SUN JULY 24, 2022 10:00 PM

MEANTIME

$8.00 (member) ; $13.00 (general admission)

Los Feliz 3 | New Restoration, courtesy of Janus Films. 

‘Mike Leigh: An American Cinematheque Retrospective’ & ‘Sunday Restorations’ Series 

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  • RELEASED IN: 1984
  • 107 MINUTES
  • DIRECTED BY: MIKE LEIGH

ABOUT THE FILM:

A slow-burning depiction of economic degradation in Thatcher’s England, Mike Leigh’s MEANTIME is the culmination of the writer-director’s pioneering work in television. Unemployment is rampant in London’s working-class East End, where a middle-aged couple and their two sons languish in a claustrophobic public-housing flat. As the brothers (Phil Daniels and Tim Roth) grow increasingly disaffected, Leigh punctuates the grinding boredom of their daily existence with tense encounters, including with a priggish aunt (Marion Bailey) who has managed to become middle-class and a blithering skinhead on the verge of psychosis (a scene-stealing Gary Oldman, in his first major role). Informed by Leigh’s now trademark improvisational process and propelled by the lurching rhythms of its Beckett-like dialogue, MEANTIME is an unrelenting, often blisteringly funny look at life on the dole.

FORMAT: DCP

DISTRIBUTOR: Janus Films