Mike Leigh

Mike Leigh on Vera Drake and Career Highlights

The austerity of the film's latter part might seem merely maudlin had Leigh not so carefully established that life goes on in and around the film's central polemic.

In achieving a credible realism, Leigh and his actors refreshingly avoid the tidy and obvious.

Leigh's extensive use of improvisation in rehearsal led to a razor-sharp final script, endlessly blooming with memorable dialogue that—while never less than credibly naturalistic—proves thematically fertile.

Revives an era in astonishing, delicate detail, then moves through the space with a documentarian's eye. Leigh takes Turner out of art history and puts him back in the world.

[Leigh] bustles his audience into a time machine and transplants them to a time and place--1819 England--for full immersion into the physical and social landscape where a politically charged tragedy played out.