Mike Leigh wrote the screenplay and directed MEANTIME. The screenplay deserves plaudits because you are drawn to its immanent truth about how decaying social conditions and rank poverty force people down materially and, particularly, spiritually; how they keep people in a limbo that renders them apathetic and without a will to fight, convinced of their own uselessness; and the pointlessness and fruitlessness of life as a result, symbolized by a black woman ambivalent about her pregnancy, and a young woman that Roth yearns after but does not get to sleep with.
The acting is splendid across the board. I have always found Tim Roth one of the great unsung actors of the 1980s and 1990s, and this performance clearly points to upward mobility. Gary Oldman would go on to get deserved awards. Here, he plays a truly repulsive good for nothing forever thumbing his nose at law and social behavior. Marion Bayley is superb as Roth's aunt who takes an interest in her nephew and offers him a home repair job, only to see the other nephew, nihilistically played by Phil Daniels, thwart her generous offer and effort to get Roth's and Daniels' family out of their rut.
Some reviewers suggest that this film shows the effects of Thatcherism. I am not British, did not live in England in the 1980s, so I know nothing about that, but this indecisive, almost waveless film certainly shows that the social boat is about to rock because people are so deeply unhappy.
Not an easy watch, but certainly a truthful and intelligent one. 7/10.
The acting is splendid across the board. I have always found Tim Roth one of the great unsung actors of the 1980s and 1990s, and this performance clearly points to upward mobility. Gary Oldman would go on to get deserved awards. Here, he plays a truly repulsive good for nothing forever thumbing his nose at law and social behavior. Marion Bayley is superb as Roth's aunt who takes an interest in her nephew and offers him a home repair job, only to see the other nephew, nihilistically played by Phil Daniels, thwart her generous offer and effort to get Roth's and Daniels' family out of their rut.
Some reviewers suggest that this film shows the effects of Thatcherism. I am not British, did not live in England in the 1980s, so I know nothing about that, but this indecisive, almost waveless film certainly shows that the social boat is about to rock because people are so deeply unhappy.
Not an easy watch, but certainly a truthful and intelligent one. 7/10.