‘Topsy-Turvy’: Mike Leigh’s unlikely turn to showmanship
It’s hardly out of the ordinary for a filmmaker to deviate from the habit of a lifetime and try their hand at something completely different, but even at that, it came out of left field when Mike Leigh opted to leave social realism at home to mount his very first period piece.
Not just any period piece, though, but a musical one that featured plenty of showstopping numbers. Topsy-Turvy dramatised the relationship between lyricist William Gilbert and composer Arthur Sullivan to fantastic – and Academy Award-winning – effect in a welcome change of pace that underlined not only Leigh’s lifelong love of theatre but displayed previously untapped potential as a showman.
It was his eighth feature and was released 28 years after his debut, with Leigh deciding it was the perfect time to freshen things up. Suburban drama Bleak Moments, the aching futility of Meantime, the comedic culture clashes of High Hopes, the working-class odyssey of Life Is Sweet, the conspiratorial Naked, the dysfunctional Secrets & Lies, and the sisterhood of Career Girls were all in the filmmaker’s socially-conscious comfort zone, making Topsy-Turvy stand out just by existing.
Set in the past and inspired by real events, it was genuinely uncharted territory for Leigh. With his usual approach being thrown out of the window by default, he instead encouraged his ensemble cast to research the people they were playing to an almost encyclopaedic extent, which led to Andy Serkis going a little too method when his exhaustive preparations proved to be for nothing.
Charles Simon read the entirety of William Gilbert’s bibliography to get into the right mindset for playing the father of Jim Broadbent’s W.S. Gilbert, too, no mean feat when that required him to peruse novels, biographies, histories, essays, and short stories that were penned over a number of years.
Having dedicated his entire career to social realism beforehand, Leigh wanted to create a movie that celebrated the arts, something he’d always wanted to do. “I felt it would be a good thing to make a film about us, what we do, we who suffer and go to hell and back taking very seriously the job of making other people laugh,” he explained to The Guardian.
Adding: “And indeed it’s not just those of us who are artists or in show business, I mean people who make chocolate and beer who do take it very seriously. I just felt I wanted to turn the camera around on us and our problems.”
As for why he decided to wait three decades to make his first period piece, Leigh made it sound like it was an inevitability. “I very much wanted to do a period film, partly because everybody else does, so why shouldn’t I?” he mused, which is as good enough a reason as any to take a trip back to the past almost 30 years removed from his debut. It may have taken a while, but Topsy-Turvy ensured that it was worth it in the end.
