The Duality of Realism and Formalism in Mike Leigh`s movies

Rare Simplicity 

Amir Siadat 

Which title can describe Mike Leigh better? Realist or formalist? If the basis is Secrets & Lies, All or Nothing or Vera Drake, we probably Will not find a more realist than him, but in that case, what should we do with a peculiar experience like Naked with that hellish and distorted portrait of England, or the extreme stylism of Career Girls? The complex mechanism of confrontation and - sometimes - the juxtaposition of the real and the formal in Mike Leigh's career does not allow us to categorize his cinema with outlined definitions. This cinema is rare. It is not easy to grasp and - in the words of Roland Barthes - just when you think you have found the thread, it will rip off like a ragged sock. Therefore, the purpose here is not to reach the answer, but to state an "issue" and to review Mike Leigh's movies through the lens that the duality of realism/formalism opens. It should be said that one of the proposed duality lines implies a more direct perception of the outside world, and the other line implies the film craft and the creation of a new world with a noticeable "distance" from objective events; Anyway, who does not know that realism itself is nothing but a formal choice? Happy-Go-Lucky may have been taken less seriously due to its unexpected simplicity, but as if in a self-conscious way it is an attempt to explain the relationship between reality and showmanship. It has been made after All or Nothing and Vera Drake, but at first glance it looks different from both of them. While the increasing bitterness of All or Nothing and Vera Drake will stay with the audience for a long time, Happy-Go-Lucky is a joyful film with a passionate character (Poppy) whose smile never fades from her face, as if her mission is to remind depressed and bad-tempered people (who often do not have the patience for her antics) happiness. It seems she has come directly from the heart of Walt Disney products and carries a kind of angelic function. She is like Mary Poppins, who set foot in a dark world, the kind we see in All or Nothing. It seems that she is a cinematic/formal or a completely dramatic element that has found its place in the heart of Mike Leigh's realism and - in a sense – is his "messenger" to improve the world which we have seen its in the Naked or All or Nothing. That’s why when Poppy sees a book titled The Road to Reality, she jokingly says that she does not want to step on such a road. Apparently, she belongs to another "planet" and had come from a place similar to the imaginary worlds of fairy tales. It is as if she is unfamiliar with the hypocrite relationships that the existing reality demands and does not want to get acquainted. Her colorful costumes, her gypsy-like appearance and her job that has connected her life with children have made her related to fairy tales. The scene of her meeting with the disheveled homeless man has the atmosphere of such tales: Poppy with the flashy colors of her clothes in the middle of the darkness, like the crystallization of the dreams of a troubled lonely man, suddenly "appears" in his solitude at night to sit with him and talk to him for a few minutes. Naked and Cinderella are side by side for a few minutes, and the audience is not surprised that nothing happens between Poppy and the homeless man because angels have no gender. Poppy - as she herself claims in a conversation with her friend - is away from love in the sexual sense of the word: Like immature children. And the film, which in a way narrates the ritual of Poppy's transition from rawness to maturity, begins with the theft of her bicycle and ends with her control over the car. In the last session of driving lessons, Poppy can no longer tolerate the shouts of Scott - his nervous instructor - and answers his criticisms with laughter and humor. Now Poppy goes crazy like Scott and screams at him. Can this transformation be seen as a sign of poppy’s maturity? Isn't it the fact that a little earlier, due to the relationship with Nick she gained "gender" and left the realm of fairy tales? Perhaps it should be concluded that at the end poppy has given up against her surroundings and has come to the belief that it is not possible to make this gloomy world alive and sweet with a happy face and a smile. Probably, now that she has learned to drive, she will go on the "road to reality". Although such a "message" can be inferred, it seems too raw and immature for a film by Mike Leigh. Happy-Go-Lucky asks questions that are not visible but slowly settle in the depths of the mind. The most important example is Scott's screams in the final fight, as if we hear them just after the ending. Although while watching, because of Scott's aggressive and domineering behavior and his unreasonable temper, we had some repulsion towards him, but in the end, we find him more sympathetic than Poppy. Why? We probably wonder if Scott is right. Isn't Poppy constantly playing a role for him and acting to win his heart? If Poppy is honest and truthful, why does her behavior with Scott suddenly change after meeting Nick? Hasn't Happy-Go-Lucky's deceptive appearance fooled us (as Poppy deceived Scott)? Maybe Poppy is not a child who is going through late puberty. Maybe we have been dealing with a smart person who has played the "role" of angels (and strangely believes herself in this role) and childish pranks and pretending to be alienated from earthly love is her way of seduction! From this perspective and in the second viewing, many things come to our eyes in a different way. For example, when we see a young bookseller not paying attention to Poppy’s teasing and flirtations, we think that the bookseller is more experienced and mature than the unlucky driving instructor! This time, we can deal with Scott's bad temper and inflexibility more easily, because we assume that he has dealt with students like poppy before, so he tries hard not to fall into a trap. But Poppy does not give up. When she talks about herself and her housemate with a kind of wickedness and childish mischievousness, so that Scott would consider them as two "perverts", we get angry at her, because after the first viewing of the film, we know about Scott's secret and we can imagine how annoying it is for him to hear what Poppy is bragging about. Having said that, Poppy is "pretending" to be something each moment, and only in the scene of the argument with Scott, when it leads to a physical conflict, she does not have a mask on her face and is in fact herself. In such moments, one cannot put a mask on. Also, now that she is with Nick, what is the use of a mask in driving lesson sessions?

By digging slowly in what is behind the Poppy’s demonstrations, It is possible to delve into the subconscious of the film and open new horizons in Mike Leigh's other films. The flamenco dance sequence, due to its emphasis on "showmanship", is a key moment in this regard: the instructor strongly advises her students to be aggressive and vengeful in the dance. She says, "Imagine that your lover has betrayed you, and left you for a Swedish woman". When she sobs while delivering these sentences, it means what she says is a part of her own past, and the "external" toughness of the aggressive dance is supposed to be a cover to hide the fragile and crushed inside. Therefore, there is a tremendous distance between the inner secrets and the outer manifestations, and therefore behind every "lie" we must search for a "secret". The scenes related to people taking pictures in Maurice' studio in Secrets & Lies are impressions of this idea. Everyone wants to look perfect in front of the camera. Everyone pretends to be perfect and happy. And although Maurice's camera captures an eternal "picture" of the happiness of his subjects in a fraction of a second, Mike Leigh's camera wants to depict the gap between the reality of people's lives and their "gestures" and "demonstrations". By observing the behavior and faces of people in front of the camera, we can imagine parts of their untold story in our minds: Before taking a photo, a Greek man and woman argue about whether the man should take off his glasses or the woman should take out her necklace. They’re exhausted, however, a fake smile and a simple opening and closing of the camera shutter will instantly erase all their conflicts. What is the difference between what happens on the flamenco dance stage and what happens inside the studio? Isn't it that both rely on "gesture" and "display"? Mr. Turner is standing in front of the camera which is the outcome of a nascent industry. Isn't it a historical moment? A recording machine is located in the place that was previously considered the realm of the painter. Turner is thinking that this strange little box that can accurately reflect "reality" will soon demolish the painters' business. When the photographer uses pins to keep his head still, he gets furious, maybe because in the Victorian era such pins were used to keep the dead upright in front of the camera. Perhaps this scene carries an allusion to the symbolic death of the painter in front of the emerging industry. Photographing the dead also reminds us of the psychological roots of the tendency to record "reality" as completely as possible: embalming. The embalmed body, which was meant to remain unchanged forever, was an obstacle against the passage of time. Little by little, iconography and portraits took the place of embalmed bodies, and the better the outside world was imitated, the illusion of overcoming of time became more prominent. Therefore, the representation of reality, even though it was at its core a non-aesthetic practice and related to magic, from the Renaissance era and Da Vinci's camera obscura and the discovery of perspective to the invention of the photography camera, had complete dominance over the history of art. For this very reason, André Bazin called photography "the most important event in the history of visual arts" because he rightly believed that photography (and art in general) "freed painting once and for all from the shackles of dependence on realism". Turner was aware of the aesthetic misunderstanding of the era before the invention of photography, and that`s why he resisted against realism and preferred "style" to "mimesis". One can guess why William Turner's art attracted Mike Leigh's attention. The painter's distinct procedure and individual perception of representation and his confrontation with the English realism of the Victorian era, have put a tempting plan in front of Mike Leigh so that he can pursue the preoccupation of his mind ("problematic" mechanical recording of the subject and the reflection of reality through the lens of the camera). "Reality" in Turner's works is the feeling which is beyond the visible and tangible things "outside", has nothing to do with "mimesis" in portraiture. Perhaps for this reason, Mike Leigh, in order to get closer to Turner, abandons an usual and familiar biographical narrative and instead of focusing on the important "events" of the painter's life, relies on scattered "impressions" (in which dramatic events - for example, the death of his father or Turner's bond with Sophia - are as important as mundane events such as father and son eating together or Turner's excursion in the heart of nature) and tries to summon the spirit of Turner's works and give a harmonious image to his paintings. Turner is a character who, while being believable, is hard to grasp. What Sophia says about Turner is fully indicative of the audience's perception of him: “I don't understand you, but I know there are things in you beyond my understanding.”

Mike Leigh's choice of aesthetics is also in the double bond of reality/showmanship: drawing the initial situation of the drama and explaining it to the actors and leaving a major part of the progress to their interpretation during an improvisational process. It means gradually refining the text based on the "real" and lived experience of the actor. Therefore, his most realistic works are the result of a kind of direct confrontation with human reality and looking at the combination of actor/character as a wide network of possibilities that can advance and complement the text and the performance. Therefore, despite the major contribution of improvisation in this Mise-en-scène, the stamp of discipline and calculation is also evident on it, and its strong realism makes the audience not only watch the world, but also experience it along with the characters. Secrets & Lies on the one hand, with the idea of an illegitimate child, is as psychoanalytic and dramatic as Ibsen's plays, and through the black girl and white mother, it makes the situation extremely "special" and improbable, and on the other hand, it presents a form of realism that is hard to go further than that; It is as if the audience is seeing the "events" from behind the keyhole. Secrets & lies shows that the most tangible realism is not incompatible with the special and dramatic situation and the happy ending. Mike Leigh has used the inevitable family conflicts, in the back and forth between the scattered threads of the narrative and the sequences of mainly two people, as an expanding motif, to penetrate through it to the depth of the existence of each person and create the context of the tormenting atmosphere of the final party. Before this party, his democracy gave all the invitees the opportunity to familiarize the audience with their moods, pains and sufferings, ideas, sensitivities and conflicting emotions. The static frame and long shot of the meal scene is an example of conveying the complexities of everyday life. There is no need to reveal a new point about the dark relationship between Cynthia and Monica. The past of those two is made by our immediate perception of their minor and small actions. Maurice regrets that why the people he loves do not get along? Why life is not like his photos? Everything looks unified and beautiful through the camera frame. The observer from the outside seeks for happiness that he does not have (or has lost), in the life of others, but as soon as he settles in the territory of them, he will see that happiness is not there either; Maybe it never existed. Looking deeper, seeing more closely and digging, the result is the discovery of stains and hollows. Beauty and reality are concentrated in the existence of a woman whose face is disfigured by an accident. Maurice moves closer and closer to her with the camera to record her wounds as clearly as possible. With each step forward, the flash of the camera hits the woman's eyes more, as if reality slaps her harder than before.

The distance and closeness to the subject and its congruence with the ideal/real mismatch also have an interesting presence in Naked: Johnny and Brian are looking at the opposite apartment from behind the window. Darkness covers everywhere and the woman in the window frame is not only the object of the gaze, she shines under the light of the room. Here, the window frame is something like a silver screen and a picture frame. Johnny, however, is not satisfied with watching this imaginary picture from a "distance". He goes towards her and makes his way to the solitude of the woman, and by standing next to her, he touches the rough skin of reality. When talking to the advertising poster agent, Johnny directly and bluntly discusses the cinema and its conflict with the world of experience: I love Laurel and Hardy, although they never got along in real life. How far is it from this "Laurel and Hardy" to Tom and Jerry in Another Year? Why they are named “Tom” and “Jerry”? Probably, this humorous emphasis is supposed to suggest a viewpoint for watching the film. Maybe the film wants us to ask ourselves why Tom and Jerry should be in constant harmony with each other! Should we conclude that the "ideal" relationship of this couple is as cartoonish as their name? It's as if we are watching one of the "they lived happily ever after together". Tom and Jerry represent another kind of "cinematic reality" without having a definite border with the real world. We have seen other Another Year’s characters (Mary, Ken, Ronnie and Carl) around us, but how many real examples like Tom and Jerry do we know? Such an optimistic and enviable image of relationship and family cannot even be found in any of Mike Leigh's works. It is possible to follow the path of family-averse and anti-family characters, from the rejected and isolated characters of Naked to the estranged Turner with his wife and child, and find out that kinship relationships are full of old wounds, suppressed anger, regret and jealousy. In All or Nothing, family is like hell, in a way that blame, hatred, and curses overflows from every moment. No one can tolerate anyone and everyone is running away from each other and they only remember family members when someone's dead or is about to die. With Tom and Jerry and their son and daughter-in-law, it's as if one of Maurice's photos has come to life and people are experiencing happiness in the current time of the film - and not in the stillness and timelessness of the photo! We get close to them, but not as close as Mike Leigh's other families. We stay at the edge of their house and envy their little joys. For losers like Mary and Ken - whose lives are full of crisis unlike Tom and Jerry - This house is a place like movie theater, where you can take refuge from time to time to forget your sorrows. It is as if the real/objective world/Mary and Ken is juxtaposed with the formal/cinema/Tom and Jerry to remind us that we can make a better world with art and relax in it.

In Naked, Mike Leigh is defined by a double design, one side with the "real" human preoccupations and sufferings of a philosopher-like charachter, and the other side with the showy artifice of Jeremy/Sebastian (as a moving statue of unbridled instinct). Leigh moves away from social realism and is concerned with Existentialism and building a world layer by layer; It goes from homelessness and poverty to existential dread, from the darkness of the London’s streets to a kind of non-place, and from criticism of Thatcherism to a metaphysical outburst. In Career Girls, the aesthetic opposition of the real and the formal is above all in the service of making the importance of time more prominent in a two-part narrative: two friends meet each other after a few years apart. Their past, which is related to the relatively long period of being a student, is full of excitement and prosperity, and their present is dull. In the past part, stylism and showmanship prevail, and in the present part, realism. It can be said that the past is the realm of formalist Mike Leigh, and the present is under the control of realist Mike Leigh. The showmanship of the past reveals itself more than anything else in the behavior of the two friends who have disheveled looks and their make-up is gaudy, and they look like cartoon characters due to excessive exaggeration. They act freely, their behavior is strangely external and they speak with exaggerated mannerisms. In the present time, however, the time has taken away their fever of youth and tamed them; Both of them have become similar to thousands of ordinary and tactful people. Six years have passed and everything has changed and there are no more youthful ideals. It is unlikely that this reunion, the most obvious result of which was a deep understanding of the inevitability and corrosive of time, made them happy. The cruel and erosive time in Mr.Turner has left its footprints in the physical decline of the painter, and in Another Year, it emerges in emphasizing on the factual aspect of the change of seasons and the motif of the middle age, a concept that Tom and Jerry and Mary and Ken have adopted different solutions to face it: one accepts it as an inevitable truth and the other is in an already lost battle. In this constant conflict with time, joys are either "pictured" somewhere outside of time (Maurice's photos, Turner's paintings, ...) or they are so simple and small as if they are announcing a kind of acceptance and submission. Tom and Jerry's fondness for the garden, cooking and gathering parties and chatting with a few friends is an easy but scarce solution; And what a pleasant harmony this rare simplicity has with the easy yet far-fetched cinema of Mike Leigh, who reached a high peak like Secrets & Lies in middle age, then after a short stop on its way (All or Nothing or Vera Drake) and internalizing his achievements, in the seventh decade of his life, with Another Year and Mr.Turner he is still slowly, dignified and restrained, walking and advancing in untraveled ways.