down and prove that she can handle the bad as well as the good. Like all people who make us laugh, she is a caregiver, intent on alleviating the sadness of others even if it means harboring her own. She can be fierce, such as when she witnesses a boyfriend yelling at her youngest sister (Kate O'Flynn), but she can also be extremely empathetic. When she randomly encounters a homeless man (Stanley Townsend) in the middle of a psychotic episode, she sits with him rather than running away, answering all of his half-finished utterances with affirmative responses. It's a beautiful acting moment, centering on a look that Hawkins and Townsend exchange at the end of the scene, the masks clearing away for both of them for one truly honest moment.

Sally Hawkins is actually superb throughout. I don't think I would have wanted to strangle her as much as I sometimes did were she not. She makes Poppy a complete character, not just a collection of catchphrases and nervous ticks. She never once breaks character or appears to be an actress performing a role, every moment is authentic. During much of the joking, there is obviously more going on behind it. The outward expression may be physical, but the true weight of the performance is all mental. Thus, when it's revealed how much strength is really backing up the buffoonery, we can believe it.

Mike Leigh's shooting style is often stark, letting the setting and the actors dictate where he takes his camera. Once or twice, he indulges in a larger shot, pulling back to show us the landscape, but it's not just decoration, it's purposeful. The world these characters live in is just as important to their state of being as anything else. Over the course of the various conflicts, he slowly moves in closer, until in the final confrontation between Poppy and Scott, their heads take up the entire frame, and he rapidly cuts back and forth between them. (Though, such is the gravitational pull of the Poppy character, in all of the conversations, Leigh has no choice but to quickly cut back to Hawkins to catch her rejoinders.) There's a psychology to how Leigh sets up Happy-Go-Lucky, but it's not forceful or overbearing. The characters, their environment, and the greater narrative are all perfectly entwined. The final scene of the film is a little on-the-nose in comparison to the rest, but better to drift out of a story like this than superimpose a false dramatic arc over the top.

I doubt Happy-Go-Lucky is going to make Mike Leigh a household name. If anything, he's like Woody Allen in that he puts out a consistent stream of product that tends to cover a lot of the same ground, and when either of them hits the mark, they hit it quite well. Happy-Go-Lucky is a good movie propped up by excellent actors, and as seems to be its intention, is sure to leave you smiling.

MEANTIME - #890

For those of us music fans who romanticize 1980s Britain, let Mike Leigh’s 1984 television movie Meantime be our wake-up call. Whether we dream of the beautifully dreary poetry of the Smiths and New Order or the New Romantic-glitz of early Duran Duran, our belief that it would have been an extraordinary time to be alive and English is based on a false ideal that borders on ghetto tourism. Sure, the hopelessness and boredom of Leigh’s tale is the same kind of situation that gave us Morrissey and Ian Curtis and Martin Gore, but it didn’t make philosophers and kings of everyone. We can hear the music without having to eek out an existence under Thatcher’srule.

Set in a London tenement, Meantime follows an out-of-work working class family--father, mother, and two adult sons--who struggle to get by, packed into a counsel estate apartment, living off unemployment. While Frank (Jeff Robert) has settled into a certain contentment doing nothing, largely enabled by his put-upon wife Mavis (Pam Ferris), his two boys are finding it hard to feel the hours ooze by without going mad. To cope, they go to opposite ends. Mark (Phil Daniels, Quadrophenia [review]) is caustic and confrontational, a prototype of David Thewlis in Leigh’s masterpiece, Naked, while Colin (Tim Roth, The Hit, The Hateful Eight) is quiet and withdrawn, and perhaps a bit behind developmentally. As we watch them kick against the nothingness across the length of Meantime, we will see the sibling dynamic at work, rivalry providing its own kind of support. Mark tears Colin down only to prop him back up (sort of).

Famous for improvising his material with his actors (Leigh is credited as having “devised” the film rather than having written it), Meantime’s drama is less plot and more situational. There are many scenes of doing nothing, of being trapped in the flat or down at the pub, the ennui inspiring cruelty, family and friends picking at each other. It’s a difficult dynamic to watch. Leigh risks inspiring annoyance in his audience, as well as a potential harsh reaction to how little these men seemingly do to help themselves. A scene down at the unemployment office sees both Frank and Mark abusing the woman who gives them their check; the opening of the film shows the family visiting middle-class relatives (Marion Bailey and Alfred Molina) and being passive-aggressively hostile toward their hospitality.

Yet, as we watch events unfold, it becomes clear that their idle state is not laziness, but a combination of defeat and pride. They have accepted that this is their lot, and there is little option for something better; at the same time, the few available options are pitiable scraps, more off-handed charity than considered solution. No one is offering them a viable choice to improve.

And while, yes, characters in Meantime can be annoying, watching them is anything but thanks to Leigh’s remarkable cast. While Daniels had plenty of work under his belt by this time, Meantime was a breakthrough for both Tim Roth and Gary Oldman, who plays Coxy, a brash skinhead. Oldman’s performance is physical, charismatic, and odd, his belching cadence predicting both his turn as Sid Vicious in Sid & Nancy [review], and his many villain roles. Coxy is the perfect example of the wayward youth who gloms on to some kind of social movement or manufactured identity to mask his own weakness--which we catch a brief glimpse of in an unsettling scene where Coxy is called on his racist bullshit in an elevator. Oldman says little in the moment, but his vulnerability is evident in his face and body language. Alternately, Roth is restrained, his angst and anger all bottled up, presenting a false gentleness rather than a trumped-up bravado. In some ways, the actors would swap these roles a few years down the road in Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Roth going nuclear and Oldman adopting a genial ignorance.

Leigh and director of photography Roger Pratt (Brazil, Mona Lisa) use the limitations of television to their advantage, achieving a lo-fi realism befitting the story. Shot on location, and contrasting the cramped apartments with the wide open spaces that these aimless young adults wander in search of something, anything to occupy the time, the outside world in Meantime is vast and endless, but offering no additional shelter or purpose, except to maybe make the characters feel smaller and more meaningless. (For contrast, see Oldman’s Coxy tucked into a big cylinder, trying to move, banging on the walls impotently...) Leigh’s England is as moody and gray as Joy Division’s, though a lot less tuneful. I don’t know if Andrew Dickson’s score is intentionally monotonous to match the repetition of the characters’ day-to-day, but its constant presence eventually serves to distract rather than enhance. But then, it’s also kind of emotionless to begin with.

All the more impressive, then, that Leigh ends Meantime so warmly, with Mark pulling his brother back from the brink after his pettiness sent Colin in the wrong direction. It’s an error corrected not even by kindness, but simply by devoting a moment to listen. Sure, the real ending suggests that once they are over that hump, the whole family will return to business as usual, but when every day is harsh, the small oases can mean a whole lot. Now if only the boys could take those brief bursts of energy and form a band....

This disc provided by the Criterion Collection for purposes of review.

ANOTHER YEAR - FILMSTRUCK/CRITERION CHANNEL

This review originally published in 2010 on DVDTalk.com.

Mike Leigh's new movie Another Year isn't a day-in-the-life movie, it's a 365-days-in-the-life movie. The drama follows a group of friends and family over four seasons, spring to winter, through their personal ups and downs, some small and maddeningly trivial, some large.

At the center of Another Year is one stalwart couple. Tom and Gerri, played with personality and heart by Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen, have been together since they were teenagers, and their marriage couldn't be better. He is a geologist who studies soil to determine the safety of different building projects around London; she is a counselor at a health clinic. Together, they work on a small patch of land in a community garden, growing their own vegetables, enjoying the shared work. These are people who we trust have made most of the right choices in life. Even their son, Joe (Oliver Maltman), a lawyer who takes on special hardship cases, seems to have turned out all right. Good spouses, good parents.

By contrast, their friends don't have it together. Gerri's workplace friend, Mary (Lesley Manville), is a bundle of nervous energy, a middle-aged woman with no one in her life. Her constant chatter will annoy you. It's supposed to. It annoys everyone else in the movie, too. She drinks too much, maybe has a crush on Tom, definitely has one on Joe. When Tom's old friend Ken (Peter Wight), an overweight, going-nowhere career man, visits, he expresses his own feelings for Mary. She rejects him, and is more than cruel in her judgment of this other lost soul. It just goes to show you, no one is so far down in life that they can't find someone else to judge as harshly as others judge them.

Leigh structures his movie to match the moods of the passing seasons. Spring is hopeful, summer is happy, fall brings disappointment, and winter delivers heartache. The cold climes also inspire the group to huddle together, to reconnoiter, and in a way, make peace--though honestly, we're not sure how well that will actually work. Another Year begins with an emotional gut punch--Gerri tries to help an older woman (Imelda Staunton) with her insomnia, but the woman is so resigned to her fate, there seems to be no way out for her. (Staunton is unforgettable in the short screen time she has; she is so bitter and angry, she looks like she will spontaneously turn to stone at any second.) The writer/director also ends on a note of brutal heartbreak, a question mark hanging in the silent air as the film fades to black.

Yet, to cast Another Year as a downer drama would do the film a disservice. Sure, it's tough going at times, and the grief it portrays will follow you around for some time to come, but it doesn't necessarily inspire the same sadness in the viewer. Rather, Leigh is provoking us to think about our own lives and how we deal with others. The writing in Another Year is amazing. Leigh has a true knack for small talk, arranging banalities like a sophisticated puzzle, finding more poetry in his characters' anxious utterances than he could ever wring out of a formal soliloquy. What a person says without meaning to say it is more illuminating than an intentional confession or revelation.

He's also quite good at making us feel sorry for characters who otherwise drive us up the wall. It's similar to how he handled Sally Hawkins' character in the marvelous Happy-Go-Lucky [review]: these chatterboxes are so achingly human, we can't help but be caught up in their struggles. Neither Ken nor Mary, or any of the other supporting players we meet, ever really intended to end up alone and broken. Leigh shows us how fragile they are, and presumably, this is what Tom and Gerri see in them, as well, and what keeps them from sending the friends away. Not that the couple are doormats. They take their stands when it counts. The subtlety of the performances cannot be praised enough. Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen manage a real back and forth, finishing each other's sentences, often sharing secret reactions through a look or a gesture. These are mature actors who understand what a mature relationship entails. You can believe that Tom and Gerri have honestly spent all those years together.

They also give us much to laugh at. Another Year isn't just twelve months of tears. The banter can be funny, and even Mary's endless string of mishaps has some comedic value. We critics spend a lot of time bandying about terms like "realism," usually for cheaply filmed verité-style films with loosely crafted dialogue; it's a whole other accomplishment when a filmmaker harnesses the engine of true experiences and infuses his art with it. Another Year's construction is delicate, and outside of the signals of time passing, barely perceptible. The drama moves in small, evocative ways. Even the music works its magic subtly. Gary Yershon supplies Leigh with short, almost insubstantial cues, and Leigh peppers these tiny snippets of instrumentation throughout, leading us from moment to moment, at times preparing us for the shifts in feeling.

It's refreshing to see a movie that isn't afraid to be many things and is adept at being all of them. Too often, when filmmakers try to inject humor into a heavy situation, or when a moral is tacked onto a comedy, the efforts feel forced. Another Year comes by its many moods naturally and is all the more touching for it.

A TASTE OF HONEY - #829

“I dreamt about you last night, and I fell out of bed twice....”

Morrissey or Shelagh Delaney?

As most fans of the Smiths know, it’s both. Though, those with a big nose who know, know that the lyricist ripped it from the playwright, just as Moz lifted much from Delaney’s texts and nodded to her often. The above lyric is from A Taste of Honey and was embedded in the early Smiths track “Reel Around the Fountain;”  another song from the same period, “This Night Has Opened My Eyes,” not only borrows more lines from Honey, but the plot as well. Morrissey makes no secret of this. On the contrary, his sampling from Delaney, as well as putting her picture on album and singles covers (Louder than Bombs and “Girlfriend in a Coma”) helped drive many a dark youngster to her work. I read the original A Taste of Honey stageplay in high school, and finally found the film version many years later. The vocabulary theft made me predisposed to be a fan.

Shelagh Delaney on "Girlfriend in a Coma"

Rita Tushingham on the Sandie Shaw/Smiths EP

The movie adaptation of A Taste of Honey was released in 1961. Directed by Tony Richardson, it is considered part of Britain’s “kitchen sink” movement, so named not because the filmmakers in that school threw “everything but...” into their cinema, but rather they showed us how folks lived, kitchen sinks and all. Examining the working class citizens as they struggled to get by and potentially change their lives, Criterion fans can see the storytelling style in films as different as This Sporting Life [review], Billy Liar [review], and Victim [review], or even later, we can see how it influenced Ken Loach (Kes [review]) and Mike Leigh.

One hallmark of the kitchen sink films was the appearance of the angry young man (Harris in This Sporting Life, McDowell in If.... [review]--both in films by Lindsay Anderson, whom Shelagh Delaney collaborated with on The White Bus [review]). This makes A Taste of Honey a bit of a stylistic revolutionary, as its protagonist is an angry young woman. Starring Rita Tushingham (Doctor Zhivago, Girl with Green Eyes), A Taste of Honey tells the story of Jo, a teenager frustrated with her life of squalor and limited prospects. Jo lives alone with her mother, Helen (Dora Bryan), a woman with many lovers but never two shillings to rub together. This means the pair moves a lot, running out on one landlord after another. They also squabble constantly, tearing one another down, breaking up and making up because, begrudgingly, they are all they’ve really got.

This changes when Helen meets Peter (Robert Stephens) and decides to remarry. Though Jo is reluctant to finally let go of the apron strings, Peter is a much younger man than his new bride and not interested in having a grown daughter. So, Jo moves out on her own, getting a job in a shoe shop and a new roommate of her own. Also, she’s gotten pregnant by a sailor who has since left to sail the seas.

An unmarried teenager having a child all by her lonesome would have been social scandal enough, but Delaney--who co-wrote the screenplay with Richardson--was a progressive writer whose vision took in all aspects of life in urban Manchester. Jo’s lover, Jimmy (Paul Danquah), is a black man, and her roommate, Geoffrey (Murray Melvin), is gay. These facts are both approached delicately. No one comments on Jimmy and Jo being together, but the color of his skin is a factor in Jo’s anxiety about the impending birth. For instance, should she even want to take Geoffrey up on his offer to marry, people will know he’s not the father when they see the child. That’s if the gossips and wags buy their relationship to begin with. Though no one but Jo ever confronts Geoffrey outright about his sexuality, everyone looks at him sideways. They all sense the truth.

Which is always fascinating to see in an older film, since anyone with parents and grandparents born in “the good old days” knows that some members of those generations often tend to pretend that gays and lesbians weren’t around until that demonic disco music magically spawned them. But that’s what art is for--and history books--to show us what many would rather we not see. There’s a reason A Taste of Honey opens with a censorship board certificate indicating it’s only suitable for viewers over the age of 16. Much of the dialogue is frank about things that just weren’t acceptable: sex out of wedlock, abortion, alcoholism. Yet, Delaney avoids pushing a message. She and Richardson just want to show life as they’ve witnessed it and let the audience empathize or reject on their own.

Though Tony Richardson’s generation of filmmakers is often referred to as the British New Wave, their early work has little of the experimentalism inherent in the movies of their French contemporaries laboring under the same name. Rather, the Brits had more in common with the Italians in that realism was more important than style. Hence the director and his cinematographer Walter Lassally (who went on to shoot many of James Ivory’s lesser pictures) filming in the streets of Manchester, inside real apartments, and walking the boardwalk by the seaside. This was an existence that could not be re-created in a studio without adding a touch of glitz, so better to go where it was actually happening. The excursions out into public have an air of documentary, including a trip to the country where the child-like Geoffrey and Jo frolic with elementary school-aged kids. The mountainside expanse emphasizes how small they really are in the grand scheme of the universe (“I’m not happy and I’m not sad”), and the company they keep exposes just how young they are, too. Neither is really in a place where they should be having kids of their own.

It’s a great sequence, actually, with Geoffrey trying to prove he can be the husband and father Jo needs by awkwardly kissing her. The “traditional” roles are reversed with these two. Geoffrey probably feels too much, while Jo doesn’t quite know how to access all that is going on in her head and her heart. Back at their flat, Geoffrey cooks and cleans, while Jo goes out and earns a wage. One assumes it will all go wrong for these two, that somehow tragedy awaits, but A Taste of Honey sidesteps our expectations. Sure, it ends on a down beat, and everything isn’t necessarily okay, but we do leave with the sense that it will be. Lessons are being learned, and these characters will all carry on and get along in some fashion. Some ties bind so tightly, they will never be broken.

Criterion’s new restoration is, I believe, the first time A Taste of Honey has been available on disc in the States. The image quality is remarkable: crisp and clear, with strong blacks and an excellent level of detail. Supplements include interviews old and new, including vintage clips with Richardson and Delaney, and new chats with Rita Tushingham and Murray Melvin.

We also get a 1956 short film collaboration between Richardson and Lassally, co-directed by Karel Reisz (The French Lieutenant’s Woman). Made as part of the Free Cinema Collective that Richardson and Reisz formed with Lindsay Anderson, Mama Don’t Allow is a 22-minute documentary that displays the realist roots that Richardson and Co. grew from. Set inside and outside a jazz bar, with cutaways to some of the attendees preparing for an evening on the town, it’s a simple portrait of a particular nightlife. With a live soundtrack by the Chris Barber Jazz Band, including Lonnie Donegan, a.k.a. the King of Skiffle, a successful British rock musician that influenced the Beatles, Mama Don’t Allow is a winning snapshot of a specific scene, giving us a look at music and youth culture before the advent of rock ’n’ roll.

The screengrabs here are from an earlier DVD given away free with the Sunday Telegraph fifteen years ago and not from the Criterion Blu-ray.

This disc provided by the Criterion Collection for purposes of review.

THE MIKADO (Blu-Ray) - #559

It surprises me that more Gilbert and Sullivan musicals haven't been adapted to film, but as Geoffrey O'Brien's liner notes to the new Criterion Blu-Ray of The Mikado inform us, this 1939 adaptation was the duo's first time on the silver screen, and there hasn't really been much more since. Mike Leigh's Topsy-Turvy, which is being released in conjunction with this under a separate cover [review], is the only comparable, substantial portrayal of Gilbert and Sullivan in cinema. Fittingly, Leigh's movie detailed the creation of the first-ever stage production of The Mikado and showed the backstage shenanigans at the Savoy, where the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company performed. Thus, the extended pedigree is intact: this late-'40s feature was an official production of the Opera Company, then run by Rupert D'Oyly Carte, son to Richard, the man who had commissioned The Mikado, who was one of the characters portrayed in Topsy-Turvy. This movie is part of the family business and a stepping stone between the truth and its fictional recreation. Sorting out the lineage is a plot bendy enough for Gilbert and Sullivan themselves!

This three-strip Technicolor production was directed by Victor Schertzinger, a composer who had also made a name for himself in the motion picture business (his next film was Road to Singapore with Crosby and Hope). Though his take on The Mikado was apparently criticized for being too "stagey," I actually found it to be an interesting melding of two theatrical disciplines. Sure, his Mikado has a lot of starch in its collar, but I like how he had the actors perform as they would when strutting the boards, even while he takes advantage of the larger sets and multiple camera angles. The way he arranges his actors and how they move in that space may be theatrical, but Schertzinger's work in the editing room was definitely cinematic. (By contrast, look at the short 1926 film showing the actual stage performers working in costume at the Savoy, which is presented as a bonus feature on the disc. The stage set is shot from the middle distance, the camera in a fixed position on the main floor.)

Given the strange, farcical plot of The Mikado, I think this may have been a good decision. Had the same story been undertaken using more standard film language, it would have seemed even more odd than it already does. As a Gilbert and Sullivan neophyte, I was amazed by the dark and twisted substance of the operetta's narrative. In a nutshell, the son of the Japanese Emperor is told he is going to marry an older woman of his father's court, the mustachioed Katisha (Constance Willis). Rather than submit, the boy (played by Kenny Baker) runs away. He hides out in a town called Titipu, where flirting is punishable by death. He poses as a minstrel and goes by the name Nanki-Poo and falls for the pretty Yum-Yum (Jean Colin) upon first seeing her.

Too bad for Nanki-Poo, but Yum-Yum is engaged to Ko-Ko (Martyn Green, a D'Oyly Carte alum), who himself has been condemned to execution for flirting with his fiancée. I don't know why Nanki-Poo gets away with his flirting, because even Ko-Ko is aware of it, but he does. The tale is a tangled mess, and I suppose the convolutions of this plot are best left where they are. Ko-Ko is given a reprieve under some weird statute that makes a man his own judge and executioner, and since he can't decapitate himself, he can stick around and marry Yum-Yum. Except then the Emperor, a.k.a. the Mikado (John Barclay), gets upset that the no one's head has been cut off for a while, so he tells Ko-Ko to get chopping or lose his job. Since Ko-Ko is the only man on death row in Titipu, he's back at square one, until he discovers Nanki-Poo is so distraught over Yum-Yum that he wants to kill himself. Ko-Ko makes him a deal that if he consents to be his stand-in on the block...well, things continue to grow more gnarled from there. Life and death and love and everything after hang in the balance.

This kind of up-and-down storytelling, full of reversals and re-reversals and flips and flops, was what was referred to as the "topsy-turvy" style and, amusingly, was just what W.S. Gilbert was trying to get away from when he started out on his Japanese story. I can see why audiences liked it, however, it definitely keeps the action moving between songs, of which there are many, including famous numbers like "Three Little Maids from School." Most of the songs are jaunty and full of wordplay, a few are a little heavier, punctuating moments of romantic gravitas. Given how the story here never stops twisting, I'm a little surprised that The Mikado doesn't move faster. I can only imagine it with some kind of screwball Howard Hawks pacing; I guarantee no one watching would ever get bored if it had been run through at the same speed as His Girl Friday.

Still, this presentation of The Mikado is one of those interesting historical excavations that has earned Criterion so many fans. Where else would I ever see the 1939 production of The Mikado, of all things, and where would I ever see it quite like this? The Blu-Ray package offers yet another remarkable restoration. The color image is astounding, full of beautiful texture and lovely variations of tone. There are multiple matte painting backdrops that have a soft, pastel-like hue that look just amazing in high-definition. Likewise, the mono soundtrack has been scrubbed to perfection. The music sounds perfect.

In addition to the silent film promoting the earlier D'Oyle Carte staging of The Mikado, the bonus section features scholarly interviews and a deleted scene, Ko-Ko's song "I've Got a Little List." It's theorized that it was either cut for the political jabs the number takes at recent newsworthy figures (it was updated to include Hitler, a lookalike of whom appears on screen in full Japanese costume) or a racial slur that is usually dropped in modern productions. It's interesting to note that Schertzinger takes advantage of recorded sound to make an audio joke during "List," which I assume was an invention for the cinema.

Tying this release of The Mikado to Topsy-Turvy is a new interview with Mike Leigh. Also, Criterion had New York-based artist Yuko Shimizu, perhaps best known for illustrating the covers to the literary-based comic book series The Unwritten, draw both covers. Shimizu's art definitely has a style fitting the material, and you should definitely take some time scanning the portfolio at yukoart.com. I am also including some of my favorite pieces below.

This disc was provided by the Criterion Collection for purposes of review.

TOPSY-TURVY (Blu-Ray) - #558

In 1885, the writing team of Gilbert and Sullivan were at the peak of success. Even their admittedly mediocre show, Princess Ida, which had just premiered at the Savoy Theatre in London, was predicted to be a smash, despite chafing reviews that called the pair on the proverbial carpet for the repetition in both Gilbert's comical lyrics and Sullivan's orchestral melodies. As a pair, they could seemingly do no wrong.

Mike Leigh's 1999 film Topsy-Turvy peeks in on the famous theatrical legends just as Ida is taking its creative toll on the duo. Arthur Sullivan, played by Allan Corduner, is overworked and unsatisfied, and for the sake of his health, he leaves for the South of France. Upon returning, he rejects his partner's new libretto, instead swearing to write his own grand opera where his music will not be outdone by the singing. Taken aback, W.S. Gilbert, portrayed with panache by Jim Broadbent, can't help but take it personally. He has been laboring on a musical in which a magical potion transforms the citizens of a European mountain town into whatever they wish to be. Sullivan's rejection of this fanciful notion seems little more than a rejection of him personally.

The comedic switch-up in this lost idea was an old stand-by for Gilbert and Sullivan, and it is a perfect example of their "topsy-turvy" style. In their musicals, everything gets turned upside down. Expectations are raised, and then flipped, to the point that the flipping had become what was expected. This is what Sullivan wants taken out of their future work. He wants to portray human drama rather than stick to formula. This doesn't just worry his writing partner, but also the owners of the Savoy (Ron Cook and Wendy Nottingham), who have the team under contract. Art and commerce, the eternal struggle! Could Sullivan turning his own artistic endeavors topsy-turvy spell the end of everything?

As it turns out, no, it doesn't, and the result is the major thrust of Leigh's movie. Topsy-Turvy is the story of the creation of The Mikado [an early film version of the play is also coming from Criterion this month, read my review here]. When Sullivan's wife, Kitty (Leslie Manville, so good in Leigh's most recent film Another Year [review]), drags him to a Japanese exhibition, the lyricist is inspired by the things he sees. He starts writing a new comic opera about a Japanese executioner, and suddenly a whole new ball is rolling. Leigh's film, which he both wrote and directed, chronicles all the backstage planning, all the bruised egos and the hard work and the dangerous peccadilloes, that keep a theatre company running. Topsy-Turvy is an elegantly crafted ensemble piece, with enough side plots to give each important performer their due and allow the actors to establish believable and complete characters, but never so much that any one can derail the main story. It's an often-brittle tale, examining the insecurities of performing life. The very need for acceptance and validation is pretty much its own guarantee that there will never be enough of either, not even when you're on top of the world. That, in its own way, is topsy-turvy, as well.

Mike Leigh and his production team meticulously re-create the Savoy and its lavish stage productions. In addition to songs from The Mikado, which are sprinkled throughout the narrative at key moments, we also get glimpses of Princess Ida and The Sorcerer, both to show the Gilbert and Sullivan style and also, in the case of the latter, to show the magic they created, both as acts of fiction and in the act of creating that fiction. Though Leigh is often known for his far more serious human comedies, the kind of thing that Sullivan could have probably appreciated and Gilbert might have dubbed boring, Topsy-Turvy is more expansive and fancy than his modern kitchen-sink style. Dick Pope's photography has a sophisticated sweep that frees it from the theatre's proscenium arch and transforms stage craft into cinema craft. We are never stuck on the boards, we are with the audience and the crew and the performers all at the same time.

I guess in a way we could also call the film's extravagant style "topsy-turvy" in that it does turn our expectations of a Mike Leigh movie on their heads--and with rather successful results. The attention to detail that Leigh takes is essential to his story. In his own subtle switch-up, once The Mikado is underway, the roles reverse, and while Sullivan contentedly trucks along with the new material, Gilbert gets serious about creating something authentic. While the music and even the lyrics are very British, Gilbert wants everything else to be true to the source. He rejects choreographed kitsch and tries to mimic what he sees in kabuki theatre and real Japanese life (albeit the lives of the immigrants visiting his country). Costumes are all based on traditional sketches, and even slimming undergarments are banned because it would change the natural shape of a kimono. As Broadbent plays him, Gilbert goes from the typical humorous blowhard to an artist of great intensity. My favorite moments are when the writer comes off the cuff with a clever joke and chuckles to himself about it: the self-satisfaction of one's own humor.

The whole approach of Topsy-Turvy is subtle and generally light as air. The intricacies of the story structure aren't immediately obvious. Leigh's anecdotal technique keeps an even pace, letting each backstage story play out, hitting the punchlines (which are uniformly funny), and then moving on. This makes it a little surprising when the film springs a heavy denouement on the audience. Despite all the laughs that Leigh has gathered along the way, he has also slowly exposed the darker sacrifice of artistic obsession. In their pursuit of acclaim and adulation, the troupe not only demands a lot of themselves, but also the people around them. Both Gilbert and Sullivan have chosen the ephemeral muse over the permanence of family, and what that means for the women in their lives comes out in different, yet equally heartbreaking ways. Manville gets a powerful scene where she describes her own surreal version of a Gilbert and Sullivan production, while Shirley Henderson, playing an actress who longs for Gilbert's approval, gets one last monologue and the movie's final song. She sings "The Sun Whose Rays Are All Ablaze," a solo ballad from The Mikado that, though quiet and plaintive, rings out as an insistent declaration of her determination to tell her own story.

Tomorrow, she will sing the song again. And there will be another production to follow. Even Kitty asks Gilbert what comes next, though The Mikado has only just premiered. The quest for originality demands its own repetition. Topsy one day, turvy the next.

The new Criterion Blu-Ray of Topsy-Turvy packs an incredible level of detail into its 1.78:1 transfer. Dick Pope stages many intricate shots of the theatrical production within the film, shooting from the theatre balcony, or sometimes right in the thick of the chorus, and in either case the image goes deep and the individual flourishes all get their proper clarity. Colors are rich and vibrant, with excellent skin tones that become all the more apparent as the stage actors wash away their make-up and we see the difference between artifice and naturalism up close. There are no hints of digital noise reduction, nor are there any other tell-tale signs of technological manipulation. The image is clean and vibrant throughout.

Criterion has packed a bunch of extras onto this new release, starting with their usual booklet, which features photos, credits, and an essay by Amy Taubin. There is also an explanation of the artistic technique that Yuko Shimizu used in creating the cover; interesting to note that, judging by the Criterion website, the Blu-Ray cover is printed with the image oriented one way and the standard DVD has it printed the other way. Chapter listings are printed on the inside front cover of the case.

Other extras include an audio commentary, deleted scenes, and a conversation between Leigh and his musical director. The Blu-Ray has them on one disc, the standard DVD on two.

Perhaps most pleasing of all of these is a the short film, A Sense of History (1992; 26 minutes; presented in HD), written by and starring Jim Broadbent, directed by Mike Leigh. Broadbent stars as the Earl of Leete. Mostly a one-man show, it features the Earl leading a camera crew around his family's opulent estate, which has been in the clan for over 900 years. As he conducts the tour, talk turns wistful and nostalgic, and soon the family history turns dark and the personal history gets darker. It's all told with the same matter-of-fact, upper-crust sense of self. There is no real reflection, no remorse: just the facts of privilege. It's an excellent piece of work, smartly and subtly packing a lot into a very short time span.

For a complete rundown on the special features, read the full review at DVDTalk.

SIDELINE: MORE REVIEWS FOR 1/11

Other movies I reviewed over the last month...

IN THEATRES...

* All Good Things, a true-ish crime story that is fine despite its distanced point of view.

* Another Year, Mike Leigh's incisive take on the ups and downs of a year in the life of a particular group of friends.

* Biutiful, Javier Bardem is here to help, but Alejandro González Iñárritu's movie is still absolutely dreadful.

* The Green Hornet, the odd pairing of Michel Gondry and Seth Rogen gives us too much and yet not enough.

* The Illusionist, Sylvain Chomet's charming, bittersweet animated adaptation of Jacques Tati.

* On the Bowery, Lionel Rogosin's 1957 Neorealist look at life on skid row.

ON DVD/BD...

* Backdraft, examining my past enjoyment of Ron Howard movies by watching the BD of the movie that started it all going wrong.

* The Color Purple, Steven Spielberg's unlikely adaptation of Alice Walker is still surprisingly effective.

* Inspector Bellamy, the final film from Claude Chabrol feels strangely unfinished. Starring Gerard Depardieu.

* Last Train Home, a heartbreaking documentary about a family of migrant workers in China.

* Red Hill, a modern western from Australia, starring the guy who plays Jason Stackhouse on True Blood as a city sheriff stuck in a small-town revenge plot.

Speaking of True Blood...

* The Romantics, Anna Paquin shines next to a bunch of TV refugees doing their best with an underdeveloped script.

* Welcome to the Rileys, a middling indie drama given significant heft by accomplished performances from James Gandolfini and Melissa Leo. (Not so fast, Kristen Stewart...)

* A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop, Zhang Yimou's remake of Blood Simple is now on DVD.

SIDELINE: MORE REVIEWS FOR 10/08

Halloween is here, and I hit my goal for one horror movie a week for October. Go me!

In addition to those reviews, here are some other movies I was able to scare up reviews for in the past month:

IN THEATRES...

* Ashes of Time Redux, the restoration of Wong Kar-Wai's martial artist stunner. I was very excited to see this, as you will likely read!

* Blindness, a take on the post-apocalyptic genre where a disease strikes people like Mark Ruffalo and Gael Garcia Bernal blind, while leaving Julianne Moore with her sight so she can be Queen. I'm still torn on this film, and was almost going to rate it at "Rent It" right up until posting time. I am still struggling with whether or not its doldrums overpower the good bits or vice versa.

* Happy-Go-Lucky, the new Mike Leigh dramedy with a stellar performance from Sally Hawkins as the eternal clown.

* Let the Right One In, a Swedish vampire film that really gives the genre a whole new lease on its undead life.

* Rachel Getting Married, Jonathan Demme's unbalanced movie about family nearly stifles great turns from Anne Hathaway and Rosemarie DeWitt as sisters trying to deal with their past as they move into the future.

* W., Oliver Stone's perplexing biopic of George W. Bush.

* What Just Happened, a Hollywood tell-all that tells nothing, despite some good work from Robert DeNiro. Based on a book by Art Linson, the story has been defanged beyond recognition.

ON DVD...

* Chaplin: 15th Anniversary Edition, the flawed biopic stays memorable thanks to Robert Downey, Jr.

* Flight of the Red Balloon, wherein one of my favorite contemporary filmmakers, Hou Hsiao Hsien, pays tribute to one of my favorite children's films.

* Ludwig, the gigantic Luchino Visconti biography of the mad king of Bavaria. This took a while to get through, which is why I slowed down some. (Plus, I have some big sets I am starting, too.)

* Mondays in the Sun, a Javier Bardem vehicle about men struggling with unemployment in Spain. A surprisingly meaningful drama with good characters and a balance of humor.

* The Picture of Dorian Gray, the chilled 1940s adaptation of the Oscar Wilde classic. Directed by Albert Lewin.

* Six in Paris, an anthology of French New Wave directors tackling different neighborhoods in the City of Light. Produced by Barbet Schroeder, and featuring segments by Rohmer, Chabrol, and Godard.

* Touch of Evil: 50th Anniversary Edition, a two-disc examination of Orson Welles' troubled noir classic.

* The Unforeseen, a dreamy, soulful documentary about urban sprawl and its effect on Austin, Texas. Co-produced by Robert Redford and Terrence Malick.

* Warner Home Video Western Classics Collection, collecting six cowboy movies from the Warner Bros. vaults, only two of which--the Rod Serling-penned Saddle the Wind and the Gregory Peck-vehicle The Stalking Moon--are really worth it. Also features Anthony Mann's Cimarron, William Holden in Escape from Fort Bravo, and Richard Widmark as another charismatic bad guy in The Law & Jake Wade.