Mike Leigh

Michael “Mike” Leigh was born on February 20, 1943 at Brocket Hall, Welwyn, in Hertfordshire, England, into a family of Jewish origin. Moved to Broughton, in Salford, Lancanshire, he coincided in the classroom with Les Blair, who would be a director like him, and who produced his first feature film for him in 1971, Bleak Moments , which became a kind of island in his career, Well, his next work released in theaters did not arrive until 1988.

He studied theater in London thanks to a scholarship at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, as well as going through other prestigious artistic training institutions, such as the Camberwell School of Art and the Central School of Art and Design. It was at the East 15 Acting School, where he honed his skills as an actor’s director, that he met his future wife and mother of his two children, Alison Steadman . He married her in 1973, but they would divorce in 2001. Leigh currently lives with costume designer Charlotte Holdich.

His professional career began on stage in the 1960s. He had the opportunity to work with prestigious professionals such as Peter Hall and Trevor Nunn at the Royal Shakespeare Company. His experience in other people’s texts would help him to configure his own inner world, which would have to be expressed in a very particular way. And it is that Mike Leigh’s way of telling stories is deeply personal, and he was forged when he was dedicated to the theater. Lover of the works of Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter, among others, would begin to create their own stories through a technique that combined the imagination of different characters, the writing of possible situations that related them, and improvisation with the actors who represented them through rehearsals. The result refined and captured on paper would serve to configure a more or less definitive text, to which in theater or cinema the actors should basically adhere in the last instance. Needless to say, this way of working helps him to create a core of splendid performers who feel very comfortable with him, and some will regularly repeat his collaboration. The list includes Jim Broadbent , Timothy Spall , his wife Alison Steadman, Lesley Manville , Imelda Staunton, Brenda Blethyn , David Thewlis , Ruth Sheen , Sally Hawkins , Marion Bailey , Peter Wight …

In the 1970s and 1980s, the possibility of doing work for the BBC on television arose. There the shorts and telefilms that he made showed his predilection for everyday realism, which made catching life itself compatible with a certain sense of humor that was not strident, as can be seen in Without mincing words (1987), a model in this sense. This and the death of her father in the mid-80s, which marked him deeply, will set the course of her career. Cinematographically he will feel inspired by John Cassavetes , his 1959 Shadows ended precisely with the significant sentence “The film you have just seen is the result of an improvisation”. And although it is tempting to embarrass him with his compatriot Ken Loach, differs from this filmmaker in his greater restraint, politics and composition of the characters, although they suffer internal tears and may face important crises in their lives. For this reason it is understandable that some scholars cite Yasujiro Ozu as a reference, and that Leigh himself says that Jean Renoir and Satyajit Ray are among his favorite filmmakers.

1988 is an important year of commitment to cinema as a means to tell their stories, with the technique described. Great ambitions of that year are followed by La vida es dulce (1990), with an ironic title, and linked to the tradition of the absurd, which still distances him from the general public. With Naked. Defenseless (1993) gives its first bell, the adventures of an immoral cynic are liked in Cannes, and the film wins the directing and acting awards, this one for David Thewlis. The ground is ready for perhaps his best film, Secrets and lies(1996), with these family stories that seem like life itself, will win the Palme d’Or at that same festival. And not only that, but Hollywood gives it its particular blessing, the film achieves five Oscar nominations, including best picture. Leigh will no longer be a stranger to these golden awards, although he has never won a statuette, he personally has seven nominations for directing or writing.

Leigh has set the bar so high, that with the slight Two Girls Today (1997) she disappoints a bit. She surprises with her next work, Topsy-Turvy (1999), as it is an unusual biopic of the tandem of musical works made up of Gilbert and Sullivan, with a luxurious production design to recreate late 19th century London. In the end, it is not so far from her favorite themes, the vicissitudes of the protagonists in their ordinary lives, to which is added the world of the scenarios that, after all, is Leigh’s everyday world.

All or Nothing (2002) is another formidable example of how Leigh is capable of capturing ordinary family situations, making them not only believable but, what is much more difficult, interesting, capable of captivating the viewer. The British filmmaker criticizes fierce individualism and the tendency to close in on oneself, and already points to the issue of abortion, which occupies the core of The Secret of Vera Drake (2004), winner of the Golden Lion in Venice, an ambiguous look at the real case of a woman who “helped” pregnant women to perform clandestine abortions. The schizophrenia of this practice that is compatible with the role of mother of a family of her exemplary overwhelms.

Leigh becomes more optimistic in her latest works. Happy ‘s title . A story about happiness (2008), is eloquent, as well as the follow-up of a woman brimming with optimism, very different from her ashen driving school teacher. Sally Hawkins, who plays the happy Poppy, was awarded at the Berlin Festival. While Another Year (2010), despite the pathos of some characters, she vigorously paints the unity of a marriage, and the possible happiness of her son, who starts dating a woman who suits him.

The religious question is rather absent from Leigh’s cinema, but she tackled it on stage with her work “Two Thousand Years”, from 2005, where she follows a secular left-wing Jewish family, which she opposes that one of its most young people are attracted to religion. She assures the filmmaker that he personally is spiritual, but not religious.