Volume 47, Number 3 · February 24, 2000
Stompin' at the Savoy
By Geoffrey O'Brien
Topsy-Turvy
a film directed by Mike Leigh
In the wake of directing what is likely to remain the best imaginable Gilbert and Sullivan movie—Topsy-Turvy, a fantastically detailed and wonderfully leisurely account of the genesis of The Mikado—Mike Leigh has taken to making statements like this: 'I'm not interested in proselytizing Gilbert and Sullivan. At the end of the day they were minor artists. They did suffer, but they suffered in a bourgeois way.' Aside from any possible arguments about the implied connection between non-bourgeois suffering and the making of major art, it's understandable that Leigh needs to put some distance between himself and the body of work he has so cunningly restored to cultural prominence. He knows after all that many will go to see Topsy-Turvy for reasons that have nothing to do with Leigh's impressive earlier films (Life Is Sweet, Naked, Secrets and Lies) and everything to do with a lingering, if decidedly attenuated, popular enthusiasm for the Savoy operas.
Review, 3553 words
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