Another Year

I have heard a lot o buzz surrounding Another Year, and it is one of the last Oscar-nominated films I had yet to see. So I had a chance to watch it today, not knowing what type of film it would be since I have not seen other Mike Leigh films. It engaged me from it's opening scene to the last.

This is a masterful film, dwelling with it's characters in truly humane and intriguing ways. This is an ensemble cast, and as a whole they were all great. Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen are at the center of the film, and the film takes us on a portrayal of their relationship with others. It is to note that the film is contrasting just how different these two main characters' approach life than the people they are surrounded by. The most notable to these other characters is Mary, played by Lesley Manville. I have to say that she gives one of the best performances of 2010, becoming her character. She is vulnerable and at the same time delusional as to her fantasies in life. It's hard to label her performance as leading or supporting. She has a large amount of screen time, but at the same time she serves only as a window looking in to both Sheen and Broadbent's life. She has definitely created one of the most memorable characters in recent memory, and thats largely because of amazing direction and perhaps the best original screenplay of 2010.

Even when Manville is placed in supporting, it is a shame that the Academy went for a more popular actress (Melissa Leo) when Manville and Weaver (Animal Kingdom) both are amazingly much more effective and either deserved to take home that Oscar (what blasphemy that Manville wasn't even nominated). However, this is a rich film, and certainly one of the best of 2010.

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.

Another Year is the kind of film an actor wishes they had been in and any director wishes they had made. Mike Leigh's skillful directing is at its peak. Long, lingering shots of the characters angst (which normally frustrate the audience) are achieved in an effortless way. The acting is so flawless that it is difficult to find fault. The story is simple and meandering...but it works, and works incredibly well. Another Year will not be to the taste of the young kick-cutting action packed generation. It requires a mature audience or an audience that have at least pondered about what their life would be like after their forties.

This will gain nominations and should win Oscars.

Mike Leighs wonderfully ironic yet sweet look at life takes a little twist in this super ensemble movie which centers around Tom and Gerri and shows us these characters mainly as reflected by their friends and kin. What makes the twist is something written in a different review and which is apparently a Continental European viewpoint if I must believe Mr. Leigh. The minor flaw of this film is that Tom and Gerri hardly develop and if they do, it really is downwards as - when you leave the theatre - you are left with some questions as to whether they really are as warm and supportive as they appear prima facie. Why are all their friends alcoholic losers? And why are they so supportive, yet so aloof? We found a few scenes that show how Tom and Gerri feel about Mary (a shoe-in for any award because of the slightly over-the-top, nail biter performance by Lesley Manville). Their friends really make them feel better about themselves. Whatever may be of this Continental take, it is a tremendously enjoyable movie, as always.