From The Vault: Cannes Returnee Mike Leigh On The "Inescapable" Jewish Spirit In His Work

Mike Leigh may be a staunch anti-Zionist but much of his work is ‘inescapably Jewish’, he claims 

By Stephen Applebaum, November 4, 2010

So much dust was kicked up by Mike Leigh's recent decision to cancel a cultural visit to Jerusalem and the West Bank that it almost obscured the fact that the outspoken veteran of stage and cinema has a new film out this week - and arguably one of his best, at that.

Another Year is like the hangover from Leigh's uncharacteristically upbeat 2008 comedy, Happy-Go-Lucky. Where that film was filled with a youthful joie de vivre, thanks to its positivist singleton protagonist, Poppy (Sally Hawkins), the new film taps a gloomier vein of middle-age angst. Leigh himself regards Another Year as no less "life-affirming", though he admits that "it does deal, in a more obvious way, with what we may call deeper and darker things".

Set over the course of a year, the film follows a group of family and friends revolving around a happily married, late middle-aged couple, Tom (Jim Broadbent) and Gerri (Ruth Sheen). While their lives seem sorted, some of the people in their orbit, in particular Gerri's desperately lonely fifty-something work colleague, Mary (Lesley Manville), are barely coping.

As usual, Leigh, who grew up the son of a doctor in what he calls the "north Manchester Jewish scene" in the '50s, serves up tears and laughter in Another Year - a characteristic of his work which he describes as "inescapably Jewish".

There's always two sides to a thing — in that sense there's a Jewish spirit in my work

"Inescapable" is an interesting choice of word, since Leigh long ago turned his back on Jewish life, in between returning from a trip to Israel with the Zionist youth group Habonim as a teenager, and enrolling at RADA to study acting.

And he is keen to make something clear about that period of his life. While he was in Habonim, "I was never a kibbutznik or anything," he says. "I was just a kid, you know? I went on their very nice, wonderful Israel camp, supported by the Jewish agency, and the idea was to make us go and be kibbutzniks. Indeed some people did, and I still know people at a couple of kibbutzim, that go back all that way. But I walked away from the whole thing because I was sceptical, and have become more so really."

Yet he believes his funny-sad aesthetic proves that the ties to his Jewish roots still bind. "It's not something I do consciously or I think about," he says, "but it is nevertheless a fact. The films are comic and tragic, there's always two sides to a thing, and all of that - in that sense there's a Jewish spirit in my work."

This, perhaps, explains why he makes "films - and sometimes does plays - which are never concerned with general political statements or simplistic analyses or propagandist conclusions. That's not what I'm concerned with," he says. "I'm concerned with humanity and compassion and life as we live it, and all that sort of thing."

His works observe life, and the human condition, from different angles, without telling the viewer what to think. For instance, Tom and Gerri's relationship with Mary raises a number of questions about the limits of friendship, without actually answering any of them. Are the couple helping her or unwittingly preventing her from moving on with her life? Another Year does not tell us, because Leigh probably does not know himself.

Famous for building his films through a protracted process of improvisation with his actors, who only know what their own character knows, the director says: "I embark on a journey, always, and Another Year is no exception, and that journey is a journey of discovery as to what the film is."

In the way that they are made, and the way that they play out on screen, Leigh believes his films embrace the "spirit of Talmudic study". "I'm inviting you, my audience, to sit round the table and for us to say: 'Maybe it's this. Maybe it's that. We don't know'. Which is a Talmudic investigation that doesn't arrive at any conclusions, basically."

Indeed, the central subject of Another Year is ageing and what comes with it; how life, says the 67-year-old director, "becomes at the same time clearer and more complicated. The film is about how we come to terms with life, really, and face ourselves and each other." Leigh offers no answers, of course, and he is uncomfortable with the suggestion that the film focuses on the pursuit of happiness and how, as we get older, we are forced to look for it inside ourselves.

"That may be true and it may not," he grins. "I don't know about it because we are all products of our background and victims of stuff that has happened to us. Yet there's talk in the film that you have to take responsibility. Mary is a victim of bad things - relationships, abuse, etc - but on the other hand, you can plainly say she's only got herself to blame. Then again, if she's an alcoholic, why does she need that? Also, you can see she's a woman that's spent a lifetime saddled with the received notion of being sexy, of being feminine. That comes from what's been fed to her. You see her hanging on to that, but it's desperate."

This understanding of the intimate relationship between past and present, and the need to look at the complete picture, is there, too, when Leigh talks about Israel - and may have had some bearing on his recent decision to cancel his visit. He does not dispute the connection between the Holocaust and the creation of the State of Israel, but says that he and his "old haverim from way back" often "ruminate about how we never knew Palestinians were evicted from the properties and everything that goes with that. It was denied to us," he claims.

"We were never, ever, really focussed on the fact that they actually were people with roots and a place and they weren't just generic Arabs. You still hear that now: 'It's their fault'. And the fact is now you've actually bred generations of resentful Palestinians. In the end people may say it's an insoluble situation. Well, that's a tragedy."

Leigh had his artistic say on the subject in 2005, in the play Two Thousand Years. He is now about to return to the theatre with a revival of his 1979 play, Ecstasy, at the Hampstead Theatre. He will also put on a new play at the National Theatre. As usual, the project is draped in secrecy. "I can't say anything about it," he smiles, "except that it's extremely unlikely it will be a further investigation into matters of a Zionist nature."

Mike Leigh returns to Cannes next month with Mr Turner

First published in The Jewish Chronicle, November 4, 2010

Mike Leigh Defends His Decision Not To Go To Israel

Zionism? To hell with all that, says film director


By Stephen Applebaum and Simon Rocker, October 21, 2010

Mike Leigh, the film-maker and playwright who has cancelled a planned trip to Israel next month, has backed a cultural boycott of the country, calling its policies "suicidal".


In an exclusive and personal outspoken interview in which he justified his decision not to teach a masterclass at a Jerusalem film school, the 67-year-old, Salford-born author said he was now "implicitly part" of the boycott.


Mr Leigh, director of award-winning films such as Secrets and Lies and Topsy-Turvy, had been invited by the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School in Jerusalem to take a workshop for students. During the week that he was due to spend in Israel he had been scheduled to visit Palestinian film-makers in Jenin, on the West Bank, and also to give a wide-ranging press conference.


Mr Leigh admitted to having been "extremely uncomfortable" about agreeing to go to Israel in the first place, but the loyalty oath planned by the Israeli government for new immigrants had proved "the last straw".In his interview, given to publicise his new film, Another Year, Mr Leigh gave his angriest assessment yet of his life as a Jew and his feelings towards Israel.


He complained that he and his fellow former members of the left-wing Zionist movement, Habonim, had been duped by Israeli propaganda, and denounced religion in the strongest terms.


"Religion's never been an issue. I've been sceptical about religion since I was born, basically. And certainly by the time I came to my barmitzvah I had long been sceptical. I think organised religion is bulls***. And I have thought that literally since before I could walk. So that's not a problem for me. Although I grew up in the north Manchester Jewish scene, in a district that's now completely where all the frummers live."


He revealed that he had planned to take his sons with him to Israel, where he has a "lot of very close relatives. My mother's surviving sister, who went on aliyah in 1949, is still alive. She'll be 90 very shortly, and she was looking forward to seeing me. But in the end, to hell with all that. A decision had to be made that this simply wasn't good enough."


Although the argument might be put that "committed, serious, liberal, left artists are not responsible for the Israeli government," he said, "that simply won't wash. Because actually, the truth is that what Israel is doing… is suicidal."


While cultural talks went on "in the nice cinematheques of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa, it is hell on earth in Gaza and I wouldn't want to be there basically".


A former member of Habonim, he has only twice visited Israel, once in 1960 and again in 1990.


"Not only was I in Habonim, in the '50s, but I actually happen to come from a very long, unusually Zionist background in Manchester, at a time when many Jews were not particularly Zionist," he said. "In fact a lot of Jews were very sceptical about the whole notion of Zionism. My great-grandfather actually edited a Zionist newspaper in Manchester at the turn of the last century. So, I have struggled with this issue, the whole thing, for a very long time."


All his close friends from Habonim had long since "walked away from Jewish life" but they talked about Israel, he added: "We wring our hands on a daily basis, saying 'For f***'s sake, what are they doing? They are shooting themselves in the foot'."


His 2005 play about Jewish identity, Two Thousand Years, would have been "tougher" if he had written it now, he said. He felt that not only had he done "the right thing" in deciding to call off his trip to Israel but "in so far as anything achieves anything, more publicity has come out of what I have done than would have been the case had I simply not gone, or had I gone and merely made a few statements that no one was listening to inside Israel."


He said he had been "of course exhorted not to go to Israel by a number of factions. That included Israeli factions within Israel. Whilst I have been berated by some Israeli positions, there are also Israelis that are extremely pleased I made that decision."


Mr Leigh, who insisted that all his work was "unquestionably Jewish", was dismissive about rocket attacks on Israel. "I don't want to know about rockets," he said. "What I am concerned with is humanity, is life being lived properly. And you cannot deal with this issue from an Israeli perspective and not from a Palestinian or a Gaza perspective. You simply can't. And if you do it's totally unacceptable. And that's the bottom line."

Originally published in the Jewish Chronicle, October 21, 2010