FILM CHALLENGE: 155) Another Year

155) Another Year

Director: Mike Leigh

Year: 2010

Plot Summary: Tom and Gerri are a good-hearted couple sliding towards old age. He's a geologist, she's a counsellor, and they have a warm relationship with their grown-up son Joe, a community lawyer. As they potter around their allotment or cook curries for their friends, the only remarkable thing about them is how contented they are. But two of their friends don't share their good fortune: Mary, a work colleague of Gerri's who bemoans her disastrous love life and drinks too much to try and keep up a cheerful front, and Tom's old mate Ken, equally lonely and unhappy, and trying desperately to stay afloat.

In the opening sequence of Another Year the camera focuses on a patient, Janet, who is clearly suffering from clinical depression. She explains to her doctor that she is decidedly a "one" on a happiness scale of one to ten, and that the only thing that would improve her life is "a different life". Soon, this doctor enters the frame and we recognise that she is far younger than her patient and heavily pregnant. There is, therefore, a contrast between both their ages and outlooks. The young doctor carries an optimistic view of life with a new birth coming her way while the ageing woman faces the end of her life and finds little happiness in reflection on her entire existence.

Another Year is built around these contrasts that are established in the prologue as the new drama from Mike Leigh focusses on those of us who have been dealt a good hand in life and those who are destined for sadness. It takes place over a year of Tom and Jerry's life from the spring and the summer through to the autumn and winter.

The incredible Leslie Manville, for example, plays Jerry's friend Mary. Though good-hearted and kind, Mary is constantly being abused by the men around her and, staring into the black hole of the future, she feels she is destined to be alone and single. Similarly, we see Tom's best buddy Ken in the first half of the movie, someone who struggles with his sense of obsolescence by over-eating and binge drinking.

On the other hand, however, we have Tom and Jerry who have been happily in love since they met on their first day of University. We get the sense, when we watch the film, that this is a couple who have never had a rift or an argument in their life, finding happiness and joy in their existence even when facing the inevitability of death around the corner. Moreover, his son, Joe, also finds love in Katie as they plan to start a life together.

Mike Leigh's portrait of life in Another Year is both painful and bitter yet uplifting and hopeful, much like life itself. It's rare that a movie captures what it means to be alive with such raw honesty and it makes his latest drama essential viewing. Moreover, much like the real world, it doesn't come in a neatly wrapped package with a traditional structure. Characters appear and then disappear without finding what they're looking for and the movie ends on a note that leaves the aforementioned Mary in a position where things may or may not change for her. Leigh's movie, because of this, continues to haunt you long after you have left the cinema.

Both his writing and direction are as good as they've ever been here. The former is so naturalistic that you completely forget sometimes that you're watching a work of fiction sometimes whilst remaining dramatic, powerful and occasionally hilarious. The latter is also faultless with each of the four seasons of Another Year having its own appearance and tone which complements the characters' and narrative's developments.

One of the finest films of the year so far, Another Year is a movie so rich that it demands multiple viewings and is as affecting, moving and honest an insight of life as you're likely to find, dare I say it, in cinematic history. It stands right up there with the very best of his work.

4/5

By Daniel Sarath with No comments