A conversation with filmmaker Mike Leigh.
PHOTOS BY JOSS BARRATi
LYNNE KONSTANTIN STAFF WRITER
Mike Leigh on the set of Career Girls.
c
ast March, British writ-
er/director Mike Leigh's
film Secrets and Lies was
nominated for five Acade-
my Awards, including Best
Film, Best Director, Best Actress,
Best Supporting Actress and Best
Screenplay.
The story of a young black pro-
fessional woman who, in seeking her
birth mother, discovers her to be
white, Secrets and Lies is much more
than an adoption tale with a twist:
The film comprises the stories of the
many individuals whose lives the au-
dience is permitted a peek at, ordi-
nary people with ordinary problems,
which are the most wrenchingly ex-
traordinary kinds.
It is the kind of film that wins
Cannes' Palme d'Or, which it did. It
is not the kind of movie one expects
to see nominated for five Academy
Awards, of which it won none.
What is so strikingly different
about Mike Leigh's films is that one
is able to feel a bit like a voyeur —
one becomes intimately familiar with
the characters on the screen.
"I'm concerned with putting real
life, real people on the screen," says
Leigh. "I don't want to make claims.
A lot of filmmakers are not con-
cerned with that; they're into the ma-
cho experience of being out there,
shooting action. My thing is to do
people, and to do them in a real way."
And though Secrets and Lies has
been by far the most commercially
successful film in the 54-year-old
filmmaker's career, it exceedingly
possesses the "Mike Leigh touch":
one that elicits the rawness from his
actors — be it a withdrawn old
woman in High Hopes, a painfully
nihilistic man in Naked or the ex-
cruciation and gentleness of youth,
memories and friendship in his up-
coming Career Girls.
Leigh first selects his actors, sug-
gesting a theme and working with
them, individually and in groups, im-
provising situations.
"They have to be versatile; they
can't just play themselves," he says.
"They must be intelligent, sensitive,
have a sense of humor, social aware-
ness. I can't work with self-absorbed
actors, egos."
The screenplay then develops out
of their work. Though it's been said
that Leigh does not work with a
script, that it's all improvisation, he
says, "It winds up being very precise.
We rehearse, and I write [the script]
by directing it.
"A lot is drawn from what has been im-
provised, from working on relationships,
and I rewrite." He adds, "I hope we end up
with good dialogue. And after that, we
shoot the picture."
Born in Salford, Lancashire, England,
a working-class area near Manchester,
Leigh's father was a physician. Training
briefly as an actor at the Royal Academy
of Dramatic Art in London, Leigh was dis-
appointed in the school's emphasis on tech-
nique and lack of emphasis on life. He
continued his studies at various art
schools, eventually landing at the London
Film School.
Leigh's first feature film, 1971's Bleak
Moments, was followed by a 17-year hia-
tus from theatrical films. Concentrating
on the British stage and television, he re-
turned to films with High Hopes in 1988,
which examined both sides of the class wall
in Margaret Thatcher's England.
It's been said of Mike Leigh in class-con-
scious England that he "condescends to
the underclass because he disdains to flat-
ter them": in Career Girls, one character,
upon entering an imposing apartment
with a view, says, "I suppose on a clear day
you can see the class struggle from here."
His treatment of the classes has no lofty
condescension nor sneering adulation; he
simply is intrigued by people and depicts
them as best he can.
And to the accusations following Naked
that he is a misogynist, Leigh responds,
"That's one of the more stupid things that
has been said of me. I deal with the ex-
ploration of men and women, and that in-
cludes 'unacceptable' sides of human
behavior.
"I have no doubt that some people who
have seen Career Girls will still think Pm
a misogynist. [The film] won't prevent peo-
ple who talk a great deal of trash, partic-
ularly humorless, politically correct freaks."
Following up Secrets and Lies with Ca-
reer Girls, this new film, though seeming-
ly smaller, still impacts with the innate
force one expects.
Annie is on a train bound for London,
to visit her former university roommate,
Hannah, after a separation of six years.
Through flashbacks, we follow their rocky
meeting, their grungy, Cure-themed mid-
'80s college days and the trepidation of
their present-day reunion. Gradually, the
two fall into their old friendship with the
advantage of time and melancholy and hu-
mor.
In her feature-film debut, Lynda Stead-
man (no relation to Leigh's former wife
and actress Alison Steadman) plays the
eczema-plagued, tick-twitching Annie,
crippled by nervousness and insecurity.
Annie shows up on the doorstep of Han-
nah, her new roommate, who later corn-