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| Mike Leigh's All Or Nothing | | (And Poverty Porn) | | 01 April 2006 | | FairgroundTown has watched a fair number of Mike Leigh films, and although we've tried to appreicate them, we've always felt slightly uneasy about them - as though there were gremlins sitting on our shoulder trying to tell us something. About half way through All Or Nothing, we realised what it was - this is porn... uncensored, hardcore poverty porn!
The basic plot will not be unfamiliar to anyone who has come across our two most popular soap-operas*. Poor people, living in dark satanic council flats, drink tea and moan about how terrible life is.
Nor is this a new concept. The Victorian equivalent of the soap opera - the serial novel, published in monthly parts - also exhibits the key facets of poverty porn. It's most famous exponent, Charles Dickens, would linger long and hard over the most extreme scenes of beggary and destitution, thus delighting both his readers and his bank manager alike.
We, however, have decided that it just isn't our thing. We know we'll be accused of closing our eyes, but poverty simply isn't something of which we want to be so forcibly reminded. If it is incidental to the plot, then maybe we can enjoy the movie still, but for Leigh, the poverty is the plot, and for us that is too much.
* Eastenders and Coronation Street, for the benefit of any foreigners who might accidentally have wandered into this God-forsaken back-water of the internet! |
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The point is we are all connected... through love... through loneliness... through one lamentable lapse in judgment!
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