Another Year

A strange and sad little film beautifully acted by its ensemble cast. Lesley Manville's agonised performance as Mary, aching with envy at the solidity and comfort of her best friend's solid marriage, must be a shoo-in for awards next year, but Ruth Sheen is also 100% believable as the endlessly patient, almost 'saintly' Gerri. Jim Broadbent's Tom teeters on the verge of hamminess, allowing Peter Wight to steal the male acting honours as Ken, another lonely and alcoholic divorcée.

After a sad Spring and a prickly Summer, Autumn brings romance to Tom and Gerri's bachelor son and Winter brings a funeral (not the one we've been dreading). Anchored by the couple's devotion to their allotment, Mike Leigh gives us a film about the seasons in our lives as well as in our vegetable patches. In life, as in the garden, some things flourish and blossom while others wither and decay.

Often humorous but mostly achingly sad, this is a very fine film about the Ordinary Lives of Ordinary People. Not to be missed.

Lesley Manville as Mary truly deserves the Best Actor Oscar for her perfectly nuanced, scary and convincing portrayal of a woman on the brink of personal desperation due to her many life mistakes and to her extremely fragile emotional nature that served to spiral her further and further down toward mental illness with every romantic disappointment and life mistake she made. Honestly, I do not think Meryl Streep could have played this role as well. Lesley was that great in it. An astounding performance, and so touching, as you felt every pain Mary felt due to Lesley's spot-on interpretation of her character's neediness and weaknesses and what they cost her.

This film tells a story(by the 4 seasons)of a year in the lives of a UK couple and their friends. Mary is a secretarial co-worker and friend of Gerri, a professional counselor and the sweet wife of her well-rumpled and very likable engineer/geologist husband, Tom(yes, Tom and Gerri). Mary is the woman we all know at some time or another in our lives.... a woman too attractive to always be alone but always is alone after every failed attempt at a relationship, always suffering badly from each failure to find what she wants so badly.

Not much of an intricate plot here, as in all Mike Leigh films, but the story was such an absorbing and typical Mike Leigh take on the day-to-day happenings in the ordinary and everyday lives of a normal UK couple and some at-risk friends. Tom and Gerri were the couple with these friends in various states of decline, and they always tried hard through their gentle patience, understanding and humor to help them and always be there for them. Ruth Sheen and the great Tom Broadbent played the wife/husband roles to perfection, and were so loving, likable and comfortable with each other and with friends that you wished you had them for your own friends. Wonderful portrayals, both.

See this film for engaging personal interaction and for the best acting performance of 2010, but be prepared for your own uncomfortable and awkward feelings throughout due to Mary's many sufferings and how her endless tales of them affected her(long-suffering)friends. It was a truly human story, sometimes warm and funny, sometimes pathetic and difficult to watch, but at the end you knew you had seen acting greatness.

Mike Leigh's latest film Another Year follows the story of a happily married couple approaching their retirement years. Their warm relationship offers them security as the the film progresses. Their friends and family, by contrast, all struggle to some extent with unhappiness, and a sense that their best years may be behind them.

The film is a story of ageing; the small events that can make life either comforting or unbearable; and the refuge that companionship can offer.

Rut Sheen's role as Gerri is superb. Her open, welcoming face invites her friend and colleague Mary (played by Lesley Manville) to open up to her about her drunken fears of where her life is leading. Jim Broadbent's Tom is charming and self-effacing, confident in his own happiness yet nonplussed at the failure of his friend Ken – Peter Wight – to come to terms with growing old.

The film dwells on the small, predominantly non-verbal signals that reveal emotional and social insecurity. Leigh's direction reminds us that the sharpest insights into character lie in moments where we think we at our most concealed. Faces betray what we wish were kept private – at moments where verbal communication fails, physical expression lights up hidden fears, passions, failings and desires.

Leigh treats all his characters with a certain dignity – whilst there are moments where we are encouraged to laugh at their social inadequacies, for the most part we suffer along with them, knowing that their experiences are all too near reality to take lightly. We encourage Tom and Gerri to keep supporting their despairing friends, yet knowing at the same time that their married happiness can only serve to mock their friends' lonely lives further. The four strictly partitioned seasons of the film point towards a growing anxiety that it may in fact be too late for these lost characters. The cyclical nature of the structure suggests that there is no real remedy for those left unloved and lonely at the film's conclusion.

From the opening scene, where a woman silently struggles to recollect the happiest moment in her life, to the point when the dialogue slowly fades away to leave Mary isolated and forlorn, we cannot help but be both enchanted and dismayed by the emotional honesty of Mike Leigh's characters. This is what sets out the director as a truly gifted artist – his ability to heighten the routine into the dramatic; and to make the trivial, truly tragic.

Greetings again from the darkness. How DARE he? Mike Leigh is such a non-compliant filmmaker. He just refuses to follow the rules ... and film goers are the benefactors of his daring. Mind you, his daring is not in the regards of special effects, stunt work or trick photography. No sir. His daring is with the subject, theme, tone and characters. He is ... GASP ... unafraid of real people! If you have seen Mr. Leigh's work in "Happy-Go-Lucky" or "Vera Drake", you understand that his films can be simplistic on the surface, while carrying multiple layers of commentary and observations. He also has the classic British sense of humor in that very few "punchlines" exist. Instead the humor comes in allowing the viewer to recognize the characters as someone they know, or God forbid, even their own self!

Mr. Leigh has a history of making films without a script ... only broad based outlines for the characters. The actors then work to fill in the details of the individuals, which in turn, forms a story. This explains why the story does not follow the traditional arc. In fact, the story has no real beginning or ending. What we see are the interactions of people who are friends, relatives, co-workers, acquaintances and strangers.

The foundation of the film, as well as the foundation for most of the other characters in the film, is the happily married couple of Tom and Gerri, played by the terrific Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen. This is a couple who not only love and respect each other, but also enjoy being together. Their friends and family come in and out of their lives, but their bond is strong.

Key amongst this group is their friend, and Gerri's co-worker, Mary (Lesley Manville). Mary is someone we all recognize. She is single, not getting any younger, desperately trying to avoid loneliness (too often with a bottle), masking her fear through fake excitement, and latched onto the security blanket offered by Tom and Gerri's friendship.

When family friend Ken (Peter Wight) makes a move on Mary, she shuns him because of his lack of perfection. She always thinks she can do better. When she begins fixating on Tom and Gerri's son Joe (Oliver Maltman), we really feel her pain but just want to slap some sense into her. The relationships all take a hit when Mary shows up for dinner and is introduced to Joe's new girlfriend ... a wonderfully charming and talented Katie (Karina Fernandez). Mary acts the selfish fool and it drives a wedge between she and Gerri. There is even a line of dialogue earlier on ... never come between a mother and her son! Another character we are witness to includes the great Imelda Staunton as a depressed middle-aged woman who comes to Gerri for professional guidance. We also meet David Bradley as Tom's older brother, Ronnie, whose wife has recently passed.

All of these situations and personalities are balanced by Tom and Gerri as they provide a stable environment ... it's as if they are a fountain of sanity from which everyone wishes to drink. As an added touch, none of the characters are Hollywood beauties. Broadbent and Ms. Sheen would never be mistaken for Brad and Angelina. Rather they are more likely to look like someone you know ... and better yet, their characters live like people you WANT to know. So again I ask ... How dare he?

Tom and Gerri (Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen), the couple at the centre of Mike Leigh's latest existential piece, couldn't be more unlike the cartoon characters who share their names. Together for several decades, their love for each other has only grown. I wouldn't complain if my marriage looked like theirs when I'm in my 50s.

When he isn't working as a geologist and she isn't counselling people, they spend their time providing solace to those who need it – Ken (Peter Wight), a straight-talking, John Smiths-drinking Yorkshireman; Ronnie (David Bradley), Tom's laconic brother whose wife has just died; and most of all Mary (Lesley Manville), a jittery colleague of Gerri's in the middle of a mid-life crisis. It is Mary who dominates the film and who most elicits our empathy. She is without love and possibly even without the hope of love. It is genuinely painful to see her disintegrate scene by scene.

As another year in Tom and Gerri's life unfolds, we see nothing particularly fascinating happen. They tend to their allotment, they invite people to their house for food and company, and they reminisce about their experiences. Nothing could be more trivial, right? Wrong. This film is about growing old and making the right choices as one gets to old age. Above all it's about recognising that happiness is less a right than an aspiration.

The word 'integrity' comes to mind when I think of Mike Leigh. Who else could convince actors to sign up to films where there was no script to begin with? Throughout his career he has eschewed the Hollywood system and has done things his own way ('Given the choice of Hollywood or poking steel pins in my eyes, I'd prefer steel pins').

An audience member expostulated at the end, 'That wasn't very uplifting'. She's correct, but Leigh doesn't offer folly or fantasy. He's a truth-seeking social observer and commentator. What's also appealing about Leigh is that he doesn't spoon-feed his audience. His films compel the watcher to debate what they have seen and draw their own conclusions. Why should films give us answers?

I was moved by this film like no other in recent memory. One moment I was laughing uncontrollably, the next I was holding back tears. The film emphasises a sad fact: for some people, things don't always go according to plan. Sometimes we're just plain unlucky. And that's life.

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