the opposite of what things seem to be
by Douglas Messerli
Mike Leigh (screenwriter and director) Topsy-Turvy / 1999
If anything, Leigh’s
Topsy-Turvy suffers in his attempt to
stuff as many of these topical references into the work as possible, forcing
his characters, at times, to participate in unlikely conversations of political
issues such as the collapse of the British garrison at Khartoum, the
development of the telephone (a special line connects Gilbert directly to producer
D’Oyly Carte’s [Ron Cook] office), the oddity of electricity (the Savoy Theatre
features electric lights, a rarity at the time), and revealing various cases of
drug abuse and sexual improprieties: Sullivan’s mistress Fanny Ronalds’
(Eleanor David) avocation of women’s use of nicotine and easy embracement of an
abortion; actor George Grossmith’s (Martin Savage) morphine addiction; lead
soprano Leonora Braham’s (Shirley Henderson) alcoholism, drug addiction, and apparent
lesbianism; Sullivan’s visitation to a French brothel; and Gilbert’s own
emotional and sexual frigidity, to say nothing of his late-night trips during
performances to the seediest parts of London. One has to wonder what Gilbert
was seeking in those journey’s into the darker depths of the city. In Leigh’s
view—and likely in reality—life upon the Victorian stage was truly wicked.
Similarly,
contract negotiations between D’Oyly Carte and his actors, even ignoring the
comic interruptions of the self-assured Rutland Barrington (Vincent Franklin)
and Grossmith—who have consumed tainted oysters before their interviews—reveal
more about the characters than any contrived plot actions might. And, as the
characters begin their long series of rehearsals, costume fittings, and
etiquette lessons about Japanese culture, we become so intimately acquainted
with the talents, quirks, and frustrations of each figure that we begin to feel
we personally know them, helping us to be thoroughly engaged with their
superlative—and their performances are truly wondrous—stage actions. Just like
everyone else in the cast, we are crushed when Gilbert suddenly cuts Pooh-Bah’s
great solo, “A More Humane Mikado,” and we almost wish we could joy the cast
members behind the screen to protest in favor of its restoration.
So fully do we
begin to fill in the lives of the large Mikado cast, that we often lose sight
of the central players, Gilbert and Sullivan. We perceive how Gilbert
accidently became fascinated with Japanese culture through his attendance of
the Japanese exhibition of arts and crafts in Knightsbridge, but we are kept
somewhat in the dark as to how that was transformed into such a sprightly
comically cockamamie world. Indeed, given his dour and dark view of the universe
and his inability to socially engage, how did Gilbert manage to create all of
those topsy-turvy plots and, most importantly, such engagingly comic rhymes?
His opposite,
Sullivan, a man too thoroughly engaged with women, wine, and song, often seems,
on the other hand, a bourgeois bore at home who might rather have spent his
life composing the kind of second-rate parlour songs and symphonies that so
many Victorians took to heart, rather than creating the delightful ditties for
which he is now famous. While Leigh is absolutely splendid in recreating the
world spinning around these artistic geniuses, we find it difficult, somehow,
to understand how they came to produce their art.
No matter, I suppose, since that art is so splendidly realized in this picture. Perhaps we must look to the two women in each of central figures’ lives, the vivacious and sexually advanced Fanny, in Sullivan’s case, and the sexually frustrated yet adoring and supporting “Kitty” (Lesley Manville) in Gilbert’s house. The last scenes of Leigh’s film are given over to a fascinating suggestion for a future opera scenario, based on “Kitty’s” dreams, obviously infused with Freudian imagery that reveals her desire for a child or even an occasional sexual engagement. An entire stage overridden with nannies pushing perambulators might have represented a breakthrough of enormous importance, an escape from the silly magic rings and talismans far more reaching in their surrealist possibilities than even Gilbert and Sullivan’s witty and joyful concoction, The Mikado. As the highly poised and self-contained Helen has quipped earlier in the film: “The more I see of men, the more I admire dogs.”
Perhaps Leigh’s
film does not quite feel like a biopic because he realizes and demonstrates
that things are often the opposite of what they seem, that the world, in short,
is “topsy-turvy”: those who are at the center are never quite as interesting as
those who faithfully proffer their love and support.
Los Angeles,
November 6, 2012
Reprinted from World Cinema
Review (November 2012).
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