At nearly two and three-quarters hours, it is overlong. And with its crowded and closed-in images, jammed up with people and furniture and bric-a-brac and dark walls, it is overheavy. At the same time, this is a very substantial film, probing the anguish and dissatisfaction behind the great (and cheerful) names of Gilbert and Sullivan, muscling into the eternal struggle between artistic aspiration and commercial compromise, stepping back for a sweeping socioeconomic overview of the rarefied world of Victorian operetta. That last angle of approach, in particular, might help us to get over any surprise that writer-director Mike Leigh would choose to retreat a full century from his customary stomping ground of present-day Britain (Secrets and Lies, High Hopes, etc.), and seek amusement instead in his forefathers' discomfort with such new-fangled gizmos as the telephone, the doorbell, and the fountain pen. Leigh's personal attitude toward the work of his two principals is a little hard to read. He gives us sizable chunks, not necessarily highlights, of Princess Ida, The Sorcerer, and finally The Mikado, but he gives them to us with a detached, a dispassionate, a quasi-documentary eye: no push from the camera to "put it over," no overpowering reactions from backstage or out front to let us know how it's going. His abstinence from cruel caricature on this occasion, his uncharacteristic observance of Victorian decorum, might be viewed as a token of respect, but it also results in a certain disengagement, a certain flatness. He seems primarily interested in the work as work -- he himself is a man of the theater as much as a man of the cinema -- and maybe the quality of the work, after all, is beside the point. Work is work, regardless. The devotee of Gilbert and Sullivan will perhaps be transported to a giddy aesthetic plane at the very first note. The nondevotee, seeing mainly the quaintness, and wondering whether he needed to see quite so much of it, is not apt to be converted. But he will at least have been transported, together with the devotee, into a different time, a particular place, a situation, a circle of characters. That's a job of work in itself. And well done. With Jim Broadbent, Allan Corduner, Lesley Manville, Timothy Spall, Alison Steadman. (1999) — Duncan Shepherd
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