Highly Overrated But Still Good

An Exercise In Nonsense

A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

This probably impressed me less than any other film by Mike Leigh that I've seen. But I mean that more as a compliment to Leigh than as a criticism of the film because its quite good by any normal standards. There's an odd quality to its narrative structure. The film has two distinctive halves. The first deals with the collective life of a housing project in Kent and seems almost like a British-ization of Bela Tarr's "Satantengo." It's relentlessly bleak- miserable people screaming at each other in conversations that go nowhere- and at times comes close to self-parody. I don't think I've ever heard the phrases "F--- off!" "You make me sick!" and "Care for a cup of tea then?" so many times in one hour. Yet, it retains a grim power, if for no other reason than the moments of mesmerizing cinematography by Dick Pope- its Leigh's visually splashiest film since "Naked"- and the characteristically wonderful score by Andrew Dickson. The second half focuses much more conventionally on one family, and is, taken in and of itself, one of the most warm and sentimental works Leigh has produced. Timothy Spall gives another great performance as a genuinely philosophical, and lazy, man. His marriage is put to the test. You feel happy at the out-come, but not sure its in anyone in the family's best-interest.

I will not write a lot about the story since so much is already said in the preceding comments. However I will tell how I came to watch it. It was very late one weekday night and the rest of the family had gone to bed. I was dead tired and just about to turn off the TV - and there was this film, All Or Nothing, about to begin in one of the two non-commercial public service channels (which might be one explanation why it transfixed me - no interruptions with inane requests to buy anti-wrinkle cream). And I was just completely enthralled! I was dreadfully tired, my eyes were red and swollen from exhaustion but I just couldn't stop watching. When the movie was finished at around two o'clock my eyes were also red and swollen from crying - and yet I was completely sober and so unprepared for this absolutely gripping film experience with the most wonderful actors. One of the best ever!

Mike Leigh's 'All or Nothing' features some of the trademarks of his best known films: naturalistic acting, moments of extreme poignancy, and a sensitive portrait of those for whom modern life is not easy. But it lacks the more comic characters who have often adorned his work. In their absence, the result is one of his most understated, and downbeat, movies since his debut feature 'Bleak Moments'; and in spite of little jewels in the script, at times its almost painfully hard to watch. Additionally, the portrait of a very white British underclass, and the empty streets of the estate where they live, doesn't quite seem in tune with life as it is actually lived today. To my mind (and despite the Oscar nominations won by 'Secrets and Lies) Leigh's best contemporary portraits remains his early 1990s trio: the bittersweet 'High Hopes', the hilarious 'Life is Sweet' and the coruscating 'Naked'; but as he followed this film with the brilliant period drama 'Vera Drake', maybe he simply needed a change of scene to refocus his vision. Still, this film is definitely a minor entry in his canon.

It strikes me that this sort of stuff bewitches the French etc at their film festivals because they fatuously see in it a corrective to the Curtis/Grant Cool Britannia, "red London bus school" of UK film-making but in reality it's just as false and fatuous -- all that Leigh's ladelled out here is an unappetising,lardy dollop of council estate ennui, over two hours of it, with precious little action and few of the light comic touches that he usually throws in to keep us engaged. Either he doesn't have it in him anymore or he felt that keeping it unrelentingly bleak this time marks him out as a more serious film maker. Whatever,it's an unwelcome and redundant return to Mean Time territory (now over over 20 years old) that reeks of the late '70s/early '80s and,despite its pretensions has little of the flavour of modern Britain. Everything here feels laughably out-of-date -- from the tarty estate girl (who looks like a refugee from some obscure '50s British black-and-white movie) to the comedy alcoholic mum (who reminds me of the bint in the Fat Les "Vindaloo" video). Only the subject of obesity gives it any contemporary feel. And a fat lot of good that is! In short, Leigh's gone back to basics here, tried to "do a Ken Loach" and produced a real gobbler that is not worth feeding to the dog on Boxing Day. Here's the plot,such as it is -- a bunch of uninteresting, taciturn working class folk living in Bermondsey eke out a turgid existence (no sign of drugs though-hmmm,has Mike read any newspapers lately?) variously getting pantomime drunk at karaoke evenings (can't remember her name but that character was so laughably simplistic that I almost took her to be a post-modernist joke slipped in!), now and again shouting at each other, having listless sex, and barely able to conjure up a wry larf between the lot of them. Who do ya think you are,Mr Mike Leigh,with your paternalistic middle class inversely-romanticised view of working class life? Oi Leigh, NO-O-O-O! Don't you think that these people can still have fun? Geez,this is as bad as Woody Allen when he decided to "go serious" and make Bergman movies,but without any of the feeling or the skill. Here Leigh's tried to remake himself, 20 years on but forgot to look out his window and see what'd changed! Ferchrissakes,these people would have topped themselves if this was all that life had to offer them! Really you're every bit as out of touch with that class as are the poor old writers of Eastenders,who also seem to think that all their working class characters are fit for is barneying and throwing themselves at every passing bit of skirt 5 minutes after the wedding ceremony! Now,I used to be big Fan of Leigh's right back to Nuts in May and up to Life is Sweet, but it needs an aficionado not a sycophant (and nowadays Leigh's got his fair share of the latter on both sides of the Channel!) to blow the whistle on bombs like this one. Please,I implore you, forget this exists, go back to the early funny ones and don't,but don't, for pity's sake watch the vox pops from the actors without a sick bag to hand. Come in Mr Leigh your time is up!