High Hopes Blu-Ray

High Hopes is an early classic from award-winning Writer and Director Mike Leigh that cemented his reputation as a key chronicler of British life. Left-wing couple Cyril (Phil Davis) and Shirley (Ruth Sheen) ponder bringing a baby into Thatcher’s Britain, while his sister Valerie (Heather Tobias) embraces the yuppie lifestyle afforded by her philandering husband. Caught in the middle is their aging mother (Edna Doré), whose gigantic council house in King’s Cross is the one holdout against a tide of redevelopment.
Through Leigh’s typically tragic sense of humour, these storylines converge across an awkward and revealing evening: Mum’s surprise birthday party. With supporting appearances from Lesley Manville and Jason Watkins, High Hopes shows the folly of optimism, while giving us reason to believe in the future.