Hard Truths by Mike Leigh, review and star rating: ★★★☆☆
As one of Britain’s greatest living film-makers, Mike Leigh launched the careers of British acting royalty, including Gary Oldman, Alison Steadman and Tim Roth. But goodness gracious me, he’s a right old misery guts. To mark the release of his new film Hard Truths, Vulture even wrote a listicle ranking his films by how miserable they are.
Leigh’s Palme d’Or-winning work asks questions about power structures and how they relate to the working classes, in films like 1983’s Meantime and 2002’s All or Nothing. In those and much else, he manages to capture the feelings of the time. But Hard Truths, Leigh’s first feature film since British historical drama Peterloo in 2018, is so comprehensively gloomily and oppressively negative that it often becomes a painful viewing experience. It is the filmic equivalent of spending hours with a family member who just won’t stop moaning and there’s nothing you can do about it.
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It’s a shame, because Leigh has spent over half a century showing he clearly truly understands the lives of his subjects. Hard Truths follows one working class black family living in London, particularly matriarch Pansy who is struggling with PTSD and cannot find a single positive thing to say. If it feels slightly uncomfortable that an 81-year-old white man is writing a cohort of young black female characters, Leigh reassures with a funny and moving script that properly fleshes out these people.
Mike Leigh returns with Hard Truths, another examination of misery and trauma, but it’s too much
It’s not Pansy actor Marianne Jean-Baptiste’s fault that her performance exasperates. She is an engrossing actor, but for one hour and forty minutes, the character is moaning about absolutely everything. She delivers laboured barbs at her depressive son Moses, commendably realised by Tuwaine Barrett, and her long-suffering sister, given addictively zesty energy by Michele Austin. But there isn’t enough time to enjoy these characters before it returns to Pansy’s criticisms. I suppose Leigh’s writing is true to life; these people do exist, but there are other ways to get at the character’s own mental cage than this literal examination of her hour-to-hour existence.
It’s often funny too, Leigh has a knack for writing a damning insult, although, yep, the comedy is often diffused too quickly by the inevitable moaning that returns every other minute. I actually turned away from the screen at one point, unable to bear the sight nor sound of it anymore.
Leigh brightly captures suburban London, bathing ordinary houses handsomely in light. Neighbourhood corner shops look attractive; these people may have small flats but Leigh’s version of the capital isn’t a bad place to be. He is a master at capturing someone with a close-up; more often than not we feel inches away from Pansy, and Leigh’s intimate direction lingers on each slot a little longer than you’d think so you can luxuriate in character.
It’s a gleaming filmic product, but the hard truth is it’s a shame it’s so hard to watch.
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