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| Ruth Sheen and Phil Davis in High Hopes |
Cyril: Phil Davis
Shirley: Ruth Sheen
Mrs. Bender: Edna Doré
Valerie: Heather Tobias
Martin: Philip Jackson
Laetitia: Lesley Manville
Rupert: David Bamber
Wayne: Jason Watkins
Director: Mike Leigh
Screenplay: Mike Leigh
Cinematography: Roger Pratt
Production design: Diana Charnley
Music: Andrew Dickson
Mike Leigh's excoriating satire of Thatcherite Britain,
High Hopes, ranges from shrill to droll, from gratingly silly to quietly touching. A film like it from any other director might have been said to be out of control, but as usual Leigh knows exactly what he's doing, and he does it brilliantly if annoyingly. Annoyance is, in fact, part of the process: If we object that his characters are unreal, over the top, his response would have to be yes, but you know who they are, don't you? And we do, from the shabby socialists, Cyril and Shirley, to the working-class strivers who can't rise above their bad taste, Valerie and Martin, to the parvenu Tories, Laetitia and Rupert. We've all seen their likes, even in the United States -- perhaps they're even more noticeable in today's Trumpian America. Fortunately, Leigh knows to ground his satire in people we can sympathize with, namely, Cyril and Shirley. They are menial cogs in the capitalist machine, he's a motorcycle courier, she works for a landscape gardener, and they rage against the system, especially Cyril, who drags Shirley to Highgate Cemetery to worship at the grave of Karl Marx. She's more interested in the foliage -- "That ivy could use a pruning," she notes -- than in the moribund class struggle, but she loves her man, even if he doesn't want to have children because he doesn't want to bring anyone else into an overpopulated world in which socialism has failed. Poor as they are, they have good hearts, taking in the mentally challenged stray Wayne for a night and putting him up in their "spare room," which is a large closet with a mattress and sleeping bag. But they have to contend with family: Cyril's aging mum, who precipitates a crisis by locking herself out of her house, and his giddy sister, Valerie, whose husband runs a used-car lot and is a thorough cad. The crisis introduces us to mum's gentrifying next-door neighbors, Laetitia and Rupert, who have bought one of the row houses in a council estate and are renovating it to the height of yuppie chic. Rupert proclaims his mantra: "What made this country great was a place for everyone and everyone in his place." Then he adds, "And this is my place." The scenes from the lives of Laetitia and Rupert and from those of Valerie and Martin are hysterically funny, but Leigh knows that a little of them goes a long way -- a little of Valerie's manic giggle goes a very long way indeed -- so he wisely turns back to the more identifiably human (and humane) Cyril and Shirley to put things into perspective. The film concludes with Cyril and Shirley taking his mum up to the roof of the building in which they live to admire the rather drab view of the St. Pancras railway yards and the gasworks, with just a peek at St. Paul's. For once in the film, mum, who is usually sunk in senile confusion and depression, brightens a little: "This is the top of the world," she says. God help us, but it probably is.
