All or Nothing (2002)

A stately drama of working-class British lives, Mike Leigh's All or Nothing paints the quiet longing of its characters with such understatement and impassivity that audiences can project anything from faint hope to utter despair onto the canvas. Like Naked, the director's brutal 1993 black comedy, the film sometimes seems to dare viewers to keep their eyes open. Leigh is so intent on depicting the stuff of humanity without prettification that his characters' raw emotions and even their gloriously flawed faces and bodies sometimes seem too fearsome to continue watching. Timothy Spall, a Leigh regular with an increasingly prestigious resumé of other collaborations, leads a uniformly fine cast that also includes the terrific Ruth Sheen and the quietly powerful Lesley Manville -- all actors whose everyday humanity invests their performances with dignity and authority. Composer Andrew Dickson's omnipresent cellos seem to signal a gloomy outcome for their characters, but the film's many workaday epiphanies point to a richer mixture of optimism and regret. The joyful moments are uniformly small and potent: the satisfaction on a woman's careworn face as she belts out a karaoke tune, the thrill of newfound sexual power that lights up an adolescent beauty, the curious understanding between a sad-sack cab driver and a haughty matron, and the anxious solidarity of a family gathered around a sickbed. Despite its hospital-room climax, All or Nothing lacks the crowd-pleasing melodrama of Secrets & Lies, Leigh's 1996 American breakthrough. Nonetheless, the film is almost absurdly representative of the director's distinctive body of work. It may not convince naysayers to join Leigh's extensive fan club, but it offers plenty of quiet power for those who've already joined the fold. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide