Meantime (Criterion Collection) (Blu ray) [USA]

[PunkNinja]

Release Date: Aug. 15, 2017
Purchase Links & Prices:
Amazon.com - $25.99
Criterion.com - $31.96

• Actors: Marion Bailey, Phil Daniels, Gary Oldman, Tim Roth
• Directors: Mike Leigh
• Format: Restored, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen
• Language: English
• Subtitles: English
• Region: Region A/1
• Number of discs: 1

• United Kingdom
• 1984
• 107 minutes
• Color
• 1.66:1
• English
• Spine #890

A slow-burning depiction of economic degradation in Thatcher’s England, Mike Leigh’s Meantime is the culmination of the writer-director’s pioneering work in television. 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 its Beckett-like dialogue, Meantime is an unrelenting, often blisteringly funny look at life on the dole.

Disc Features
DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION:

• New, restored 2K digital transfer, supervised by director of photography Roger Pratt and director Mike Leigh, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• New conversation between Leigh and musician Jarvis Cocker
• New conversation between actor Marion Bailey and critic Amy Raphael
• Interview from 2007 with actor Tim Roth
• PLUS: An essay by film scholar Sean O’Sullivan

1980's Video trailer: