Blu-ray, DVD Release: Meantime

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: Aug. 15, 2017
Price: DVD $17.49, Blu-ray $25.99
Studio: Criterion

A slow-burning depiction of economic degradation in Thatcher’s England, Mike Leigh’s (Another Year) 1984 black comedy-drama 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 (Quadrophenia‘s 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.

Criterion’s editions of the movie feature the following:

* New, restored 2K digital transfer, supervised by cinematographer 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
* An essay by film scholar Sean O’Sullivan