Like most Mike Leigh movies, this one appeared award-laden in 1999 (Best Actor for Jim Broadbent at the Venice Film Festival, Oscars for Make-Up and Costume Design). Unlike other Leigh movies, this isn't a slice of contemporary London social realism but an account of the English comic opera writers (and, arguably, fathers of the modern musical) WS Gilbert (Broadbent) and Arthur Sullivan (Allan Corduner), from the first night of 'Princess Ida' in January 1884 to the triumphant return to form at the first night of 'The Mikado' a year later.
Their successful musical partnership appears to have come to a halt when 'Princess Ida' is unsatisfactory to Sullivan and it closes after running into a heatwave. Gilbert is inspired to write the lyrics for a Japan-set opera after visiting a Japanese exhibition in London. This re-energises the partnership.
But the plot isn't really the thing here. TOPSY-TURVY has layer upon layer of good acting. Every character is distinct or odd or larger than life. There's not a dull or uninteresting performance from a supporting cast which numbers Lesley Manville (Mrs Gilbert), Timothy Spall, Kevin McKidd, Martin Savage, Shirley Henderson (as members of the D'Oly Carte opera), Andy Serkis (as the choreographer) and Ron Cook (as D'Oly Carte, the opera impresario - a sort of Victorian Cameron Mackintosh). But top honours do go the two outstanding leads: Corduner is suave and laid back as Sullivan and Broadbent's WS Gilbert is, by contrast, grumpy, critical and loud.
Leigh triumphs in the evocation of life in London in 1884/85: there are the latest inventions such as the fountain pen and the telephone; over oysters actors discuss the news of the death of General Gordon at Khartoum; Gilbert's painful visit to the dentist; the staff at the Savoy Theatre overdressed in Victorian finery during a summer heatwave.
A corpulent (it's around two-and-a-half hours long) film but one full of things to enjoy. Highlight has to be Spall singing 'A More Humane Mikado' (which Gilbert cuts).
Their successful musical partnership appears to have come to a halt when 'Princess Ida' is unsatisfactory to Sullivan and it closes after running into a heatwave. Gilbert is inspired to write the lyrics for a Japan-set opera after visiting a Japanese exhibition in London. This re-energises the partnership.
But the plot isn't really the thing here. TOPSY-TURVY has layer upon layer of good acting. Every character is distinct or odd or larger than life. There's not a dull or uninteresting performance from a supporting cast which numbers Lesley Manville (Mrs Gilbert), Timothy Spall, Kevin McKidd, Martin Savage, Shirley Henderson (as members of the D'Oly Carte opera), Andy Serkis (as the choreographer) and Ron Cook (as D'Oly Carte, the opera impresario - a sort of Victorian Cameron Mackintosh). But top honours do go the two outstanding leads: Corduner is suave and laid back as Sullivan and Broadbent's WS Gilbert is, by contrast, grumpy, critical and loud.
Leigh triumphs in the evocation of life in London in 1884/85: there are the latest inventions such as the fountain pen and the telephone; over oysters actors discuss the news of the death of General Gordon at Khartoum; Gilbert's painful visit to the dentist; the staff at the Savoy Theatre overdressed in Victorian finery during a summer heatwave.
A corpulent (it's around two-and-a-half hours long) film but one full of things to enjoy. Highlight has to be Spall singing 'A More Humane Mikado' (which Gilbert cuts).