Meantime

Colin (Tim Roth) is unemployed and a little slow. His father Frank is also unemployed and so is almost everyone else he knows. Only his mother Mavis works in the family. His brother Mark (Phil Daniels) and skin head friend Coxy (Gary Oldman) drink their days away. They live aimless, hopeless lives in the jobless underclass of London. Mavis' sister Barbara and her husband John (Alfred Molina) are better off. Barbara gives Colin a job at her house which only turns the family relationships toxic.

This is early Mike Leigh and it is straight into his favorite subject, the English underclass. It's a full length TV movie filled with future stars. It is compelling and not only due to their performances. There is a real sense of these characters and their world. Like most Mike Leigh movies, this is very much a character study. These actors are buzzing with power and soul.

'Meantime' is a modernist masterpiece, closer to Antonioni than Loach, all the more remarkable for having been made on TV, and transcending the incidentals of portentousness, contrivance and misogyny. Leigh doesn't simply record the monumental, faceless, soulless tenements that dwarf his characters, as a social-realist would: he allows them to shape his narrative, a rigid, static series of concrete tableaux. Leigh doesn't reduce his characters to caricature (a complaint often levelled against him) - Thatcherism does, by removing all those things - hope, work, dreams etc. - that mark humanity and individuality. As bitterly angry and funny as 'Naked'.

Uncomfortable glimpse into poverty ridden Thatcher era London and what happens to the working and underclass when there are no jobs or prospects. A life on the dole, and the affects it has on the people, the families and the area. A young Gary Oldman as the demented delinquent skinhead Coxy and Tim Roth playing mentally handicapped Colin. Both brilliant performances. Still can't believe how young they were here.

Ugly and gritty, just as it's meant to be. Bit bleak for me though and I wish they'd stop repeating that same bit of music over and over!

This is Mike Leigh's finest film. Next to this masterpiece his later feature films feel very contrived, it just flows beautifully. It's also very honest, the best depiction of the effects of unemployment I've ever seen on film. But of course as with all Mike Leigh's films it's all about the performances of the actors and they're all pitch perfect. I feel a bit sorry for Tim Roth, his first film role and without a doubt his greatest, how could he ever equal it, it was all downhill from here. A truly heartbreaking performance and if you're not moved by it then you have no empathetic feeling. I also particularly like the performances of Jeff Robert and Pam Ferris as the Mum and Dad. It's a tragedy that this film missed out on getting a theatrical release since it was a few months after it was finished that Channel 4 began shooting on 35mm with a view to feature film distribution. Because it's a 'TV' film it's unjustly ignored in comparison with Leigh's later films, but don't let that put you off, this is a masterpiece. The music is beautiful as well perfectly matching the mood of the film.

Don't really know why but I couldn't look away. Nothing really happens, and no one really says anything, except for an exchange about economics and anthills, but something about it is captivating. Great performances of course are some of that. Saxy is a feral animal.