"HOW MUCH BETTER IS IT TO WEEP AT JOY THAN TO JOY AT WEEPING?": FILMS BY MIKE LEIGH

The great prickly humanist of British cinema, Mike Leigh has forged a body of work unique in its concern for the struggles of ordinary people and the social fabric of working-class London. Famously born from a process of extensive improvisation with his powerhouse actors, Leigh’s films inhabit a register of tragicomic despair that, thanks to their unwavering compassion, never slips into miserabilism. His work is so gracefully attuned to that pained push and pull on the conscience when one struggles to do what is right to one’s own self. And it is equally attuned to an even rarer frequency: the joy that can arise from doing so. From his early slice-of-life portraits of Thatcher-era Britain to his award-winning international triumphs, Leigh plumbs the darkest depths of the human condition without ever losing hope.