depressing truth


there is no hope in this hopeless world

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That's not the 'truth' with which the film is concerned.

Why do you refuse to remember me?

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The poor couple will stay poor and have to take care of the senile mother. Other than some dubious satisfaction they don't get anything from it.

The daughter and her husband may get divorced at a point when he would have had enough of her neurotic behaviour. He would remarry and support her.

The third couple keeps living their posh life and may have a kid at a point.

All of them eventually get old and senile, wear diapers and stink. Some die of stroke or in a car accident.



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The couple choose to take care of his aged mother because, thanks to the loving kindness of his girlfriend, the son achieves some reconciliation with his mother and acceptance of the latter and himself. The final scene where they take mum up to the roof and she says she's on top of the world is a moment of quiet joy.

The daughter will not achieve happiness whilst she pursues some suburban, material dream in any empty marriage to the "jerk with the merc".

The posh couple are treated mercilessly by Leigh as they move into an area in the name of regeneration but spoil the landscape and treat its inhabitants with disrespect. Far from being depressing, Leigh's scathing portrait of them is a sadist pleasure for (some) viewers.

As to your last line: Not every old person becomes senile although memory and other brain functions decline. Not every old person is incontinent. Not every old person is incapable of washing themselves. Young people suffer strokes and die in car accidents. I can't really take these points seriously ...

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[deleted]

That's a hell of a misreading of 'truth'. PoppyTransfusion's response is far closer to the way I read this film. I really struggle to understand how you get those interpretations from what we were given.

I dont know where you are from, or how old you are, but if like me you grew up in Thatcher's Britain, you might get a much better understanding of what was going on with the characters here. The society of that time was riven with divides based on wealth - those who had it, those who strove for it, and those who recognised that the pursuit of wealth as an end in itself was an unsatisfactory basis for living. Those groups are all portrayed here, and Mike Leigh is devestating in his presentation of the ways those attitudes affected people, and the relationships between them.

It's very clear who is doing well in this film, and that hope persists for them and all of us if their outlook on life is given space to thrive.

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No unlike you I wasn't lucky enough and didn't grow up in thatchers Britain though I heard about what the crown did to your country. There's even a flick no room for Romeo brass that strives to show the impact of their policies on younger generations.

Fact is nothing of what poppy or you wrote about this film contradicts how I interpret it. If you consider these characters as real people not as a respective representation of their social class you'd see their trajectories in life don't change much with time and being satisfied with the choices they made bears little significance.

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Ah, but you couched it in terns of there being no hope, and there very much is. The end of the film is full of hope, largely because the outlook of Cyril and Shirleyis so hopeful. There's where I think your misreading of it lies. Your trajectories may be right, but their impacts are not the same on all the protagonists as they would be on you. Therein lies the hope.

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For the record, I'll be the first to say you're completely wrong about what the film says ABOUT these people, whether or not your analysis of where these people will end up is true. You clearly understand from a social perspective the predicament these people live in, but the film celebrates small ounces of joy and gives hope in this harsh reality. It sounds as if you are too blinded by your own cynicism to actually see what the film is telling us.

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They dont visit marxs tomb by chance, it means the hope they had died. What theyre supposed to do with their lives anyway? What can be possibly going on for them?

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Obviously you've never had a wife or girlfriend, and by the sound of it, close friends. The last line "we're top of the world" sums it up as clearly as it could get. They might not have their social utopia, financial stability or any certainty about where their lives or going and whether they'll end up discarded old meat like the mother, but at least they have each other and the much broader sense of personal prosperity that brings, which is the revelation in the final lines.

Mike Leigh has always been something of a miserabalist whos characters often dwell on economic impossibility and their domestic failings, but misery cannot exist without contrasting harmony and happiness that his characters find in family and relationships, even if they often have to spend the entire film looking for it.

It just sounds like you lack the empathy or experience will relationships to understand that there is more to life than dreams and wealth. Mike Leighs films are all about the importance of love, to disregard these people simply because they have no financial success and their dreams aren't resolved is quite frankly, disgusting and completely ignorant. If you can't appreciate the hope in the last line of the film you are borderline autistic.

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Fook ya smelly t(!)at

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I rest my case Cthulhu

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You dont have respect so fook off

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