Mike Leigh: An American Cinematheque Retrospective

ABOUT THE SERIES:

The American Cinematheque is thrilled to welcome legendary English filmmaker Mike Leigh in-person for a curated retrospective centered around his newest feature HARD TRUTHS. A dramatic poet of both social realism and dark comedy, Leigh’s works have consistently invented a form all their own, connecting audiences with the realities of those on the fringes of an alienated society, as his characters grapple with both the socio-political and existential obstacles that stand in their path towards happiness, or an overall life satisfaction.

Playing alongside HARD TRUTHS is SECRETS AND LIES, a nuanced and empathetic portrait of the working class wrapped into an emotional juggernaut of a film that features some of the most powerful performances in recent memory. Cementing himself as one of the great humanist filmmakers of his time, Leigh has his characters in the film confront their past as he interrogates their notions of self and their own morality, completely shattering his characters and audience alike before allowing them to heal and eventually find themselves in an embrace of one another. With NAKED, a more explicit exploration of individualism and the deterioration of morality in Margaret Thatcher’s England, Leigh presents us with one of the most despicable protagonists in all of cinema, a disillusioned and abusive man simply known as “Johnny” who embarks on a nocturnal odyssey through the streets of London, spewing his nihilist contempt for the modern world and routinely causing the suffering of those unlucky enough to encounter him over the course of the night.

While Leigh’s most acclaimed films are unflinchingly dark, intense and emotionally overwhelming, much of his earlier works explore similar themes of existential alienation and the working class from a more comedic lens, observable in such films as MEANTIME and LIFE IS SWEET. Also screening as a part of this retrospective, prior to NAKED, is Leigh’s short film “The Short and Curlies,” in which he explores the intersections between comedy and romance, and those who are destined to remain on the margins of happiness, always on the outside looking in.