BACK STAGE WEST
October 31, 2002
Mike Leigh's empathy as an
artist doesn't always extend to journalists, as I learned.
by Rob Kendt
Mike Leigh, I had
read, doesn't suffer fools gladly--indeed, according to frequent collaborator
Jim Broadbent, he suffers them "not at all." I'm not a fool, but I am
an entertainment journalist; the line is a fine one, the confusion
understandable. So I can cut the diminutive British writer/director some slack
for being so brusque and snotty with me in a recent L.A. interview to publicize
his new film All or Nothing, a bleak drama about desperate working-class folks, their faint,
frayed hopes, and familial entanglements.
Still, I
wondered, after an interview that felt more like he was auditioning me (and not
liking what he saw): How can a man whose films and stage works display such an
abiding empathy for the vagaries of human folly, and which convey such a
palpable longing for human connection, be such an ass in person? There are two
possible answers, as I see it. One has to do with his reluctance to discuss his
"technique," especially with the press; the other has to do with his
worldview--which, like his technique, is often misunderstood and
oversimplified.
On the subject of
his technique, it dawned on me as I tried to take Leigh over the well-trod
subject of his unique creative process--he works with his actors in a
months-long exploration/rehearsal to shape the characters, the story, the
dialogue, before a single frame is exposed--that as fascinating as this process
is, it is finally a distraction. Too much has been made of it, to the point
that the experience of seeing a Mike Leigh Film is now colored by our knowledge
of his "process."
"This is
very academic," he said at one point in our discussion of how he works
with such powerhouse actors as David Thewlis, Leslie Manville, and Timothy
Spall (the latter two play All or Nothing's lopsided common-law couple). "If you were shown my
films without any knowledge of how they were made, you wouldn't be saying what
you are."
And on the
subject of his aesthetic, his style, what makes Leigh Leigh, he's quite
defensive. Indeed, the assumption that commonly creeps into any consideration
of his work is that, because actors make a larger contribution to his films
than they may to standard scripted films, he is somehow more a traffic cop or
curator or pseudo-documentarian than a true auteur. It's a longstanding misconception
about "realism": that on the one hand it's "truer" than
other, more "stylized" aesthetics, and on the other hand it has a
weaker authorial voice, it's somehow less "art" than the stuff that
looks and behaves like art we're used to. If Leigh sees this view of his work
as backhanded, condescending, faint praise, I can understand his objection.
I had suggested
to Leigh that in many respects his actors define the character and tone of his
films--thinking of Thewlis in the harrowing Naked, or Jim Broadbent in the brilliant Life
Is Sweet, or sad-sack
Spall as a lumbering cabbie in All or Nothing. "How come," he responded
sharply, "all these films are similar to each other when they don't have
all the same actors all the time? My answer is, 'Bingo, there you go.'
"Is what I
do a technique?" he continued, looking over to the film's publicist,
Fredell Pogodin, for support. "I can say right now, 'I think I am going to
paint some daffodils using Van Gogh's "technique." ' Will that give
me a Van Gogh painting? I don't think so. I think something else went on as
well as his technique."
He's an artist,
in other words, and how he makes his art is his own damn business. It's because
I wholeheartedly concur with that first point that I'm sorry our interview went
so poorly--sorry for both of us, because as injured as I felt, he seemed
genuinely insulted by my questions. I'll just say for the record that I
consider Leigh among the few true artists working in narrative film right now;
I think of him in the same rank as Chekhov and Renoir for his deceptively
simple, almost invisible narrative craft, his compassionate but unblinking eye,
his sense of emotional proportion; and that while All or Nothing is not his strongest film (for my money, Life
Is Sweet and Grown-Ups are his tops), it's a must-see for
serious students of the human condition.
Or, as Leigh said
acidly as he wrapped up our interview, "I hope all those unemployed actors
come see it."