MEANTIME [BLU-RAY]

Details

• Release Year: 1984
• Genre: Comedy, Drama
• Plot: A slow-burning depiction of economic degradation in Thatcher's England, Mike Leigh's Meantime is the culmination of the writer-director's pioneering work in television. Unemployment is rampant in London's working-class East End, where a middle-aged couple and their two sons languish in a claustrophobic public-housing flat. As the brothers (Phil Daniels and Tim Roth) grow increasingly disaffected, Leigh punctuates the grinding boredom of their daily existence with tense encounters, including with a priggish aunt (Marion Bailey) who has managed to become middle-class and a blithering skinhead on the verge of psychosis (a scene-stealing Gary Oldman, in his first major role). Informed by Leigh's now trademark improvisational process and propelled by the lurching rhythms of its Beckett-like dialogue, Meantime is an unrelenting, often blisteringly funny look at life on the dole. ;
• Cast: Marion Bailey, Phil Daniels, Tim Roth, Pam Ferris, Jeffrey Robert, Alfred Molina, Gary Oldman, Tilly Vosburgh, Paul Daly, Leila Bertrand, Hepburn Graham, Peter Wight, Eileen Davies, Herbert Norville, Brian Hoskin, Mike Leigh, Graham Benson, Roger Pratt, Lesley Walker, Andrew Dickson, Malcolm Hirst, Billy McCarthy, Diana Charnley
• Director: Mike Leigh
• Runtime: 1:47
• Company: ITV Studios Global Entertainment, ITV Studios, Janus Films, The Criterion Collection
• Media Format: Movie