Mike Leigh’s wonderful, bittersweet film (voted best picture of the year by both the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Society of Film Critics) isn’t actually about their collaboration–they work separately, and have surprisingly few scenes together. It’s Leigh’s loving but tough-minded salute to the creative process itself. The G&S stalemate is broken when Gilbert, inspired by a Japanese exhibition in London, conceives of the idea for “The Mikado.” In delightful, knowing detail, “Topsy-Turvy” takes us from first rehearsal to opening night. At the helm is Gilbert, virtually inventing the process we now call “directing.” Broadbent brilliantly captures his gruff mix of authority and insecurity. This may seem a far cry from Leigh’s usual gritty contemporary turf (“Secrets and Lies,” “Naked”), but it shares with his other work an abhorrence of cliché and a crowd of richly idiosyncratic characters.
The notion of art as an organically evolving process is crucial to Leigh. Almost alone among directors, he creates his scripts in the rehearsal period through improvisations. Only when all the pieces have fallen into place is the text set in stone and the cameras begin to roll. This is the first time Leigh has turned his eye on his own theatrical world, and it feels giddily right. Naturally, “Topsy-Turvy” is filled with delicious backstage drama, his superb actors reveling in the opportunity to play their 19th-century counterparts. Among the standouts are Timothy Spall as the leading man sent into a tizzy when Gilbert cuts his best song; Martin Savage as the tremulous, morphine-addicted actor George Grossmith; and Shirley Henderson as the hard-drinking Leonora.
There may be a bit too much “Mikado” for everyone’s taste, protracting the already long running time, but the scenes Leigh and Co. have created are dazzling, none more so than the heartbreaking encounter near the end between Gilbert and his wife. In this stunning scene of marital misunderstanding, Broadbent and Manville show us what great acting is all about.
