Bleak Moments

Mario Melendez3.5

I am of the idea that a celebrated person should always be recognized when he/she is alive and active working, no matter if that person is celebrating his/her birthday or any other reason, and yesterday I was reading an article about Mike Leigh's life on the web and I think that there is a lot to thank this magnificent director for: for giving us a glimpse of his country, being honest to his authorship as well as giving us a particular stamp, that's why I want to write about this, his first film, almost fifty years ago, which he directed before he even started working in British television. Bleak Moments tells us about Sylvia, who is an accountant in an office, living with her sister Hilda, who is somewhat retarded. Her passion is reading and having a few drinks in the evening. Hilda hates Peter, a schoolteacher interested in her and her sister, but loves Norman, a hippie who works in Sylvia's garage, printing an underground newspaper. Only when Norman plays guitar do things seem to flow nicely. Everything else is suffering, disorder and darkness. On his first occasion Leigh would incur in talking about a theme that he would later use again in several of his films, but showing it from other approaches without losing its purpose: to deal with loneliness and the lack of communication between human beings. Bleak Moments could be considered as a declaration of intentions, it shows interest, and certainly, aptitude, to delve into the inner life of people, their psychologies, as well as interpersonal relationships and the spheres, public or private, that they conform. Of course, true to its title, the film is deliberately sober, with a riskily leisurely pace and tempo, yet the gamble is a successful one that portrays, head-on, these incredibly awkward characters in their relationships, characters who have a lot of trouble showing feelings or saying what they want, speaking for themselves, even feeling for themselves. Leigh's staging is claustrophobic, generating closed and suffocating spaces, but always maintaining that tone and that restrained pace, not desperate as if the regime of subjugation was already simple habit and nothing else to do, why to get upset: by dint of routine, emotions were crushed by these giant blocks of wasted hours It is not an easy thing to tell a story with characters so self-absorbed that one might think they have nothing inside, that they are empty or superficial, but Leigh manages to show that these characters (some, at least) do have something, even if it is an almost extinct light of humanity and dreams and desires, and with it, with that found treasure, the director can also portray the environment that almost drowns that light until its disappearance. Don't be put off by the heavy atmosphere of tense stillness, for through it Leigh captures that desire to escape and break free that shines in the eyes of the protagonist, especially, and despite that pause, that intentional sense of monotony, one never fails to feel that underlying flow of frustrations, stifled cries and repressed desires that every person must contain or suppress.My problem with this debut is that when I saw the word bleak in its title I expected something sad and desolate and perhaps it has only given me a nostalgic feeling, also to say that although I liked the story and the characters I didn't like them to the point of feeling total empathy with them, perhaps only the character that has attracted me the most is Norman since he reminds me of a more decaffeinated, shy and less complex version of Johnny from Naked, could it be that Leigh gave us a prototype of this character decades before? It is curious because if so then Norman would not be the first character to do so, but Cyril from High Hopes from 1988 would be in my opinion another alleged attempt to gestate this character that would take David Thewlis to the peak of his career.Even so, this film is a good story of distances and proximities, of coldness and sympathies, which shows a director who is certain and determined about what he wants to film, to narrate, already capable of establishing his discourse as a film writer and director. It is a quite mature work, full of intentions, that shows the tragedy of those who must give up their lives for this or that reason, continuing their existences by mere inertia, showing what Leigh is like: a man straight to the point, subtly poetic and a great observer.Bleak Moments is not as faithful to its title nor will it be a remarkable or memorable debut but thanks to it we would have the birth of one of the best auteur directors not only the UK but the world has ever conceived.

Mark Cunliffe 🇵🇸3.5

Mike Leigh's first feature is certainly embryonic but equally it perhaps wears his chief fascinations (social clumsiness, the trivialities of human behaviour, self-importance and conceit, frustration and desperation and how we perceive each other and ourselves) far more clearly on its sleeve than some of his later work. There's little interest in polish here (though Bahram Manoocherhi's cinematography is wonderful) as Leigh explores the ponderous and awkwardness between his protagonists head on. Ricky Gervais would later extol and practice the virtues of embarrassing human behaviour as a source of comedy to great mainstream success; getting on film situations that the cringing viewer may only be able to stomach via a hand over the eyes or a slightly averted gaze, but here is proof that Leigh had beaten him to it. Bleak Moments is utterly uncompromising in its mumbling mordant depiction of social awkwardness and gaffes and in the bold move of getting the reality of facial twitches, clearing of the throat, hand wringing and almost kisses onto the screen. It's a fine line between watching excruciating interplay and the product actually being excruciating to watch but Leigh just about manages this tight rope well, dazzlingly well when one considers this is his first film.It's certainly bleak, but it is equally not without hope too, simply because of the obvious resilience of spirit at the film's centre. It is Anne Raitt as Sylvia, a young woman utterly trapped by an unfulfilled life who takes that position and its a real tragedy to see someone so beautiful - Raitt looks like and is certainly lit like a heroine in a classical painting, like something by the Dutch Masters - in such titular bleak moments, solo bingeing on sherry of an evening as she endlessly waits for Eric Allen's obnoxious coldfish of a teacher to make a move. And yet, in her care for Hilda her mentally ill sister, her moments of dry and subversive wit and her achingly slow interactions with the hippy Norman, we see a woman not just isolated but strong, determined to do her best for her sister - a care home, for example, is simply never broached and her outright refusal of her colleague Pat's offer to take Hilda on is telling.Not entertaining in the conventional sense, but nevertheless an excellent and important piece of filmmaking and an impressive debut from one of the true great in British cinema.

fran hoepfner3.5

hard not to slip into sentimental bias here and call it a minor masterpiece, of which it has some of the trappings, but because it is shaggier and more unpleasant than a lot of the Leighs to follow. it’s good though — painful and gentle. bleak, duh. kind of like Meantime for the girlies, though it worked best when it reminded me most of High Hopes. got a lot uncomfortable laughs out of our audience, but really the only funny bit is when Peter’s teacher suggests a philosophically dense diatribe on the “five types of jokes” for her third graders. as bf said, more succinctly, “definitely and unmistakably the debut film of Mike Leigh.”