Themes: Life in the Arts, Actor's Life, Bohemian Life
Main Cast: Jim Broadbent, Alan Corduner, Lesley Manville, Eleanor David, Ron Cook
Release Year: 1999
Country: UK
Run Time: 160 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
Noted for intimate character studies created in collaboration with his actors, director Mike Leigh makes a dramatic change of pace with this biography of comic opera composers W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan. Gilbert (Jim Broadbent) is an easily angered but otherwise emotionally remote lyricist who works in collaboration with composer Sullivan (Alan Corduner), a genial and fun-loving sort who feels unsatisfied writing light operettas and longs to work with more serious material. While Sullivan is having a creative crisis, Gilbert is facing a failing marriage to Lucy (Lesley Manville), who loves her husband even if he can't return her affections, and must deal with his ailing father (Charles Simon). When they suffer their first failure, both men are depressed, and Sullivan announces that he's giving up operetta for good. However, a visit to an exhibit of Japanese art sparks an idea in Gilbert, and soon he and Sullivan are hard at work on what will become one of their greatest successes, The Mikado. Much of the film is devoted to the staging of this classic, with Shirley Henderson, Dorothy Atkinson, Martin Savage, Timothy Spall, and Kevin McKidd as members of the operetta's cast. Jim Broadbent won Best Actor at the 1999 Venice Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Review
Mike Leigh's Topsy-Turvy is such a faithful rendering of a past era, it's as though the director time-warped his cinematographer back to 19th century England. In his first period piece, Leigh transplants the grittiness of his films' usual working-class British milieu, and the result is a Victorian England with a lived-in look, rather than one glossed over by a fanciful sheen. Armed with this sort of authenticity, Topsy-Turvy becomes a new classic among movies, documenting the behind-the-scenes fits and foibles of a dramatic production. And what better production than The Mikado, the hilarious turning point in the careers of Gilbert and Sullivan, whose precarious professional status made the choice of a Japanese-themed operetta all the more fraught with peril. Leigh lets loose and gets big laughs from his cast of prima donnas getting fitted for kimonos and taking lessons from the misinformed about how to "act Japanese." But the film also contains Leigh's noted finesse for examining emotional distance, most notably between Gilbert and his long-suffering wife (Leslie Manville). And Leigh regular Timothy Spall is unforgettable as he tries to swallow his wounded pride, learning only days before the premiere that his big number will be cut. Topsy-Turvy is the rare film in which grand-scale art direction and intimate character study both feel absolutely true. To echo the succinct praise of Broadbent's Gilbert, Topsy-Turvy is "capital." ~ Derek Armstrong, All Movie Guide
John Bush - Art Director, Georgina Lowe - Associate Producer, Francesca Jaynes - Choreography, Lindy Hemming - Costume Designer, Nick Heckstall-Smith - First Assistant Director, Mike Leigh - Director, Robin Sales - Editor, Carl Davis - Composer (Music Score), Gary Yershon - Musical Direction/Supervision, Christine Blundell - Makeup, Trefor Proud - Makeup, Eve Stewart - Production Designer, Dick Pope - Cinematographer, Simon Channing-Williams - Producer, Mike Leigh - Screenwriter, Arthur Sullivan - Featured Music
