Richard von Busack T HIS IS NOT a titanic age in film.
Movies are big in size, but they are almost never big in scope.
The armies of technical assistants rebuilding vanished civilizations or devising alien worlds can create beautiful illusions, but these dissolve like smoke as soon as you leave the theater. In our time, most modern novels, let alone films, don't have wings and claws. Leigh shows us not only the specifics of some little lives, but of every family. The film is a portrait of Leigh's time and his world. There as here, he unleashes characters who coalesce and then change from workaday figures to epic heroes and heroines.