An ordinary view

During the course of his 30-year feature film career, director Mike Leigh has portrayed the British blue-collar life in a style he calls “heightened realism.” A true independent who finances his own movies primarily with European money, he’s also a master of improvisation -- letting his actors inhabit their roles months before the cameras roll.

His latest work, “All or Nothing,” was just released on video after a brief theatrical run. It focuses on three families in a London housing project coping with substance abuse, achieving intimacy and the challenge of keeping love alive.

During one scene, the protagonist, a downtrodden cabdriver, tells a colleague that, if he knew what was going to happen when he woke up in the morning, he’d never get out of bed. Is that the reality for the working class?

Not just for that social structure but for the world. Even if money isn’t scarce, people reach a point where they just can’t cope and feel like walking away. Those of us who have exotic lives and the privilege of choices to motivate us are very lucky, indeed.... Still, this film is less bleak than most of my films. At the end, there’s a sense of redemption. This is a movie about love, as all of my movies are. Even a loveless life is all about love -- or the lack thereof.

You and director Ken Loach (“Kes”) are among the handful making what could be called “political” movies, increasingly rare in Hollywood these days.

I make films about ordinary people because there’s a dearth of movies about them. And because you can’t make films about real life -- certainly in England -- without dealing with class. Though I’m not Costa-Gavras, my films are political in that they deal with the human condition, how people live their lives. I ask questions rather than providing answers. Loach has an agenda of a more specific kind, more overtly political.

The Left, in fact, has criticized you for being insufficiently political -- and for portraying a class that’s not your own.

The Left is upset because I don’t make movies that inspire people to man the barricades -- and because my father was a doctor. Not aristocracy but a man who spent his entire life caring for the working class. We lived above the clinic. I went to local schools. I briefly worked as a cabdriver in the ‘60s when I was broke, and I still live in an extremely unfashionable part of London. But, even if I didn’t grow up in industrial England before the Clean Air Act, that shouldn’t disqualify me from telling stories, if I’m able. .

So you see yourself as someone who looks reality in the face?

More of a dramatist, really, because my films aren’t naturalistic. “All or Nothing” is an epic study of emotional journeys that goes beyond mere observation. My job is to distill things down to the core. And I use dialogue that’s heightened -- banter, repartee, a kind of poetry, I hope.

Some have observed that there’s a Jewish tragicomic element to your work.

That’s probably true. My movies reflect my take on life, which has to do with my own roots -- Jewish roots. Still, the theory should be applied with great caution, a pinch of salt, or there’s the danger that my movies will be perceived as an English version of Isaac Bashevis Singer. That was never the intent.

-- Elaine Dutka