In this much needed examination of Mike Leigh, Sean O'Sullivan reclaims
the British director as a practicing theorist--a filmmaker deeply
invested in cinema's formal, conceptual, and narrative dimensions. In
contrast with Leigh's prevailing reputation as a straightforward crafter
of social realist movies, O'Sullivan illuminates the visual tropes and
storytelling investigations that position Leigh as an experimental
filmmaker who uses the art and artifice of cinema to frame tales of the
everyday and the extraordinary alike.
O'Sullivan challenges the prevailing characterizations of Leigh's cinema
by detailing the complicated constructions of his realism, positing his
films not as transparent records of life but as aesthetic
transformations of it. Concentrating on the most recent two decades of
Leigh's career, the study examines how Naked, Secrets and Lies,
Topsy-Turvy, Vera Drake, and other films engage narrative convergence
and narrative diffusion, the tension between character and plot, the
interplay of coincidence and design, cinema's relationship to other
systems of representation, and the filmic rendering of the human figure.
The book also spotlights such earlier, less-discussed works as Four
Days in July and The Short and Curlies, illustrating the recurring
visual and storytelling concerns of Leigh's cinema. With a detailed
filmography, this volume also includes key selections from O'Sullivan's
several interviews with Leigh.
