Personally, I think Leigh gets a lot of undeserved credit which tends to distract from how manipulative he can be as a filmmaker. We often hear that his famed rehearsal process gives both his actors and his characters a special degree of freedom, but both High Hopes and Happy Go Lucky are full of characters behaving in precisely the way they need to for Leigh to make his points. In fact, High Hopes rarely ventures from the 'poor-people-good, rich-people-bad' school of human understanding, and in Happy Go Lucky, the character of the domesticated sister is simply there as a mouthpiece for a lifestyle which Leigh has little time for. And as for the taxi driver, to me he's just a walking conglomeration of what Leigh dislikes. As your article suggests, there's not much visual pleasure to be found in Leigh's films. I suppose my worry is that, if he's only able to communicate through the characters, Leigh ends up weighing them down, leaving us with mouthpieces in place of people.
adamob   posted 29.10.08