Main Cast: Philip Davis, Ruth Sheen, Edna Doré, Philip Jackson, Heather Tobias
Release Year: 1989
Country: UK
Run Time: 110 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG
Plot
In this early film, award-winning director Mike Leigh uses a loose, open-ended narrative structure to unsettle cinematic expectations and create a truly inventive and very honest film. High Hopes opens with the arrival of Wayne, a small-town lad in his twenties, in the London metropolis. Completely lost in the hustle and bustle, Wayne asks for directions from a cyclist named Cyril. Unable to assist him, Cyril brings Wayne to his house to examine a map and meet his long-time girlfriend, Shirley, also a working-class intellectual. After the opening credits roll, Wayne, equipped with directions, leaves and turns to wave goodbye to the helpful couple. Completely unexpectedly the camera stays with Cyril and Shirley, Wayne exits the film as a minor character, and the viewer's notions of what to expect from a narrative drama are completely shaken. Throughout, High Hopes' seemingly innocuous events turn out to be crucial incidents in the characters' lives. After this abrupt change of direction, Cyril and Shirley pay a visit to Cyril's aging mother, Mrs. Bender, and meet her neighbors, the vapid Boothe-Braines. In a parallel story, we meet Cyril's high-strung sister, Valerie, who perpetually neglects her mother as she herself is neglected by her wandering husband, Martin. The remainder of the film explores the dull, unfulfilled lives of the middle class and the wasteful and purposeless lives of the upper-middle class (the Boothe-Braines), and Cyril and Shirley's struggle to decide if they should bring a child into this mess of a world. As with his other films, Leigh did not work from a script in filming High Hopes, relying instead on the actors' improvisations which contribute to the lyrical, open-ended quality of the narrative. ~ Brian Whitener, All Movie Guide
Review
After working for nearly two decades almost exclusively in British television, writer/director Mike Leigh asserted himself as a feature film director with this sly, rousing study of various malcontents languishing in Margaret Thatcher's upwardly mobile 1980s London. Leigh's loosely devised film is a series of incidents among a half-dozen or so residents of a London neighborhood, of varying ages, political convictions, and economic status. Though each character is essentially an archetype of his or her particular social class, the film never resorts to left-wing posturing or becomes a stale treatise on the state of the nation. Instead, Leigh achieves exhilarating moviegoing highs from his characteristic emphasis on improvisation and genuine human interaction. Despite the film's workshop origins, it's less writerly or actorly than other Leigh movies; an effortless vitality permeates every scene, and Leigh reveals his wider themes -- of social consciousness and human compassion -- through focusing on the details of everyday life. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide
Lesley Manville - Laetitia Booth-Braine; David Bamber - Rupert Booth-Braine; Jason Watkins - Wayne; Judith Scott - Suzi; Linda Beckett - Receptionist; Diane-Louise Jordan - Chemist Shop Assistant; Cheryl Prime - Martin's Girlfriend
Credit
Andrew Rothschild - Art Director, Simon Channing-Williams - Co-producer, Victor Glynn - Co-producer, Lindy Hemming - Costume Designer, Howard Arundel - First Assistant Director, Mike Leigh - Director, Jon Gregory - Editor, Tom Donald - Executive Producer, Andrew Dixon - Composer (Music Score), Rachel Portman - Composer (Music Score), Andrew Dickson - Composer (Music Score), Morag Ross - Makeup, Diana Charnley - Production Designer, Roger Pratt - Cinematographer, Caroline Hill - Production Manager, Bill McCarthy - Sound/Sound Designer, Mike Leigh - Screenwriter
The film primarily examines Cyril (Philip Davis) and Shirley (Ruth Sheen), a motor-cycle courier and his girlfriend, along with their friends, neighbours, and Cyril's mother and sister. Despite staying true to Leigh's down-at-the-heel, realist style, the film is ultimately a social comedy concerning culture clashes between different classes and belief systems.
Cyril is a strong, old-style socialist, who despairs of his elderly working-class but Tory-voting mum; her new yuppie neighbours (who have purchased what was once a Council house next door); and his social-climbing sister and her crass, car-salesman husband. Cyril and Shirley are portrayed as the most decent characters in the film, despite Cyril's irascible nature. Theirs is a strong relationship, marred by Cyril's reluctance to have children and his resentment that his cause is destined to be on the losing side in history.
In one of the special features included on the Criterion Collection's double-disc dvd release of Leigh's film Naked, Leigh states that High Hopes is a film about the difficulty of being a socialist.
