Mike LeighRory Kinnear, Maxine Peake, Pearce Quigley
UK / 2018 / English / 154 minutes / DCP / Color
For more than four decades, Mike Leigh (Another Year, 2010) has been probing, satirizing, critiquing and above all bringing to life the everyday violence of class and inequality in Britain. Here, he switches his contemporary lens to probe a seminal albeit forgotten moment of British political history – a military attack in 1819 on peaceful marchers for democracy in Manchester where many were killed and hundreds injured. Scrupulous historiography and political framing provide a complex balance to the humanity that has been Leigh’s hallmark.