In 1884, with their partnership fraying and their recent theatrical effort a commercial disappointment, Gilbert and Sullivan seem destined to go their separate ways. Then W. S. Gilbert attends a Japanese exhibition and is seized by an idea for a new opera: The Mikado. Mike Leigh's richly detailed, brilliantly acted period drama is an immersive portrait of the creative process itself—the inspiration, the collaboration, the temperament, and the exhausting, exhilarating labor that goes into making a work of art—brought to life through one of cinema's greatest ensemble casts.