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Meantime (Criterion Collection) on DVD

A slow-burning depiction of economic degradation in Thatcher's England, Mike Leigh's 'Meantime' was the culmination of the writer-director s pioneering work in television and became his breakthrough theatrical release. Unemployment is rampant in London's working-class East End, where a middle-aged couple and their two sons languish in a claustrophobic public housing flat. As the brothers (Phil Daniels and Tim Roth) grow increasingly disaffected, Leigh punctuates the grinding boredom of their daily existence with tense encounters, including with a priggish aunt (Marion Bailey) who has managed to become middle-class and a blithering skinhead on the verge of psychosis (a scene-stealing Gary Oldman, in his first major role). Informed by Leigh's now trademark improvisational process and propelled by the lurching rhythms of it's Beckett-like dialogue, 'Meantime' is an unrelenting, often blisteringly funny look at life on the dole.