- published: 23 Jan 2013
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High Hopes is a 1988 film directed by Mike Leigh, focusing on an extended working-class family living in King's Cross, London and elsewhere.
The film primarily examines Cyril (Philip Davis) and Shirley (Ruth Sheen), a motor-cycle courier and his girlfriend, along with their friends, neighbours, and Cyril's mother and sister.
Despite staying true to Leigh's down-at-the-heel, realist style, the film is ultimately a social comedy concerning culture clashes between different classes and belief systems. According to the critic Michael Coveney', "As in Meantime, High Hopes contrasts the economic and spiritual conditions of siblings. And in developing some of the themes in Babies Grow Old and Grown-Ups, it presents a brilliantly organised dramatic résumé of attitudes towards parturition and old age." In one of the special features included on the Criterion Collection's double-disc DVD release of Leigh's film Naked, Leigh states that High Hopes is a film about the difficulty of being a socialist.
When you're on your high horse
and things are going your way
you really don't appreciate
what you wanted bad yesterday.
But if i lost it-
I'd still be the same
It won't break my spirit-
I'll look ahead just the same
Times are hard it's true- I'll cope
But it won't get me down
cause I got- High Hopes
When you're on the bottom
the place to look is up
When things are getting better,
don't stop, don't say enough
What you achieve-
that's for you to choose
You can always-
regain what you lose
Something shitty happens
and it hurts- I'll cope
It's time we all had- High Hopes
Some people can't rebound
when hardship hits their life
When they lose something they love
and their friend's holding the knife.
Pick your head up, get off the ground
These High Hopes that I have