A centaur occasionally frames components of the our bodies of actors/characters in one tableau: one person’s head with one other person’s stomach, one person’s torso with one other person’s legs, one person’s again with one other person’s entrance. At moments like those, the query of what a individual is turns into literalized—although the centaur doesn't continuously pose that question visually. the wider factor of synthesis, as with the paired Catholic and Protestant in 4 Days in July, provides us one other colour of this challenge. what's a individual, or a complete crew of humans, if we will merely needless to say being or team as a counterweight to a different being or crew? The unbroken shot presents one other epistemological process, just by asking us to appear, and glance, and glance. once we examine a picture for an extended period than such a lot motion pictures have expert us to examine a picture, for extra time than is needed to appreciate easily what's taking place at the point of plot, we begin to ask yourself why we're taking a look at it. Is there whatever “more” to this? If such a lot pictures in such a lot motion pictures provide us details, Leigh’s unbroken pictures frequently require us to invite even if we're getting the appropriate details, or what details potential. 106 | i-xii_1-196_O'Sul. indd 106 Mike Leigh 6/24/11 8:33 AM  yet this question—What is a person? —has one other sought after size in our tradition: it's the basic query of the difficulty of abortion. The query should be requested at each level of gestation, from belief to beginning; the reply, at each one level, is certain up in a posh nest of biology, social values, and metaphysics. it's a query that operates on the heart of All or not anything (2002) and Vera Drake (2004), if extra evidently within the moment than within the first. by means of framing the subsequent part via this query, i need to transparent away the conception of Vera Drake particularly as a discrete movie with its personal subject—abortion—and reintegrate this paintings right into a career-long main issue. being pregnant and abortion recur all through Leigh’s motion pictures, beginning with tough Labour, which in its depiction of sophistication and situations serves as an early model of Vera Drake. being pregnant is an argument, small or huge, in Grown-Ups, intervening time, 4 Days in July, the fast and Curlies, excessive Hopes, lifestyles is good, secrets and techniques and Lies, Topsy-Turvy, Happy-Go-Lucky, and one other 12 months; abortion is mentioned explicitly in not easy Labour, excessive Hopes, bare, and Topsy-Turvy; and a lifeless child offers the main chilling second within the Kiss of demise. being pregnant enacts at the very least of Leigh’s units: it literalizes the centaur by means of conjoining beings into one, and it offers a vertical model of the side-by-side by way of framing interdependent people. extra commonly, being pregnant serves as a determine of potentiality, of transition, of the “what if,” of questions with out instant resolutions. Leigh’s videos provide a panorama the place transitions and percentages coexist with the monotony of behavior and repetition; being pregnant and abortion carry these contradictions into sharp concentration.