As a
rule, I find most of Mike Leigh's films completely unwatchable - his
Happy-Go-Lucky
of 2008 being about as bad as a film can get when it comes to
tin-eared dialogue, lethargy-inducing mise
en scène
and dimwit characterization - and yet he has, in some kind of
illustration of a basic human law, managed to produce a couple of
really, really good movies - both period pieces: the authentically
tragic Vera
Drake
(2004); and the authentically dazzling Topsy-Turvy
-
the story of how Gilbert and Sullivan got their groove back with The
Mikado. And
yes, in Topsy-Turvy,
there is wine.
More
accurately, drink punctuates the movie: a quiet index of the
characters' situations and expectations, as meaningful as the clothes
they wear and the expressions on their faces. Which means that when,
about fifty minutes in, we observe the actress Leonara Braham
(unflinchingly played by Shirley Henderson) slumped in her
dressing-room, filling a wine-glass brimful of neat bourbon and
staring abstractedly into its depths, we know not just that something
is wrong, but that it is terribly wrong.
After
all, Sir Arthur Sullivan (Allan Corduner) has been seen embracing the
virtues of champagne (in a Parisian brothel); and some kind of
high-end Burgundy, from the look of it, in a supersmart restaurant,
where he inks his share in the new Savoy Hotel being built by D'Oyly
Carte. His drink is a mark of licentiousness or high prosperity - in
contrast with the stuff that W. S. Gilbert goes for. Gilbert (Jim
Broadbent on pure top form) is prickly, diligent, obsessed with
getting the small things right, keen not to waste money; tea and
coffee are therefore his motifs, their sobriety only lessened when
Sullivan - in one scene - plies him with a sugar-cube. Oh, and to
round out the drinks selection, three of the younger male leads get
stuck into some Guinness and oysters about half-way through the film;
with hilarious consequences.
All
of which is framed so thoughtfully, in such measured filmic terms,
with such grave opulence, that it doesn't take much to disturb the
surface richness. George Grossmith shooting up in his dressing-room is
about the most shocking image; the actors' strike is almost as
arresting, although for rather different reasons; Leonara Braham
getting loaded and maudlin is another kind of backstage disruption,
much bigger in impact than it has any right to be. As it happens,
Miss Braham was in real life both a drunk and the mother of a
clandestine child, even though her position in the company depended
on her way with ingenue soprano roles. 'When I meet a gentleman, he
invites me to supper,' she murmurs on-screen through her cigarette
smoke, 'I mention my little secret - and then he's off, quick smart.'
Her son, her 'Precious little bundle', is a tragedy as well as a
justification for living - a situation which mirrors the bleak
inability of the established, well-to-do Gilberts to conceive a
child; as well as Sullivan's tendency to get his mistress pregnant
before having the unborn child discreetly got rid of.
All
of which is contained in the way Shirley Henderson aims her moue
at the rim of her glassful of hard liquor, in the way she holds the
glass close to her, tenderly resting it on her bodice, her fondling
of the glass binding ideas of drink and maternal affection in one
image. Which in turn is put into context by all the other visual
references to cups, glasses, beakers and carafes littering the frame;
which in their
turn are all parts of the complex, crowded, visual texture of the
film, whose genius is to reveal how all this density and complexity
can be shaped into something as apparently air-light and uniform as
The
Mikado - or,
if you want to go down that road, as coherent and satisfying as
Topsy-Turvy
itself. The glass is nothing, just a tiny part of the pattern, but on
this occasion you've got to hand it to Mike Leigh: he really knows
how to fill a picture with meaning.
CJ
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