Class Wars

directed by Mike Leigh

Brattle Theatre, Thurs. Nov. 9th

When I first moved here from London I wondered why no one laughed at my jokes. One potential explanation was that they had stopped being funny. Another had to do with cultural difference: over here the simple fact of failure is not, as it is in Britain, considered amusing. Walk into any London pub, for example, and you'll find at least one group of drinkers vying for laughs with stories of the day's disasters. Try the same tactic to amuse a group of friends in a Cambridge bar and one is greeted with expressions of surprise, confusion and even alarm.

This peculiarity of the British sense of humour is important to keep in mind when viewing "High Hopes." Otherwise Mike Leigh's sketch of the state of class warfare in London might become unbearably bleak. The film centers on Cyril and Shirley, a couple who live in a high-rise block, work as motorcycle couriers and are haunted by Cyril's dogged refusal to start a family. Although Leigh is sympathetic to Shirley's need for a child, the family portraits he draws would be enough to put anyone off.

One the one hand there's the exaggeratedly yuppified couple who've moved in next door to Cyril's aged mother. These are Thatcher's children, who display their politics and appalling snobbery when they tell their neighbors that "mercifully you people do have the opportunity to purchase your council properties these days." The other side of the social coin is represented by Cyril's sister Vivien and her nouveau-riche husband. While Vivien personifies the British obsession with upward social mobility, her husband's chat-up line, "Hurry up, I've only got ten minutes" was for me a nostalgic reminder of the romantic sensibility of men back home.

Throughout the film Leigh's vision of London is stark. His tendency to hold the camera completely still lends the narrative an almost documentary quality--Leigh rests on Cyril's mum's lined and bitter face or on a view of her gloomy kitchen. Pauses like these counterbalance the near-hysteria of Leigh's social caricatures. And the breathing space they provide force one to contemplate how close to reality those caricatures are. Because you can take it from me that British society does still revolve around antiquated, almost tribal social rituals. And Mike Leigh does dissect them with a frightening precision in this film.

One particularly poignant moment occurs duringa scene in which Cyril and Shirley have taken atrip up to Highgate cemetry to visit the grave ofKarl Marx. Cyril starts lamenting the erosion ofindividual freedom, anticipating that "by the year2000 there'll be 36 television stations 24 hours aday, telling you what to think." At this veryinstant the couple are engulfed by a crowd ofstereotyped Japanese tourists, chattering andsnapping away furiously at Marx's statue withtheir telephoto lenses. The sequence provides acommentary on the futility of protest in a worldof mass production and mass-communication. TheBritish don't like change, but somehow we willeventually be dragged kicking and screaming intothe modern world.

This will only be seen as a "feelgood" movie bythose who can thank their stars that they're notBritish. But Leigh somehow manages to steer clearof unmitigated pessimism. There are some greatone-liners, for example Vivien's classic blunder:"I would like to propose a toast to mum's birthday'cos it may be her last." There is also, inCyril's enduring idealism and his tenderness forboth Shirley and his mother, a reminder of theimportance of maintaining "high hopes."

There's a lot wrong with British society butLeigh's film does point out one of its redeemingqualities: its ability to laugh at it's ownfailure