| Allan Corduner and Jim Broadbent in Topsy-Turvy. [click photo for larger version] |
As a result, it’s not just the number of characters and wealth of detail that takes some getting used to: the rhythm of the movie is disorienting at first as well. The movies that Topsy-Turvy is descended from have a head-long quality to them. They rush us on to the conclusion. But each scene in Topsy-Turvy is self-contained; the plot is submerged beneath whatever happens to be going on in the moment. It’s as if Leigh has frozen each frame of a traditional backstage drama, enlarged it, and made a mini-movie out of each one: each scene has its own stars, its own plot trajectory, its own themes. Each character and each scene has an autonomy that’s lacking in most movies. They develop independently from the overall plot, the overriding conception the director has. The movie plays out in two dimensions, so to speak; it moves forward (at its own pace) but also expands outward (or is it inward?).
In every backstage drama we watch the rehearsals; we’re witness to the behind-the-scenes intrigue; we see, eventually, part of the final performance. But we’re rarely allowed to settle in, to appreciate the rehearsal or the intrigue or the performance for its own sake. Watching Gilbert and three of his actors rehearse part of The Mikado (to take one of my favorite scenes), we’re aware that it’s a step in a process and that eventually we’ll see their work in its finished form, but we’re so engrossed we’d hardly care if the payoff were denied to us. This scene, like almost every other, works on many more levels than we’re used to. It’s documentary-like in that we can take any number of things away from it. We can choose to observe the creative, theatrical process, with regard to either the writer or the actors; we can watch for insights into the characters, Gilbert or the others; we can appreciate the scene they are practicing and think about how it should be performed; we can simply appreciate the leisurely, open rhythm and shape of the scene. And on some level we appreciate each of these facets.
The same goes for the performances themselves. It’s not necessary, plot-wise, to show us the musical numbers in their entirety, but Leigh (like Altman in Nashville) isn’t afraid to give us too much to take in. He’s not afraid that engrossing us in a scene from The Mikado will distract us from the movie. And this particular risk has a big pay-off: it would be a poor movie about an artist if it were unwilling to give us a substantive glimpse of the art. The excerpts we see from the operetta entertain us in their own right, as well as adding to the portrait Leigh is painting—of Gilbert and Sullivan certainly, but also (especially in the beautiful, majestic final shot) of the characters performing the piece.
| A production of The Mikado is staged in Topsy-Turvy. [click photo for larger version] |
In the end, there’s nothing messy about Topsy-Turvy. Leigh’s greatest weakness is his tendency towards caricature, his habit (paradoxical given his method) of assigning one, grotesque trait to his characters. In fairness, his overall strategy is usually to create seemingly one-note, simplistic characters who, over the course of the movie, develop into complicated, multi-layered people. It’s an effective approach, but a slightly schematic and, by now, predictable one. The characters in Topsy-Turvy though become more and more complicated without starting out as caricatures. Leigh reveals their layers with more subtlety and delicacy, and above all more quietly, than in his recent films. The last ten minutes of Topsy-Turvy are revelatory. Jim Broadbent’s Gilbert and Allan Corduner’s Sullivan have been convincing and charismatic from the beginning, but in these last moments, Leigh takes a graceful, utterly unsentimental dip deeper into their personalities than he has thus far gone. Having entertained us with their creativity and charisma, he adds a bold, unexpected, clear-eyed final stroke to their portraits, giving us a glimpse of another, less public, more serious side of their personalities, and deepening the movie’s attitude towards them. And in a beautiful, immensely moving final gesture, he gives the last moment to a character who has played a relatively small role in the movie thus far, transforming her, in a matter of seconds, into a vivid, fascinating character, and at the same time, demonstrating eloquently that, though she has not created the music she is performing, her profound identification with it makes it as much hers as it is Gilbert and Sullivan’s. Topsy-Turvy is a rarity—a movie about artists that is genuinely about art, and the artistic process, rather than merely personality and fame.