Cast: Jim Broadbent, Ruth Sheen, Lesley Manville, Oliver Maltman
What I am about to say probably wont be news to most readers: Mike Leigh makes film by taking a group of trusted actors and creating characters and stories with them during an intense period of workshops. I always feel the need to explain this when referencing a Mike Leigh film, because it really is a unique and mesmerising way of making films, and it is part of the reason that so many of Leigh’s peers have been left bobbing in the wake of his awesome creative power over the years. His films are imbued with a level of detail (both visually and in terms of characterisation) that makes them as gripping as a murder mystery and as melodic and emotional as the most manicured Hans Zimmer score.
‘Another Year’ stars two of Leigh’s most trusted and accomplished muses – Jim Broadbent and Lesley Manville – and will surely be counted amongst his greatest triumphs when he eventually stops making films and allows the world’s critics and academics to look upon his oeuvre from a distance. Tom (Broadbent) and Gerri (Sheen) are a settled, late middle-aged couple who seem to have been together in their North London home forever. Possessions, as a rule, get more comfortable with age, as they get worn in and submit to our shape and movements. So it is with blankets, mattresses, couches, clothes, spouses, and most of the other items that clutter our homes. That is the first thing that springs to mind when you see Tom and Gerri (don’t worry… a character makes the obvious joke early on so you don’t have to) in their well lived in home. There is a level of comfort and solitude in this unassuming suburban house that cannot be bought; every doorknob, cushion and ladle has been loved and used over many years, and the house is now a cluttered and peaceful monument to a happy family life.
Tom is a geographer and Gerri a counsellor, and when they are not working or tending their well-kept allotment, they are usually providing refuge for a stream of less fortunate friends. Chief amongst this roster of broken souls is Mary (Manville) a nervous, squeaking alcoholic who smokes too much and decided to stop acting her age in her mid-twenties (a period of her life that ended many years ago). All of the characters in this film are wonderfully complex and realistic, but they all lend themselves so easily to anthropomorphic comparisons. Mary is a fragile but fiery vole, darting around in the reeds of a pond. Ken (an old friend of Tom’s with a penchant for saturated fats and canned lager) is a weighty beaver, tumbling over anything in his path in a giddy but ill-conceived attempt to impress Mary’s coquettish vole. And Tom and Gerri are the swan and signet – bound eternally with a calm but unswerving loyalty to one another, but possessing a certain aloofness towards the less fortunate creatures in their pond.
We follow these well-rounded and thoroughly entertaining characters through each of the four seasons, beginning in spring and ending in winter. This might seem like an awkward framing device for such a free-flowing style of storytelling, but it really works perfectly here, as we see how hopeless the characters are to stem the flow of time. Mary is eager to quit smoking, fix her car, and find a man; but as spring slips into summer and then into autumn, she reappears at Tom and Gerri’s home just as reckless and miserable as the last time we saw her. And these shifts in time also remind us how timeless Tom and Gerri’s life together is. If it weren’t for the changes in produce that they bring in from their allotment – and the fact that rose and barbeques make way for earthy reds and cups of tea in the living room – it would be difficult to notice that time had ever moved on in their sanctuary of a home.
It is only right that Broadbent should play the ‘father’ in this story, as there is something about the playfulness of the film that harks back to ‘Life is Sweet’. Many of Leigh’s recent films have had a darker, more sombre tone; but ‘Another Year’ is filled with hilarious quirks and moments that punctuate the melancholy of Mary and Ken’s loneliness and promise that, no matter how sad life may sometimes seem, there is always someone to turn to and some reason to smile.
What I am about to say probably wont be news to most readers: Mike Leigh makes film by taking a group of trusted actors and creating characters and stories with them during an intense period of workshops. I always feel the need to explain this when referencing a Mike Leigh film, because it really is a unique and mesmerising way of making films, and it is part of the reason that so many of Leigh’s peers have been left bobbing in the wake of his awesome creative power over the years. His films are imbued with a level of detail (both visually and in terms of characterisation) that makes them as gripping as a murder mystery and as melodic and emotional as the most manicured Hans Zimmer score.
‘Another Year’ stars two of Leigh’s most trusted and accomplished muses – Jim Broadbent and Lesley Manville – and will surely be counted amongst his greatest triumphs when he eventually stops making films and allows the world’s critics and academics to look upon his oeuvre from a distance. Tom (Broadbent) and Gerri (Sheen) are a settled, late middle-aged couple who seem to have been together in their North London home forever. Possessions, as a rule, get more comfortable with age, as they get worn in and submit to our shape and movements. So it is with blankets, mattresses, couches, clothes, spouses, and most of the other items that clutter our homes. That is the first thing that springs to mind when you see Tom and Gerri (don’t worry… a character makes the obvious joke early on so you don’t have to) in their well lived in home. There is a level of comfort and solitude in this unassuming suburban house that cannot be bought; every doorknob, cushion and ladle has been loved and used over many years, and the house is now a cluttered and peaceful monument to a happy family life.
Tom is a geographer and Gerri a counsellor, and when they are not working or tending their well-kept allotment, they are usually providing refuge for a stream of less fortunate friends. Chief amongst this roster of broken souls is Mary (Manville) a nervous, squeaking alcoholic who smokes too much and decided to stop acting her age in her mid-twenties (a period of her life that ended many years ago). All of the characters in this film are wonderfully complex and realistic, but they all lend themselves so easily to anthropomorphic comparisons. Mary is a fragile but fiery vole, darting around in the reeds of a pond. Ken (an old friend of Tom’s with a penchant for saturated fats and canned lager) is a weighty beaver, tumbling over anything in his path in a giddy but ill-conceived attempt to impress Mary’s coquettish vole. And Tom and Gerri are the swan and signet – bound eternally with a calm but unswerving loyalty to one another, but possessing a certain aloofness towards the less fortunate creatures in their pond.
We follow these well-rounded and thoroughly entertaining characters through each of the four seasons, beginning in spring and ending in winter. This might seem like an awkward framing device for such a free-flowing style of storytelling, but it really works perfectly here, as we see how hopeless the characters are to stem the flow of time. Mary is eager to quit smoking, fix her car, and find a man; but as spring slips into summer and then into autumn, she reappears at Tom and Gerri’s home just as reckless and miserable as the last time we saw her. And these shifts in time also remind us how timeless Tom and Gerri’s life together is. If it weren’t for the changes in produce that they bring in from their allotment – and the fact that rose and barbeques make way for earthy reds and cups of tea in the living room – it would be difficult to notice that time had ever moved on in their sanctuary of a home.
It is only right that Broadbent should play the ‘father’ in this story, as there is something about the playfulness of the film that harks back to ‘Life is Sweet’. Many of Leigh’s recent films have had a darker, more sombre tone; but ‘Another Year’ is filled with hilarious quirks and moments that punctuate the melancholy of Mary and Ken’s loneliness and promise that, no matter how sad life may sometimes seem, there is always someone to turn to and some reason to smile.
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