/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23382327/VRG_Illo_STK022_K_Radtke_Musk_Twitter_Upside_Down.jpg "Elon Musk is being sued by the feds over the way he bought Twitter")
When I speak with Leigh at the height of his festival run with Hard Truths, the director is hesitant to see the connection between the hardening of Britain and that of his latest protagonist. “What I’m concerned with is the human condition,” he says. “Pansy and her issues, and all the issues that the film looks at are, I hope, universal. If we made the film twenty years ago, in principle, it would have been the same.”
Still, Leigh admits that his films often reflect the zeitgeist of British society—although, to him, that is not a trait exclusive to his work but instead common to filmmakers engaged with the issues of those around them. “French films, there is a Frenchness about them. Russian films, there’s a Russianness about them. And British films, if they’re truthful—which not all British films are—there’s a sense of British society about them. I’m committed to making films in the UK, looking at our society in a very specific way.”
members have widely identified the honesty of Leigh’s titular hard truths. “Economical and yet exhaustive, our most unsparing filmmaker going straight for the throat, still with the audacity to leave us with a question rather than a prescription,” says Chris, with Matt wittily calling the film “the John Wick of depression-fueled outbursts.”
Members have also joined in a chorus to campaign for Jean-Baptiste and her triumphant central performance in the ongoing awards season, after winning the BIFA for Best Lead Performance. “Marianne Jean-Baptiste should probably win every award under the sun because my god,” says Adam, with Theo adding: “Marianne Jean-Baptiste slips so effortlessly between caricature and flesh-and-blood person; such a funny performance, even as it hammers home that angry people are miserable people.” And Coleman hits the nail on the head, saying that Leigh and Jean-Baptiste reuniting “should really be being received like Scorsese working with De Niro.”
