SECRETS AND LIES
A film review by John Schuurman
Copyright 1997 John Schuurman
Written and Directed by Mike Leigh.
"O what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive!" Sir Walter Scott first wrote it -- Mike Leigh and his superb movie have shown us the truth of it.
This is (appropriately) a complicated movie; guile and duplicity have made it so. The story unfolds with evidence of the tendrils and shoots of deceit cast all about and we need to have our wits about us as we watch. The film does not make unreasonable demands on us but the attuned observer will quickly become aware that there is a lot of submerged hurt lying around. The main action of the movie is to take us through a marvelous and simplifying exercise in unearthing the pack of lies that make for pain. From cemeteries and slums; from secrecy and deceit the hurt is nudged and beckoned to the surface and in the end we say with the characters, "This is the life ain't it?" "Yeah....Yeah."
Ironically, the integrity of it all is the most compelling thing. Writer/Director Leigh has drawn his characters so fully and so candidly that he makes us forget it is a movie about lies. Indeed, the great accomplishment here is that we forget that it is a movie at all. I can't remember a film that called me into it quite so thoroughly.
It is a movie that shows people all fouled-up with misunderstanding -- of both their own and others doing -- slowly coming to terms. Despite their inherent dimness of soul, they slowly turn up shiny.
Me too. It was something like a earnestly said and deeply felt service of confession and reconciliation in a church service: I felt clean as I walked away.
for other reviews by John Schuurman see: http://www.mcs.com/~wcrc/movies.html
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