I recently watched Mike Leigh’s 1971 film Bleak Moments – his directorial debut. And while watching it, I again felt something about Leigh’s characters (or at least some of them), which I’ve felt watching some of his other films: they have a caricature-esque level of eccentricity. Others have drawn attention to this too, such as the character Jeremy G. Smart, the caricatured yuppie in Naked (1993), played by Greg Crutwell. These caricatures are intentional: their exaggerated nature brings out the most salient features; it balloons them, so we can see them clearly and more easily criticise, empathise with, or laugh with/at these characters.
Leigh, however, has rejected the description of at least some of his characters as caricatures. But when watching Bleak Moments, and other of Leigh’s films in which some characters feel like exaggerations of real people – I’m thinking of Annie (Lynda Steadman) in Career Girls (1997) – the caricature can feel like ‘overacting’. Whether someone is ‘overacting’ or not is, to a certain extent, subjective. Although even if people do disagree whether some performance has been overacted or not, if a performance feels cartoonish, out of place, and excessively melodramatic or gestural to the viewer, then, at least in their eyes, the character and the performance don’t fulfil their intended aim. (Interestingly, one of Leigh’s early careers was as a cartoonist, and he was inspired by cartoonists such as Ronald Searle, which may help explain the cartoon-like sensibility of how he crafts characters, as well as his later reputation as a caricaturist.)
Take (the younger) Annie in Career Girls, an anxious goth with a skin condition that covers half her face, making her self-conscious. The first time I watched the film, Annie’s exaggerated shyness, jitteriness, and nervousness seemed unrealistic enough that I probably empathised with her less than if her anxiety were less ‘in your face’. Two other characters in the film – Hannah (Katrin Cartlidge, who also plays the goth, Sophie, in Naked) and Ricky (Mark Benton) – also appeared as caricatures of real people. Hannah’s brashness and mannerisms seemed over the top, so I thought, no one’s like that, while Ricky’s anxious, idiosyncratic stuttering, twitching, wincing, and squinting again seemed more like a cartoon character – a caricature of anxiety. The exaggerated personality traits and mannerisms of each of these characters, at times, rubbed me the wrong way. In a review of the film for Salon, Laura Miller wrote:
It’s Leigh’s MO to introduce us to people whose company we’re not sure we can endure for the next two hours, then craftily win our sympathy. Annie’s flinching and twitching and Hannah’s hyperactive patter almost scuttle that plan – they feel more like caricatures than anyone in a Mike Leigh movie has for years.
Another character who provoked this response for me was Nicola (Jane Horrocks) in Life is Sweet (1990), a bitter, angsty, contemptuous teen, whose croaky, raspy voice and constant hostility, cynicism, and nihilism felt unnatural, like a caricature of a troubled teen. As one Redditor who watched the film said, “Steadman and Broadbent play their part pretty much realistically, while on the other hand Horrocks and Spall play with theatrical, exagerated [sic] expressions. Horrocks’ voice (Nicola) sounded so whiny and superficial, it felt unnatural to me and it distracted me from the film.”
(But could any of this annoyance be the point? Should I be annoyed at these characters’ exaggerated features because I want them to be different? If they were different, and less like caricatures – such as when Annie and Hannah are older and have outgrown their shyness and brashness, respectively – they could be happier as people. On the other hand, the annoyance, I think, may have come from just expecting, or wanting, a different kind of character, a different portrayal of a toxic trait or anxiety. It’s also valid to think of a performance or character as so exaggerated that it just feels irritating, cringeworthy, or distracting – separate from whether or not this exaggeration is intended for a particular reason. It’s normal to find characters irritating who aren’t intended to be.)
On second watch, however, I appreciated Career Girls a lot more (even though on first watch, I still found the film’s story of university flatmates reuniting later in life, revisiting their memories, highly relatable and introspective). The characters that felt over the top and almost silly on first watch, I now think they seem more idiosyncratic and interesting; their exaggerated features help bring certain anxieties to the surface. Annie, for example, is truly a painfully shy character. While I can’t say I’ve met someone who acted or appeared so palpably shy and insecure, the contrast between her cariacturish shyness at university and self-confidence six years later does show how much people can change, or at least, how much each person reflects on how they have changed when comparing their current selves to themselves in the past.
In Bleak Moments, it felt like I went through this change of heart about the characters as the film went on, rather than changing my mind on a second watch. The title of the film is apt: these characters really give off a feeling of bleakness, and their interactions with each other – such as Sylvia (Anne Raitt) and Peter (Eric Allan) on a restaurant date and later alone together at Sylvia’s house – feel especially bleak and uncomfortable. This reminded me of how I felt when watching Anomalisa (2015), directed by Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson. Just as with the character of Michael Stone (David Thewlis) in Anomalisa, the desperation and loneliness of Sylvia and Peter emanated from them – their desperation for connection, and failure to achieve it, is painful to watch.
Yet, when I was introduced to these characters, as in some other Leigh films, it felt hard to connect with the characters, or like them, or they just became distracting, because again, they made me think, no one’s truly like this. I couldn’t help but think that no one I know or have met, and no one I can imagine knowing or meeting, is really as repressed, awkward, and strange as Peter. Norman (Mike Bradwell), who plays a drifter in the film, like Ricky in Career Girls, seemed like a caricature of someone uncomfortable in their skin. But as I continued watching Bleak Moments, I think the exaggerated repression of Peter made the desperation for connection, and failure to meet Sylvia’s invitation for intimacy, even more acute. (Sylvia herself also plays someone subdued, living a life of quiet desperation; her slight loosening up when alone with Peter in her home was only possible because she was drinking: a very typical story of British anxiety.) I’m reminded here of the line from Pink Floyd’s track ‘Time’: “Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way.”
The exaggerated mannerisms of Norman, like Ricky and Annie in Career Girls, became sort of endearing as well: these characters, through their eccentricity, do still speak to something personal – a reminder of some aspect of ourselves, or what we used to be like, or other people we know well, or those we’ve only briefly crossed paths with.
As in Career Girls, in Life is Sweet, we are also presented with a stark contrast: Nicola’s persona of rage and hostility (covering up the deep sadness inside her, which we do see through her eating disorder) and the moving finale of the film, where her mother – Wendy (Alison Steadman) – expresses her concern for Nicola’s well-being and the family’s love for her, a moment of genuine connection, which leaves Nicola breaking down in tears. Later, we see Wendy reconcile with Nicola, as well as Nicola accept help from her sister Natalie (Claire Skinner), the first time we see her accept an offer of help.
This contrast between Nicola’s facade of cynicism and her later vulnerability helps illuminate how our facades – especially in our more insecure, younger years – hide our pain, anxiety, and insecurity, which need to be expressed, for the sake of our own catharsis. (Yet, it’s still legitimate to find Nicola, as a character, annoying and distracting, although this eccentricity can eventually stop being as such: as one Redditor said of Nicola, “I felt the same way about her voice during the beginning but as the film progressed I felt like I adjusted to it.”)
I definitely haven’t found every central character in Leigh’s films to be highly eccentric. Many have portrayed anxiety – often an anxiety about desiring connection but struggling to achieve it, due to classic British repression – in a way that feels authentic and relatable. One performance that comes to mind is Lesley Manville’s character of Mary in Another Year (2010). This is one of my favourite of Leigh’s films (up there with Naked and Secrets & Lies). I don’t think I’ve seen desperation portrayed so accurately, as we see Mary feign happiness about her life, but whose profound loneliness and discomfort can’t really be hidden. It felt like I’d met a Mary before, even though I can’t remember if I have. She seemed to embody an archetype of a certain middle-aged person, going through a midlife crisis, but who has that attitude of everything’s fine, everything’s great, who puts on an act of happiness and gregariousness, who always wants to drink and have a good time, but who is hiding a painful loneliness, an anxiety about their life and where it’s going.
In a piece for Tribune Mag, Claire Biddles also wrote about how Pansy (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) in Leigh’s most recent film, Hard Truths (2024), captures the isolation and anxieties of modern Britain. Like Nicola in Life is Sweet, Pansy wears an armour, a facade, of being frustrated with others, of complaining, of criticising others, of others not meeting her expectations. Yet this is covering up the fear, depression, and deep emotional pain she is carrying around, which eventually bubbles to the surface. This, I think, does represent a certain kind of Brit, many British people, in fact – those who constantly complain and who are irascible – but whose grumpiness is a cover for their unspoken isolation and sadness. There is a mental health crisis in Britain, but, unfortunately, this may express itself in the way Pansy expresses it – through anger. And this frustrates our desire for connection.
Pansy’s anger, bitterness, and constant complaining, while easy to dislike, can also be relatable. it’s still possible empathise with her and side with her, because we see – eventually, more powerfully in the film – what’s behind her irascibility. At the same time, it can be difficult to be on her side, because it’s also easy to feel that her pain doesn’t justify her hostility. This can be what makes being depressed, or caring for someone with depression, challenging at times: when this pain expresses itself as anger.
However, even though I’d say Lesley Manville and Marianne Jean-Baptiste’s depiction of a specific kind of anxiety felt more real and powerful than other depictions from more eccentric characters in Leigh’s films, this doesn’t mean the more eccentric characters don’t also depict anxiety meaningfully – and precisely through their eccentricity.
Since many of Leigh’s films can be characterised as tragicomic in genre, these eccentric characters can, at times, feel tragic or comedic (or both at the same time). I’d say that’s an accurate way to describe much of British anxiety: the emotional repression of many of Leigh’s characters is, like Mark Corrigan (David Mitchell) in Peep Show, funny in its awkwardness and cringeworthiness, but when these characters get a bit too relatable, we do truly feel empathy with their anxieties and downfall. Peter in Bleak Moments reminded me somewhat of Mark Corrigan: I could feel the frustration and pain resulting from his excessive level of (very British) emotional repression, of being so subdued, reserved, stuffy, uptight, tense, awkward, and socially anxious.
Many of Leigh’s characters feel like truly British misfits, the epitome of British weirdness and quirkiness. Some of the eccentric and characteristically British characters in Leigh’s films also remind me of the character that the British comedian Joe Wilkinson plays up to: the oddball, the scraggler – unkempt, scraggly, badly dressed, awkward, socially incompetent, reclusive, with peculiar habits. But we cannot simply dismiss Leigh’s eccentric character as simply weirdos to laugh at. Because his films are tragicomedies, his characters also offer us a more serious reflection on life. And the eccentricity of his characters doesn’t mean these characters aren’t complex. Their anxieties, and the way they express them, can be ridiculous, absurd, awkward, funny, sad, painful, relatable, unrelatable, annoying, and so on and so forth. This is often what anxiety is like: it’s complex.
More than that, Leigh has captured distinctly anxious Brits through his uniquely eccentric characters. His characters will display classic British traits like sarcasm, cynicism, and wit (such as the anti-hero Johnny, played by David Thewlis, in Naked), but these traits can cover up vulnerabilities, insecurities, anxieties, isolation, and sadness (which is also true in the case of Johnny). And this is true of many of us Brits as well.
Other characters in Leigh’s films, as we have seen, are also characteristically British in their reticence, which, when exaggerated, more acutely displays how so many British people get in their own way, frustrating their ability to connect to others. This is why, even though Peep Show is a comedy and not classified as a tragicomedy, there are plenty of moments in the series (mostly portrayed by Mark) which feel extremely tragic and painful. Yes, British awkwardness is funny, or just plain uncomfortable (as it is when all the characters get together in Bleak Moments), but it can reveal a tragic dissatisfaction, too – about things wanting to be said, expressed, and done – left unsaid, unexpressed, and undone.
The eccentricity of Leigh’s characters is an idiosyncracy – a uniquely valuable idiosyncracy – of his filmmaking. It’s what has made his films stick with me, even if, at times, the characters’ displays of anxiety have felt cartoonish, unrealistic, and distracting (which can make them feel ‘off’ in an otherwise realistic world). Whether Leigh would call the characters I’ve looked at in this essay ‘caricatures’ is, to a certain extent, irrelevant (although he has done so in the case of Life is Sweet and High Hopes). It’s understandable to push back against the use of this term to describe his characters, as ‘caricature’, in the context of literary or film criticism, often carries with it a negative connotation, implying that a character lacks depth or is simplistic. That is not how I’ve intended to use the term when speaking of some of Leigh’s characters. Caricatures have valuable roles to play in terms of social and cultural commentary. But in any case, Leigh’s films achieve this, regardless of whether the term ‘caricature’ is appropriate or not.
However you choose to describe their exaggerated traits, what matters is that these characters’ personalities and eccentricities can leave a lasting impression on us, helping us to reflect on ourselves – our own lives, relationships, and worries. For me, these characters encapsulate the different flavours of British anxiety, and this is one reason (among many) why Leigh’s films remain some of the most important contributions to British cinema.
