Soon after his wife has left him, William finds his life turned further upside down upon meeting Tina, a younger woman with problems of her own in Mike Clarke’s A Light Through Coloured Glass.
Sophia Leanne Kelly’s acting in Mike Clarke’s “A Light Through Coloured Glass” is easily one of the most beautifully directed performances in recent independent movies. Without it, the film could be the usual run-of-the-mill, kitchen sink, drama; one that we have seen many times before. It’s the type of film Britain creates in abundance, yet each moment Sophia appears as Tina Sheppard, she elevates the material above the rest. The screen sparkles, the energy infectious, and the electricity flows. Not for a moment, not even for a frame, does she lose her concentration, and yet it seems effortless. There is an often-used saying that the best acting comes when you can’t see actors acting. You don’t see Sophia Leanne Kelly acting as Tina. She is Tina. She is a character who merely exists in the situation created for her by director Mike Clarke. I know this girl, you know this girl, we all do, she can be seen on every council estate across the country, drifting through life, not caring about family, friends, or even herself. She behaves how she wants to behave and talks how she wants to talk, and if you don’t like it, well you can just (add expletive here) do one.
This is Mike Clarke’s second directorial feature after the genre horror The Stranger which he co-directed with Paul Gerrard – a cracking (if slightly flawed) debut back in October, he seems to be taking the Danny Boyle route of following one genre with a completely different one; it’s very admirable and proving to be highly successful. His influences here are most likely Mike Leigh and Ken Loach, and like them, he is also the screenwriter of his films. One of the strengths of Clarke’s beautifully written script is that the people and everything they do in it feels real and believable, but it is also his ability to coax powerhouse performances from a group of relative newcomers that put him up there with the very best indie directors of the last few years.
Kyle Brookes plays William, who is distinctly middle class. He lives in a nice big house, works at a local TV station, is a practicing Christian, and plays the organ at his church. We learn through others that his wife has left him, and he is all alone. Brookes manages to create a sympathetic character, a man at odds with the world around him, clinging to the faint hope his wife may one day return. The complete opposite of the fiery Tina, Brookes underplays William so perfectly that, in allowing his co-star to shine, generates a certain amount of awe in his own performance. He turns what could have been a two-dimensional character into a complete person who, through his friendship with Tina, gains a developing hunger and desire to start living his life again. Two supporting actors also stand out with Macauley Cooper’s Dan – an overwhelming presence of darkness as a drug dealer with a temper and memorable chimpanzee analogy. While Danni Shepherd as Tina’s friend Lisa provides some much-needed light relief with brilliantly sardonic line deliveries and comedic facial expressions that garner some unexpected but very welcome laughs.
As the director, Clarke uses a number of different shots and makes no attempt to emphasise points or push us, he just allows us to observe. Henry Owen’s cinematography gives us time to study the environments with wide shots of mundane tasks, close-ups of faces and feet, and shots that show the awkwardness of William and Tina in strange environments sitting next to someone or each other yet still seeming alone. Yet it’s the hand-held shots that are the best. A standout is a scene involving an argument and some dog dirt. Here the cinematography makes a backyard feel like a war zone, with the camera shaking, following, and chasing. Iain Cash’s editing is slick pulling the audience right into the middle of things. It’s as if Ken Loach had directed Saving Private Ryan’s allied invasion of Normandy, albeit with more curse words, hair-pulling, and the aforementioned dog dirt.
By the film’s end, we are basically watching life itself and how we all struggle and make do. How some of us compromise our own dreams yet insist on the ones of others. There is no real closure with A Light Through Coloured Glass, but we don’t need it, we get all the nourishment from knowing that William and Tina shared a brief time together and that the time they spent changed everything before they have to part forever. There were obvious budgetary constraints, but thanks to a committed cast and crew, Mike Clarke (who is currently gearing up to make two featurea entitled Semolina Pilchard and aA Few Towns Over) has managed to give us a film as great as he could have dreamed of at this stage in his career and who undoubtedly will go on to achieve a huge amount of success in the years to come as he is easily one of the best film-makers we have seen in recent years outside of the studio system.
Leave a Reply