movies
BY JASON BLAIR
Ruth Sheen and Jim Broadbent
in Another Year
There’s Something about Mary
The master director of Happy-Go-Lucky returns
ANOTHER YEAR:
Written and directed by
Mike Leigh. Cinematography, Dick Pope. Music, Gary
Yershon. Starring Lesley Manville, Jim Broadbent and
Ruth Sheen. Sony Pictures Classics, 2010. PG-13. 129
minutes. 44444
S
omewhere in London, an aging
couple is inexhaustibly happy.
Gerri (Ruth Sheen) is a gentle
and capable counselor, while Tom (Jim
Broadbent) is a jolly if judgmental
geologist. Together they embrace, rather
than shrink from, the world’s rhythms and
fluctuations — they’re both four-season
gardeners — and their relationship is
hearty, fortified, even graceful. They’re
at ease in the world because they adapt to
it. If only their friends were so fortunate.
How we resist change, and under what
circumstances change is possible, is the
central question of Another Year.
Another Year is the latest from writer
and director Mike Leigh (Naked, Secrets
& Lies), an artist whose unscripted
approach to social realism often finds
ordinary people negotiating a crisis.
At face value, Another Year refers to a
typical year for Gerri and Tom. Being
a safe port, they tend to attract boats in
a storm, and so we meet Mary (Lesley
Manville), Gerri’s dippy co-worker,
and later, Ken (Peter Wright), a clumsy
friend of Tom’s. Mary, following a
homecooked meal with Gerri and
Tom, repays the kindness by drinking
too much and passing out. Ken, who
visits soon after, drinks too much and
collapses into tears. With friends like
these, best to avoid friends altogether.
But the disconnect is merely a starting
point in Another Year, where characters
who at first seem minor turn out to be
major players, while other characters,
seemingly major, simply drift away.
Exuberantly positive folks harbor great
pain and fear in Leigh’s work, but also
great reserves of strength.
Mary is a self-deprecating type
whose polished exterior hides signs of
a breakdown. She’s always late, usually
following some mishap or catastrophe,
even if we sense it’s in her imagination.
Earnest, she addresses people by their
first name far too often, as if a supplicant
looking for reassurance. She clearly
adores Gerri, but one can imagine her
putting a move on Tom, in part because
she’s a natural flirt and in part because in
the presence of wine, she’s has a tendency
to overserve herself by tossing it back in
great desperate glugs. As it turns out,
she has it bad for their son, Joe (Oliver
Martman). With each passing scene,
Leigh makes a case for her as possibly
the world’s loneliest woman, a shift so
natural and evolutionary that you barely
notice it happening. First she’s buoyant,
then she’s sunk: It’s a great example of
how much drama can be wrung from a
completely unself-aware person.
Meanwhile,
while
Gerri
and
Tom remain genetically predisposed
to kindness, they can be sweetly
patronizing to both Mary and Ken. They
indulge their lonely friends, but only up
to a point. Jim in particular is quite tart
when he wants to be. But throughout
Another Year, they’re shining examples
of stability and perseverance — Tom’s
brother loses his wife, Gerri has to cut
off Mary for a time — qualities they’re
so in control of that they’re barely aware
they possess them. Eventually, Mary
is invited back into their house, but
has anything changed? Has Mary the
courage to change? We can debate all we
want the mysterious ending of Inception;
whether it’s a dream or not is irrelevant.
By contrast, the ending of Another Year
is almost molecularly subtle. That Lesley
Manville isn’t nominated for an Oscar
for her role as Mary is the oversight
of awards season. Another Year is one
of the most rewarding movies of the
year. Precise, humane, and lovely, it’s
a forward-thinking movie about people
whose lives are stuck in park.
ew
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