Meantime (film)
| Meantime | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Directed by | Mike Leigh |
| Produced by | Graham Benson |
| Written by | Mike Leigh |
| Starring |
Tim Roth Phil Daniels Gary Oldman |
| Cinematography | Roger Pratt |
| Edited by | Lesley Walker |
Release dates |
|
Running time | 112 minutes |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
Meantime is a 1983 film directed by Mike Leigh, produced by Central Television for Channel 4. It was shown at the London Film Festival in 1983 and on Channel 4 a few weeks later, on 1 December. According to the critic Michael Coveney: "The sapping, debilitating and demeaning state of unemployment, the futile sense of waste, has not been more poignantly, or poetically, expressed in any other film of the period."[1]
The film details the travails of a working-class family in London's East End, struggling to stay afloat during the recession under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's premiership. Only the mother Mavis (Pam Ferris) is working; father Frank (Jeff Robert) and the couple's two sons Colin (Tim Roth), a timid, chronically shy individual and Mark (Phil Daniels), an outspoken, headstrong young man, are on the dole. This situation is contrasted by the presence of Mavis's sister Barbara (Marion Bailey), and her husband John (Alfred Molina), whose financial and social loftiness, in suburban Chigwell, appears to be a comfortable facade over the unspoken soreness of a lacklustre marriage.
Cast
- Marion Bailey as Barbara
- Phil Daniels as Mark
- Tim Roth as Colin
- Pam Ferris as Mavis
- Jeffrey Robert as Frank
- Alfred Molina as John
- Gary Oldman as Coxy
- Tilly Vosburgh as Hayley
- Paul Daly as Rusty
- Leila Bertrand as Hayley's Friend
- Hepburn Graham as Boyfriend
- Peter Wight as Estate Manager
- Eileen Davies as Unemployment Benefit Clerk
- Herbert Norville as Man in Pub
- Brian Hoskin as Barman
Filming locations
- Bryant Court (Pollock family flat), Whiston Road, London E2
- Dunston Road (canal scene), London E2
- 10 Gwynne Park Avenue (Barbara and John's house), Woodford Bridge, London IG8 8AB
- Trafalgar Square, London
- Chigwell, north-east London
- Woodford Green, north-east London
Notes
One day at the rehearsal space, a factory in Homerton, Roth and Oldman were throwing a milk bottle around. Suddenly Roth threw it up and it hit a fluorescent lighting strip. Leigh saw "...Gary's shaven head erupt into a thousand red blotches; in the film you can see the stitch marks." He rushed Oldman to hospital. "As I drove him there, all done up in his skinhead stuff, covered in blood, Gary said to me, "For fuck's sake, tell 'em I'm an actor!" He could easily have lost his eyesight in the accident, and I do not know to this day what I would have done if that had happened."[2]