The Criterion Collection

Meantime

Edition no. 890

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Release Date: Tuesday, 15 August 2017
Country of Release: USA
MSRP: $39.95

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Licensor Information

ITV Global Entertainment

Directed by: Mike Leigh

Featuring: Phil Daniels, Tim Roth, Marion Bailey, Pam Ferris, Jeff Robert, Gary Oldman, Tilly Vosburgh, Alfred Molina

A slow-burning depiction of economic degradation in Thatcher’s England, Mike Leigh’s Meantime was the culmination of the writer-director’s pioneering work in television and became his breakthrough theatrical release. Unemployment is rampant in London’s working-class East End, where a middle-aged couple and their two sons languish in a claustrophobic public housing flat. As the brothers (Phil Daniels and Tim Roth) grow increasingly disaffected, Leigh punctuates the grinding boredom of their daily existence with tense encounters, including with a priggish aunt (Marion Bailey) who has managed to become middle-class and a blithering skinhead on the verge of psychosis (a scene-stealing Gary Oldman, in his first major role). Informed by Leigh’s now trademark improvisational process and propelled by the lurching rhythms of its Beckett-like dialogue, Meantime is an unrelenting, often blisteringly funny look at life on the dole.

Year: 1984
Time: 107 min.