Mark Kermode on… director Mike Leigh, who mines the comedy and tragedy of life
From Nuts in May to Vera Drake and the forthcoming Hard Truths, Leigh’s unique creative process gives us perfectly crafted dramas and characters who feel real
A few years ago I went on a pilgrimage to West Lulworth in Dorset. My wife, Linda, came with me. I stood on the shore beside the geographically fascinating Stair Hole and shouted: “Candice Marie, you are standing on sedimentary limestone!” To which Linda, who had walked up to the top of the cliff, duly replied: “I can’t hear you, Keith.” After which we went to Corfe Castle and had a theatrical row about who got to hold the guidebook before going in search of the dungeons.
To be clear, this was no marital tiff – rather, it was a reenactment of one of our favourite movies, Mike Leigh’s Nuts in May (Internet Archive). The story of a would-be idyllic camping holiday that turns into a social nightmare for pompous Keith Pratt (Roger Sloman) and his infantalised wife, Candice Marie (Alison Steadman), Nuts in May, first broadcast as a BBC Play for Today in January 1976, is one of the funniest films I have ever seen. Linda bought me a copy on VHS after I’d had back surgery in the 90s and could do nothing but lie on the floor. I laughed so hard I nearly put myself back in hospital.
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