The Peterloo Massacre of 1819, in which British magistrates sent cavalry with drawn swords into a political gathering of Manchester civilians, is an event not likely to be recollected in tranquility; and Mike Leigh’s Peterloo (2018) goes full agit-prop, with apoplectic hanging judges, heartless aristocrats, mercenaries advocating “violence, hatred, destruction,” and local governors declaring “We must be brutal!” On top of the mustache-twirling, Leigh coarsens his storytelling to remove ambiguity: character is conveyed via TV-style shorthand; sympathetic characters foreshadow the coming catastrophe; the historical context is signposted in the dialogue. And yet the film is still deeply impressive, with more evidence of Leigh’s greatness than any of his films since Vera Drake (2004). Despite his reputation for kitchen-sink naturalism, Leigh has always favored exaggerated acting that isolates and intensifies character traits, and this stylization, coupled with his intelligence about social behavior, blows away the obstacles of historical adaptation as if they didn’t exist.
- 9/17/2018
- MUBI
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