Mike Leigh vs Terence Davies

[pauraque_bk]

It's the battle of the strange films about dysfunctional Brits!

Well, not really. Couple days back I discussed Mike Leigh's movies. spican said my description of his All Or Nothing reminded her of Terence Davies's Distant Voices, Still Lives, and asked if I thought they were similar filmmakers. I hadn't seen the later, so I rented it.

The two are similar in certain ways, yet come off quite differently, at least to me. They're both about dysfunctional British families living in desperation (Leigh's characters are disconnected and impoverished; Davies's are disconnected and living through war). Both films are non-linear; they present a series of scenes, ordinary conversations and observations -- some bleak, some hopeful. Distant Voices is also non-chronological.

However, the stylistic similarities are not as striking as you might think. Leigh's movies are intensely naturalistic: The actors improvise, the characters mumble, the camera keeps rolling almost as if it's shooting a documentary. Very fluid -- long takes. Distant Voices, on the other hand, feels quite deliberate and stylized, presenting carefully set-up images, arranging the characters like tableaus. It actually reminded me of an anime movie in that way... not a specific one, just generally. The dialogue is spare and tight -- these people only say what Davies wants them to.

Davies's characters sing almost constantly, much more than they speak. Music seems to be their only joy in life, yet it, too, can be manipulated by abuse, as when the father demands that his daughter sing through the bombing of London. (Leigh also uses music as a ray of hope, as with the karaoke scene in All Or Nothing, or when Johnny and Louise murmur a song together in Naked.)

I certainly appreciated what Distant Voices, Still Lives was trying to do, but I didn't enjoy it. I didn't feel like I got to know the characters -- I felt somewhat alienated by them, like watching through glass. Perhaps the carefully-arranged style and sepia-toned nostalgia helped construct that wall. In any case, I wasn't able to build the empathy that I have with the more humanistic creations of the actors that work with Leigh. The movie's only 85 minutes long, but I was looking at my watch long before then.

Does that answer your question at all, spican? I notice that you didn't actually say whether you liked Davies's work, just that I'd reminded you of it. What did you think of the film?


ETA: kaptainsnot, I'm looking for the movie you mentioned, too.

Also. I hereby declare iibnf to be a BNF, subject to all rights, privileges, and kerfuffles thereof. So ha!

Comments

[iibnf.livejournal.com]

One thanks you. Perhaps you may share in one's expected swarms of lizards.

[spican.livejournal.com]

It does answer my question quite nicely, thank you. :) And thanks for sharing your impression!

It's been long since I saw the movie (I watched it when it came out in the late eighties, then caught it again on TV some years after that) so I'm fuzzy on the details, but I liked it very much. I found it very beautiful both in an emotional and in an esthetic sense -- appreciated those carefully constructed and layered tableaus and the way memory worked in the play. I knew when I watched it that it was autobiographical, and I think that colored my impression as well: for presenting such a bleak, intimately personal family story, I thought it was... I think unassuming is the word I'm looking for -- unassuming in a way that touched me and shook me. It just presented these people and their lives and their very own songs in a memory framework, making few if any judgements, and I definitely felt for them -- or perhaps more for their common experience than for the individual characters? I can't quite remember! I do feel a knee-jerk nostalgia connected with that sort of music (reminds me of yet another, rather different movie: Woody Allen's Radio Days, which I also loved) but can't say I remember finding the film as such nostalgic at all.

That probably sounded very jumbled -- it barely makes sense to me! :) But I'd like to give it a fresh re-watch and to see All Or Nothing as well. From your description of the latter, I do think I may like it. (From your description of Naked I suspect that one is a little too much, too intense, something, for my taste.)

[pauraque]

I always wanted to be a minion.


...why lizards, though?

[pauraque]

Maybe 'nostalgia' was the wrong word, because that implies fond memory. How about... 'pastness'. In any case, what I was getting at was a lack of immediacy. It felt very 'past' to me, over and done with. And it is describing memories, of course... but in such a way that I found it difficult to relate to.

I'd be very interested to hear what you think of All Or Nothing. As an aside, my ever-popular "screw you guys" icon is a screencap from it. *g*

Also, I was curious -- when you watch English movies, do you put on the Norwegian subtitles? I would imagine it depends on how difficult to actors are to understand.

[pauraque]

the actors, even.