Meantime (1983)
Directed by Mike Leigh
A working-class family in London's East End is struggling to stay afloat during the recession under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's premiership. Only the mother Mavis is working; father Frank and the couple's two sons Colin, a timid, chronically shy individual and Mark, an outspoken, headstrong young man, are on the dole. This situation is contrasted by the presence of Mavis's sister Barbara, and her husband John, whose financial and social loftiness appears to be a comfortable facade over the unspoken soreness of a lackluster marriage.
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What critics compared Meantime to
Mike Leigh's Meantime (1983) offered a more cohesive attempt to describe what produces an English skinhead in London's East End; the designated turf of American History X is Los Angeles's Venice Beach.
While those two have a partially whimsical tone, Leigh's earlier work, theatrical and TV films like "Bleak Moments," "Grown Ups" and "Meantime," had much more of a downbeat thrust.
Hilarious, but sometimes hard to stomach, Leigh's picaresque tale is his most troubling and intriguing work since Meantime; it's also by far his most cinematic.