All or Nothing [2002]

 In All or Nothing, Mike Leigh constructed a multilayered, kaleidoscopic and Dickensian slice-of-life on working-class Brits residing in a sprawling but dreary London council estate. With its nuanced and compassionate portrayal of the desolate, hardscrabble lives of the proletarian apartment complex’s residents, who’re shorn of any silver lining in their grey horizons, it provided a trenchant depiction of Thatcher’s damaging legacy, and thereby vividly recalled Leigh’s remarkable earlier Thatcher-era films like Meantime, Four Days in July, High Hopes and Life Is Sweet. Yet, despite the overarching bleakness, Leigh never basked in miserabilism; rather, he developed his characters and their stories from a place of deep empathy for the human condition, and infused his script with touches of levity, camaraderie and warmth; the film, consequently, was absorbing and lyrical amidst the melancholy and hopelessness. The  exceptional ensemble’s primary focus was on Phil (Timothy Spall), a lost, soft-spoken taxi driver; his common law wife Penny (Lesley Manville), who’s become inwardly bitter for having to hold together their family both economically – the wages from her job as a departmental store cashier is their primary source of sustenance – and through her housework; their cranky, obese son; and their withdrawn, lonely daughter (Alison Garland) who buries herself in books when she’s not working at a home for the elderly. Their neighbours comprise of Maureen (Ruth Sheen), an effervescent single mother; her troubled teenage daughter Donna who’s in an abusive relationship; temperamental taxi driver Ron (Paul Jesson); his dazed, alcoholic wife; and their conflicted teenage daughter (Sally Hawkins), who’s smitten with Donna’s boyfriend and craved by a hapless stalker. Marvellous performances abound, as do immaculately conceived moments, in this delicately strung tapestry on everyday survival.

Director: Mike Leigh

Genre: Drama/Marital Drama/Urban Drama/Slice-of-Life/Ensemble Film

Language: English

Country: UK