The film opens with a quiet shot and a simple piece of music playing in the background, as we watch some people in the distance strolling through a park. Soon, a car pulls up to a house, a large one in a clearly well-to-do neighborhood. It's the home of Uncle John (Alfred Molina) who is showing it to his in-laws. His wife Barbara (Marion Bailey) has a sister, Mavis (Pam Ferris), whose husband Frank (Jeff Robert) and two sons Colin (Tim Roth) and Mark (Phil Daniels), are all unemployed. While they live off the dole, she works and the family struggles to survive. Her sister and husband have it easy financially, but have a marriage that seems almost non-existent by any emotional measure.
Adding to the problem, Colin is painfully shy and socially inept never quite fitting into any situation and never knowing how to speak up for himself. His brother, Mark, is outspoken and arrogant, and at times downright mean. He defies his father at every turn just to make trouble. When their parents go to bed, Mark purposely plays his music as loud as he can.
Mark has a friend, Coxy (Gary Oldman), who seems to have made a life for himself by being the guy that will always bully, offend and instigate. We first see him bullying Colin then later, when walking along the canal with Mark, constantly badgers and picks fight. With Mark it's all in fun, but behaving aggressively is the only way Coxy knows how to have fun, period. He starts to use Colin as hanger on, someone to take with him on jaunts, someone he can abuse and ridicule. All of this is just one of many daily occurrences as the characters wander through a landscape that seems to have no concern for any of their needs.
If that sounds a little bleak, it is. Mike Leigh didn't set out to make a movie about a family that turns it all around or a shy son who figures out his place in the world. It's about their struggles and their lives and what meaning they draw from it but also a blunt observation on the working and non-working poor struggling in a new business friendly Britain. It's very title reflects that. The economy grows and business booms, meantime, the ordinary people keep suffering.
Playing the role of Barbara is Leigh's longtime partner, Marion Bailey, who would work with him several more times throughout his career, including her best role to date, Sophia Booth in Mr. Turner. As her sister Mavis, Pam Ferris gives a beautiful performance as the mother and wife who is trying to keep everyone going and reassured. She would become most famous as the inflating aunt in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
Alfred Molina was probably the most recognized actor in the cast when the movie was released, not because he was an international leading man but because he was the field guide of Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark. His lines "still fresh, three days," and "throw me the idol, I'll throw you the whip," were already repeated around the world by movie fans everywhere. Meantime gave him the chance to show much more depth in his short time onscreen.
But the two biggest stars of Meantime were Tim Roth and Gary Oldman. Both would become well known Hollywood actors by the '90s. Roth and Oldman were very young while working on Meantime but it seemed clear the two were headed for stardom to anyone paying attention.
Mike Leigh has since made some of the best films of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Movies like Secrets and Lies, Topsy-Turvy and Mr. Turner are indisputably great works of art and his style of improvisation has served him well. It is evident in Meantime, where he organizes the narrative structure for his actors but lets them work through the dialogue (and credits himself as "deviser" as a result). Meantime may have been an early effort for Leigh but his talent and skill was already well developed and his techniques already working wonders.
Director: Mike Leigh Screenplay (Deviser): Mike Leigh Producer: Graham Benson Music: Andrew Dickson Cinematography: Roger Pratt Film Editor: Lesley Walker Art Director: Diana Charnley Cast: Marion Bailey (Barbara), Phil Daniels (Mark), Tim Roth (Colin), Pam Ferris (Mavis), Jeffrey Robert( Frank), Alfred Molina (John), Gary Oldman (Coxy), Tilly Vosburgh (Hayley), Paul Daly (Rusty)
By Greg Ferrara
