High Hopes

Composite Score: 83.2

Starring: Phil Davis, Ruth Sheen, Edna Doré, Philip Jackson, Heather Tobias, Lesley Manville, David Bamber, and Jason Watkins

Director: Mike Leigh

Writer: Mike Leigh

Genres: Comedy, Drama

MPAA Rating: PG

Box Office: $1.19 million worldwide

Why should you Watch This Film?

                High Hopes is Mike Leigh’s film about a working-class London couple and their relationships with friends, family, and acquaintances. Featuring Phil Davis as Cyril and Ruth Sheen as his significant other Shirley, the film follows the pair as they contend with Cyril’s unstable sister Valerie (Heather Tobias) and her husband Martin (Philip Jackson), his aging mother (played by Edna Doré), her neighbors Lætitia (Lesley Manville) and Rupert (David Bamber), and a lost stranger named Wayne (Jason Watkins) who is looking for his sister’s apartment. Across it all, the film highlights the growing class inequalities in Britain under the Thatcher administration and the complex nature of human relationships – be they romantic, filial, fraternal, or merely societal.

Why shouldn’t you Watch This Film?

                High Hopes’s messaging ends up a bit muddled by the end of the film due to its many overlapping stories. Its central theme of the necessity of empathy in relationships and interactions is the only message that comes through overly clear. Forays into issues of politics (socialism vs. conservatism and theory vs. practice), critiques of classism, and commentary on the treatment of the elderly serve more to support the film’s central theme rather than story lines in and of themselves. As such, there are plenty of moments in the film that make it feel like it’s trying to be smarter than it actually is. As is true of many Mike Leigh films, the dialogue feels like someone speaking who is incredibly sure that what they are saying deserves to be heard because of how profound it is. As it stands, I think the overall film is much better than the sum of its parts, which at best feel a bit disingenuous and at worst feel legitimately misplaced and excessive.

So wait, why should you Watch This Film?

                To reiterate, High Hopes is so much better than any of the individual stories and/or characters that it contains because, at the end of the day, it is a film that looks positively on human interaction and our need for one another, with all roads leading back to that end. The film’s overwhelming positivity even in the face of some very real story lines helps make it a film worth watching. Particularly moving are the story of Shirley’s desire to have children and that of Mrs. Bender’s relationship with her children. Shirley’s desire for a child is a point of tension in hers and Cyril’s relationship that is revisited multiple times throughout the film, leading to poignant conversations between the two characters in which both of them are forced to hear and process the viewpoint of the other in a refreshingly healthy take on romantic relationships in film. High Hopes doesn’t seek to romanticize romance but instead places it in these moments of reality and shows how both characters grow through conversation and listening and a willingness to sacrifice for and empathize with one another. Similarly, the developing contrast between Valerie’s and Cyril’s relationship with their mother highlights empathy in a different way. That Mrs. Bender cares for her children seems fairly clear, but each of them reciprocate that care in different ways, neither of which feels overly healthy at the film’s start; however, Cyril’s healthier home life affords him the ability to approach his mother with increasing empathy as her own situation deteriorates while Valerie is stuck seeing her mother as merely a character in her own story rather than an individual worthy of recognition and connection.

                By telling stories of empathy, focusing on familial relationships and interactions, High Hopes endears itself to the audience with resonant and meaningful messaging that make it one of the Greatest Films of All Time. Despite its flawed plot points, a cohesive story with a clear central message come together to give you something truly uplifting in the face of reality. This film is currently available to stream via the Criterion Collection if you’d like to check it out.