How did Mike Leigh mess this up? He should be on safe ground, telling the real-life story of how in 1819 soldiers assaulted an unarmed crowd of reformists, turning a patch of land in Manchester into a killing field. But as a chapter of history, this one really drags.
The first person we’re introduced to is a young soldier, Joseph (David Moorst). Like Charles Dickens’s Stephen Blackpool, Joseph is a confused, radiantly innocent prole. He has no texture (it’s gobsmackingly obvious that he’s a martyr-in-waiting). Dickens’s aim was to stir up sympathy for the down-trodden in the hearts of the privileged. But it’s 2018. Surely working-class characters in this day and age don’t need to be quite so unthreatening.
Joseph’s impoverished family are barely more dimensional, even though the wonderful Maxine Peake plays his mum. This decent clan want a stake in society and the men in the family go to hear speeches, some of which are genuinely rousing.
But there are so many speeches! The film’s baddies (royals, politicians, vainglorious clerics, Northern bigwigs and, topically, various spies) prove just as windy. I wanted more of the hellishly noisy satanic mills. If only to drown out the droning words.
Luckily, one character proves intriguing (Rory Kinnear’s self-conscious, priggish but conscientious orator, Henry Hunt). And once we get to the march and the massacre itself, you’ll be rooted to your seat. Not because you’ve dozed off but because Leigh and his cinematographer, Dick Pope, finally seem galvanised by the material. Better late than never.
