A good year

The latest film from lauded writer and director Mike Leigh doesn't look like much on paper, but on the big screen it's a masterful commentary on the lottery of life: its winners, its losers and how they cope with one other.

Another Year invites us into the north London home of Tom and Gerri, a couple in the autumn of their lives who are content but burdened with less fortunate friends. Over the course of four seasons, Tom and Gerri play host-cum-counsellors to melancholy friends including a rotund loser named Ken (Peter Wight), Tom's bereaved brother Ronnie (David Bradley) and the serially desperate, Pinot Grigio-guzzling Mary (Lesley Manville). There are golf matches, dinner parties, babies, funerals and more than a few breakdowns (nervous and vehicle alike). But life carries on regardless for what is, after all, just another year.

The casting couldn't be better, as Leigh employs refined British talent from his usual canon of actors, including Jim Broadbent, Ruth Sheen, Lesley Manville and Peter Wight, along with a fleeting but memorable appearance from Imelda Staunton as a sleep-starved depressive. Each and every character is well-rounded, believable and adorable (if sometimes abhorrent). Of course, the caliber of acting has a lot to do with this, but so does Leigh's inimitable directing style.

Leigh doesn't subscribe to the usual filmmaking etiquette of carefully coiffuring a script; he gradually shapes characters through improvisational workshops, often only revealing life-changing events to his actors seconds before they go into a scene. It's a tried and tested method, and makes for vibrant viewing - emotions and words fill the screen with refreshing spontaneity.     

Broadbent and Sheen as Tom and Gerri make a truly lovable pair. They've got a beautiful house, a successful son and a healthy allotment - the only place where they ever seem to be truly alone. In the hands of the wrong actors, this portrayal would be sickly, but instead, the graying couple's passion for life and for each other is a heart-warming reminder that "till death do us part" needn't be a struggle. As leads, Tom and Gerri don't change for the duration of the film, yet remain a joy to behold throughout.

But for all the wonderful acting, it's Manville who stands out as the effervescent yet utterly tragic Mary. A bedraggled figure with her best days behind her, Mary makes none-too-subtle advances at any piece of trouser that comes her way, including Tom and Gerri's son, Joe. Manville owns every scene she is in; it's like watching a tipsy tightrope walker who you know will come crashing to the ground sooner rather than later. Violently buoyant at times, Manville has a constant undercurrent of envy and despair bubbling just below the surface, and when it erupts, it's grim yet engrossing.

In one scene, Joe introduces his new girlfriend to Mary. Her painfully obvious jealousy and the cringe-worthy way she subsequently destroys the evening are nearly tear-jerking. But she's hilarious too - indeed, all great drama acknowledges the lighter aspects of life. In fact, considering its depictions of alcoholism, depression and death, Another Year is an incredibly upbeat experience.

What really makes it so are the little traits and nuances: the sarcastic asides from Tom, the slurred scatterbrain of Mary, Ken's gruesome eating habits. There are no comic-relief roles as are used so clumsily and frequently in lesser films. Just as in real life, everyone is funny in their own right.

Another Year touches on themes of friendship, loss, parenthood, nostalgia, jealousy and more. It has no underlying moral, no exacting plot, no monumental shifts in personality, no neatly tied-up storylines.

In any other film, Mary would have been paired off with Ken, they'd wean each other off the sauce, buy the allotment next to Tom and Gerri's and live happily ever after. As much as we might want that to happen, however, life doesn't work that way. Finally, it's the film's imperfections that make it so perfect.

In a recent interview, Leigh was quoted as saying "I feel the audience needs to leave the cinema with work to do - stuff that's going to stay with you." Watch Another Year, and you're guaranteed to be dreaming up your own endings for at least another week.

Will Noble can be reached at
wnoble@praguepost.com