Plenty of other reviewers have captured this movie, describing it as a hard to watch dose of poverty realism about some of the British underclass, brilliantly acted grimness, with a long time coming break from the apparently unrelenting nastiness (yes the people are not just miserable, many are often nasty) only towards the end, supposedly this brings a dose hopefulness to this group of people that could sustain them in the future, potentially improving their lives. Ah, if only. I know these people, I worked with them for years. Of course they have hearts and emotions and feel love etc, as well as anger, depression, envy, bitterness, etc....but in reality. These people don't learn from experiences as routine as this. They make the same dumb ass decisions, big and small all day long and eternally once adult. This realisation would be real but short lived, and wouldn't lead to permanent sustainable change in behaviours. So it's fake hopefulness. I love Mike Leigh, but there's a sort of underclass fetish aspect to films like this that is born of his empathy, but has a large dose of naïveté in it too. So bleak, what's the point?
Review of All or Nothing
All or Nothing
(2002)
Underclass fetishism. Brilliant actors, but what's the point?
11 April 2022
Warning: Spoilers