Customer Reviews

All Or Nothing [VHS]

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

'All or Nothing' is a fascinating but disturbing portrayal of the lives of struggling working class people in a London tenement. It is a very thought provoking film and may lead to reflecting on your own life and on life in general. As with Mike Leigh's other films this is not very upbeat stuff, in fact this movie is probably more of a downer than the usual from him. The superbly acted characters are real hard luck cases and their lives seem utterly hopeless, so much so that I was expecting someone commit suicide at any moment. But at the same time their story is gripping and so realistic that you feel like a voyeur looking in on them. The ending while not exactly a happy ending provides a slight glimmer of hope but in keeping with the reality of the movie is not overly optimistic. If you like Leigh's other films you will not be disappointed by this one.

Even when making a film about astonishingly uninteresting people. The lives portrayed here are as going nowhere as lives can possibly be. Yet though bleak, it is not depressing, for it is the response to those circumstances that separate the successful from the failures. Dale Carnegie would be challenged to maintain a positive attitude in this discouraging environment, and yet Leigh once again demonstrates that life is in the control of those who choose to control whatever it is they have to control.

The story ostensibly watches the lives of Penny and Phil, moldering in a low-income housing project with individual lives that contain nothing to look forward to and nothing at all to share. Leigh uses some of his favorite actors, the brilliant Lesley Manville (who shone even in the incredibly bright Topsy-Turvy) as Penny, and the most underrated performer around today, Timothy Spall. Penny is a middle-aged mother who is trying to hold up three very heavy lives, and she is crushed by the burden. Bitter and recriminative, she cannot fathom why she has so little. Phil has allowed himself to become an observer to all life, even his own, and in the process finds he too has nothing left. Their two children are fat, lonely, uneducated, and going nowhere. If you knew what was going to happen to you during the day, you wouldn't get up, says Phil. And he doesn't. Until the epiphany that has to save him from the self-destruction rampant around him arrives, and he does indeed start to get up. Like many in the world, Phil is waiting, waiting for salvation to arrive. But only he can create it for himself. And when he does, Penny can join him, and they can look forward with a sense of togetherness.

The actors are all brilliant...Leigh seems incapable of filming a boring performance. James Corden, who was hysterical in the never-seen Whatever Happened to Harold Smith? deserves special mention here. His brooding, angry, wastrel is one of the saddest characters I've ever seen. His life is out of control in every way, and he is overwhelmed by his inability to understand why. He has no language skills but is reduced to swearing and punching, yet hits as ineffectually as he speaks. The lost soul is common in Leigh; but no one is more lost than Rory. But he has a loving family to support him. Now he needs to grab his opportunity and make himself something closer to a person.

Naked was the story of a man who understood language and used it brilliantly, yet still had a miserable life. But those who cannot speak cannot really think, and the lives of those who cannot think do not make good cinema. There is not quite enough in the interiors of these losers to hold this film together. The overall effect, while poignant, carries less weight than Leigh's great films, Topsy-Turvy, Secrets & Lies and Life Is Sweet. While better than nearly everything out there, the weaknesses and inarticulateness of each character cannot carry the story.

*Topsy-Turvy* was apparently an aberration for director Mike Leigh, in terms of its period-setting (i.e., English theater in the time of Gilbert & Sullivan), epic scope, and freedom from sheer bleakness. Well, it's back to basics, here. Leigh's latest, *All or Nothing*, puts us right back into the dreary lower-middle-class setting of contemporary London, where we meet the type of commonplace and yet thoroughly individualized working-class characters that one finds only in Leigh's films, outside of Real Life itself. Leigh is such a master by now that he can create a fully-drawn character, such as the virtually silent and disturbed young man who stalks one of the film's other characters, without hardly a word of spoken dialogue: actions speak louder than. And it's a lucky thing, too, because these people aren't very good with words -- heck, they don't even KNOW that many words. ("F--- off!", for instance, is a sort of utilitarian phrase, loaded with several shades of meaning.) It turns out to be one of the movie's central themes: the inability to communicate, and the damage that can result. But it requires more than a master-director to get us to care about these people; it requires brilliant actors. And we get plenty of those in *All or Nothing*. Lesley Manville and Ruth Sheen deserve extra praise as a pair of housewives trying to hold their respective families together. Manville is saddled with a man who, after 2 decades and 2 kids, still hasn't summoned the gumption to marry her. Her kids, as overweight as their dad, are sullen introverts with no capacity for dealing with the society around them. Manville carries her scrawny frame like a martyr's armor amidst these butterballs, but the endless self-sacrificing doesn't stop her from poisoning her household with nagging spats and guilt-tripping displays of woe. Leigh contrasts this doormat with Ruth Sheen's character, a single mom with a teenage daughter who gets pregnant by an abusive boyfriend. Sheen is functional; she's upbeat in the face of hard knocks; she patiently waits out her daughter's "F--- offs" and prods her into real communication. Their story might not have a happy ending, but it's also likely to avoid tragedy. Love is worth that much. Indeed, Leigh is fairly generous with most of the dozen or so characters in *All or Nothing*: some, of course, are damaged beyond repair; but most are given a second chance at hope. And with hope, perhaps they will learn to strive to better their lives. In sum, this was the best film that England produced in 2002. See it -- it's an overwhelming experience.

Everything about this movie is depressing of the lowest order. The background is set in a housing project of three main families. Timothy Spall's character is a taxi driver whilst his partner is a counter lady for Safeway. Both of them have a dejected daughter who works as a cleaner in a retirement home whose work colleague is a lonely & sad old man who suggests to go out with her, a lazy & obese son who only cares to eat, watch TV & fighting with other children whole day long. Timothy is an disillusioned taxi driver who himself is less than motivated to work long hours. One of their neighbours happen to be Timothy's character's colleague whose wife is an alcoholic & a horny daughter. Another neighbour happens to be a cheery mother whose angry daughter has to come to terms with pregnancy. A tragedy would befallen one of them and aid would come from the least expected source. All of caricatures here are too busy minding their day to day life that they lack the perspective of cherishing what truly matters in their lives. An honest, gritty and well-made movie with superb casting. Commendable watching.

how is "poor people, weak people, unsmart people, unhappy people, unsane people, violent people, fat people, ugly people" like a cliche? if people want 'a smile' there are plenty of (cliched) films out there about rich, talented, beautiful, perfect, boring people to keep you occupied. complaining about directors like mike leigh making films that are too depressing (and they're not, actually, if you pay attention instead of wondering when the fast cars and low-cut dresses are going to come in) is missing the point by so far i wonder how people who do it ended up at the film in the first place. did you get lost on the way to disneyland?

Granted, this movie is not for all tastes. It's virtually unrelenting look at the struggling working class of Britain can be bleak and troubling. However, for those who frequent the local art house, and those who have found themselves drawn to the previous work of Mike Leigh it is a must.

Timothy Spall and Lesley Manville are a common-law couple who work as a taxi drive and a grocery store checker respectively. They are raising two teenagers, a shy, bookish daughter who works as a janitor of a nursing home and a son who does little but verbally abuse his mother while he sits in front of the TV. Plot here is not the emphasis. Slice of life is.

Bleak as this scenario sounds (and it only scratches the surface) this is a film that rewards the patient viewer as the ending does offer a healthy dose of redemption. Along the way the acting shines (typical for Leigh films) with Spall, Manville, and Ruth Sheen as the friend and neighbor dealing with a pregnant teen age daughter turning in award worthy performances.

After hearing the director's commentary (sadly available only on the British DVD release, it seems), I appreciated Mike Leigh in a new way. He is, at heart, a simple storyteller who delights in letting us see real human beings in real situations, inviting us along on the journey as their lives and characters are shaped. As expected, we meet a number of struggling (and uniformly depressed) characters, all of whom have hidden depths which are revealed as the central events of the film transpire. Leigh elicits believable and affecting performances all round. Admittedly, this is even bleaker than Secrets and Lies, although there is an undercurrent of redemption as the tensions begin to resolve. As usual, this vintage Leigh offering is compelling stuff.

Difficult, but very much worthwhile ensemble piece from British director and all around film genius Mike Leigh.

The story, as it is, revolves around a group of people living virtually hand to mouth in a London housing project. The class consciousness of British society, as it so often is in Leigh films, is on full display here as is the absolute top notch acting another mainstay of Leigh movies.

This isn't the best movie in Leigh's cannon, but it speaks volumes about Leigh and his vision that even one of his "lesser" films still warrants five stars.

This is a movie about working class Brits who speak such cockney I had to view with subtitles in order not to miss the mumbling dialogue. It was worth the time, because it had a very unusual feel. It was very slice of life, as I am told most of Leigh's films are.

A London cab driver and his supermarket clerk wife raise two fat kids. The daughter works in an old folks home, the son refuses to do anything but watch TV and eat. The parents are numb. The cabbie is depressed and hardly says anything as the son sasses the mother. Other characters include a girl that is pregnant by a violent boyfriend, her mother who had a similar experience, the neighborhood slut that goes after the violent boyfriend next, and her alcoholic parents. Nobody knows who they are or what they want. Finally, the young boy winds up in the hospital with a heart attack and that sort-of brings the family together.

You could call most of the film downbeat. After much worry and tragedy, the film ends on a higher note than it starts, but you don't really feel that their lives have improved. Even though there is a lot of negative emotion, the movie is still compelling like a train wreck. On the strength of this, I would watch any Mike Leigh movie that comes out on DVD.

Many of have complained about the sheer, utter, inescapable bleakness of ALL OF NOTHING's working-class world, but there is no denying the emotional force of the pitch-perfect performances here. I wish American films took the time to stop, look, and listen, patiently observing real life as it carefully unfolds. I defy anyone not to cry at the film's climax, as the culminative effect is devastating. I don't know of any other director who is so good at drawing rich, detailed, nuanced performances from all of his actors - this time including Leigh regulars RUTH SHEEN, TIMOTHY SPALL, etc. This is truly "ensemble" acting at its best! Another Mike Leigh winner - not as good as SECRETS & LIES or LIFE IS SWEET, but certainly among his best.