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has made a career of rescuing unlikeable people. His purely fictional movies – Naked, High Hopes, Happy-Go-Lucky, for instance, are filled with characters fighting against their circumstances, often angry and pouty, or even alone and ranting against the night. His film about the famous painter J.M.W. Turner shows a growly, demanding, critical man who infuriates people around him.

But by the end of these pictures, even if you wouldn’t want to have dinner with the characters, the films get you to understand them – what struggles or situations have helped bring about such anger or dismay or depression. It’s far more satisfying than most typical happy endings with now-loveable people and everything resolved.

Leigh’s new film, Hard Truths, starts with the mournful sound of a viola that gives a fair indication of what’s on the way.

A pleasant house stands on a corner in full sunlight and then, Pansy () wakes up in a dark room screaming. She barks at her adult son, who gives her the finger as she leaves his room. She lights into her husband Curtley, a plumber carrying a bathtub spigot, about messing up the house. She’s in a constant state of rage. The son and the father seem to have gone silent under the pressure of her outbursts. And she takes off about going to the supermarket.

Courtesy of Simon Mein Copyright Thin Man Films Ltd.

For a time, it’s funny. Pansy’s language of abuse is so alive that it has its own kind of pleasure, and it’s funny to see someone in a movie this energized and articulate. But what the audience is doing with its laughter is turning Pansy into a kind of twisted clown; it’s an act of condescension on our part.

The critical moments come on Mother’s Day. At her mother’s grave with her sister, Pansy breaks down, and what comes out is her frustration, disappointment and deep loneliness. She doesn’t become easier to be around, but by the end of the film, it’s clear she’s not malicious. She’s a tremendously smart woman with tons of energy – and she’s trapped. That the film is always on her side, and that it can hold simultaneously resentment, disappointment, rage, love and humor, is a testament to Mike Leigh’s profound humanity as an artist.

Courtesy of Simon Mein Copyright Thin Man Films Ltd.

It also has to do with his unique method for making movies. Leigh builds a script through roughly a year of rigorous improvisations with his actors. Everyone participates in the creation of the film – actors, costumers, the cinematographer and so on – and this full participation brings to the work a startling intimacy. Hard Truths feels like a world fully fleshed out and populated. The parts don’t just fit together; they’re fused, as if the film grew out of the earth like some marvelous plant.

And credit also goes to cinematographer Dick Pope, who worked with Mike Leigh on most of Leigh’s films. Pope died a few months ago; Hard Truths is his last film. Visually, the movie has wondrous clarity – sharp focus and clean lines. Pansy’s home is immaculate – and sterile. Clean blank walls, a crisp white kitchen, so that the flowers her son got her for Mothers Day, but never actually gave her, look phony and out of place. It’s no wonder Pansy tosses them into the back yard. What a gutsy film.