Mike Leigh
Only some of the Poms are whingeing these days, says director Mike Leigh. He spoke to Ruth Hessey about Happy-Go-Lucky
But for a strangulated hernia Mike Leigh would be here right now. Sydney's always been a favoured destination for the British filmmaker. He's even directed theatre here (Greek Tragedy at Belvoir Street, in 1989), and once pursued funding for a film about whingeing Poms in Australia.
"I think that moment has passed" he muses on the line from London. "But we tried very hard."
Leigh is such a product of London, and has always used the city as his stage, what sort of film he'd make in Sydney, is anyone's guess. UK backpackers don't so much whinge these days, as guzzle. But it's the whingers back home that concern him most at the moment.
Leigh made his new film Happy-Go-Lucky, screened in competition and on opening night at the Sydney Film Festival, as "an energetic positivist challenge to the pervasive pessimism of the world we live in; to show that people on the ground are simply getting on with it."
His leading lady, Sally Hawkins, who plays relentlessly eager school teacher, Poppy, has said she had no idea her role would be so pivotal when they started rehearsing.
"I do like to keep my actors in the dark," Leigh admits, "and I never let them in on each others sessions because that maintains the important element of surprise."
Leigh's techniques are still considered outré, even though he's hardly an obscure auteur. He's been nominated for several Academy Awards, won Best Director and Best Film BAFTAs, and been lauded as Best Director at Cannes. He has a Palme D'Or for Secrets and Lies and a Golden Lion from Venice for Vera Drake. His style is quite self-contained - Leigh favours an organic actor-dominated process for script evolution which he has perfected in over 17 films, and 20-odd plays - and he's no Quentin Tarantino when it comes to flaunting influences, but Leigh's films often do surprise. He made his name with contemporary realism, but has branched into the unlikely world of Gilbert and Sullivan (Topsy-Turvy), and evoked 1950s Britain inVera Drake.
"I can find roots and resonances in all sorts of films, from the silent era on," he says. He's particularly enamoured of the DVD box set Forbidden Hollywood (from Turner Classic Movies archives). He's also fond of the Coen Brothers and Almodovar, not as influences, but as a "fraternity".
‘The great thing about World Cinema, by which I mean anything that is not Anglo- or Hollywood-
centric," he explains, "is that we do have a community, and interacting with each other, having that unique and idiosyncratic dialogue, is what it's all about. I have no time for isolationist filmmaking."
While his own circuitous path to finished product (he never produces a script to raise money for a film) has been popularised by technology which allows filmmakers to cover their arses with acres of footage, Leigh still shoots with a "ten to one ratio", and by the time he reaches the set, has honed a tight shooting script. "Discipline is the key. And love."
"I do like my films," he muses, even as the wheels for the next project (which he won't talk about until it's finished) begin to spin. "I think that's perfectly healthy. It's hard not to love the flamenco scene in Happy-Go-Lucky, and I absolutely love the scene in the boat, at the end."