In this, Mike Leigh's first television drama, Mrs Thornley quietly endures a
life of unceasing domestic work: as a char for Mrs Stone and at home for her
demanding husband, Jim. Throughout, Mrs Thornley is inarticulate and passive.
Her characterisation attracted complaints from left-wing and feminist critics
suggesting that, when he derived the character from his middle-class mother's
cleaning lady, Leigh could not imagine a fulfilling life beyond such work.
However, although she does not articulate her feelings, Leigh uses cutaway shots
of her to comment on others' attitudes. Furthermore, her apparent passivity
serves several dramatic purposes.
Leigh uses visual echoes and parallels to juxtapose Mrs Thornley's domestic
and paid jobs, heightening the play's exploration of identity as shaped by work
and maternal duty (hence the pun in the title) and gender roles across classes
and generations. It also heightens Leigh's wider social point that people's
private lives are so separate that they are often connected only by economic
convenience. Leigh acknowledges his position by filming the middle-class Stone
in a house two doors away from his old home. He cites Hard Labour as a very
personal film which unusually for him touches, albeit marginally, upon his
Jewish background.
The play's closing scenes imply submerged depths beneath Mrs Thornley's
passivity and Jim's belligerence. Mrs Thornley rubs Jim's unsightly hairy
shoulders, alleviating rheumatic pain but also satisfying his unarticulated need
for intimacy and physicality. This leads Mrs Thornley haltingly to discuss her
emotional restraint with a priest, who prescribes penance. There follows a
lengthy closing shot of Mrs Thornley cleaning windows, implying that penitence
motivates her work. This, alongside recurring Catholic imagery, implicates
religious guilt in her confused identity and offers active interpretations of
her stoical labour, although she does not experience the moments of realisation
common to characters in Leigh's later work.
Reinforcing the play's political concern with isolation and working-class
communities, Leigh heightens confinement and the repetition of mundane tasks
through restrictive editing and compositions, including shots which isolate feet
and hands at work. Although he retains characteristic features, such as his
noted process with actors, he also employs improvised location footage inspired
by producer Tony Garnett, a device which he would subsequently avoid. Though
more sombre than Leigh's later work, Hard Labour's visuals, which comment on the
action and on modern life's ironies in an understated, witty way, address a
common Leigh theme: limited social and emotional
communication.
Dave Rolinson
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