If you watch too many movies like me, the problem with casting Eddie Marsan in God’s Pocket is that you remember him in Mike Leigh’s movie, Happy-Go-Lucky. When you start thinking of other Mike Leigh movies, you realize how God’s Pocket has failed itself. Like Killer Joe, it initially appears to be a post-fall movie, but then that stark layer of omnipresent perfidious layer, but unlike Killer Joe, it is simultaneously romanticized. God’s Pocket suffers from the same problems as Richard Jenkins’ character-it admires and wants to belong to the working class while also looking down and fetishizing them. Mike Leigh never does that-he always strikes the right tone by portraying the working class like real people instead of his fetish. Leigh doesn’t romanticize their flaws. He shows them with no editorial or winking at the camera. He treats daily life with the same respect as an epic. God’s Pocket also has moments where it visually contrasts the neighborhood with life outside the neighborhood and seems to state that life anywhere else is like heaven thus further fragmenting the tone problems. God’s Pocket even failed to distinguish the neighborhood from other locations-It was supposed to occur in a Philadelphia neighborhood, but I initially thought it was New Jersey or New York. God’s Pocket is epically disappointing because it does have perfect moments with its most tertiary characters: the woman at the flower shop and the stepson’s boss. The cast is the best roster ever. I’m not sure if God’s Pocket’s flaws lie in the adaptation team or its original book, but I have no desire to find out. Slattery’s God’s Pocket failed where Affleck’s The Town succeeded: having a middle class director effectively portray and have ambitions to be in a lower class with more criminal connections.
SPOILER
If you did read the book, why do two pivotal turning points at the beginning and near the end of the film involve brief appearances by silent black people? Reverse magical Negro cameos? No judgment YET, just wondering.