Time Passes By: “Another Year” (2010)

Lesley Manville in what should've been an Oscar nominated performance in Mike Leigh's 2010 film "Another Year".

Mike Leigh’s “Another Year” was one of the pictures that I really wanted to see last year, especially after the performance by Lesley Manville began picking up critical buzz and award recognition, but, alas, it slipped through the cracks of my viewing schedule until now, since it has finally aired on the Starz channels.

I’ve thought highly of previous Leigh films like “Life is Sweet“ (1992), “Secrets & Lies” (1996), and “Vera Drake” (2004), (note I said I thought highly of them, not that I enjoyed them), but his films aren’t really about enjoyment.  They’re seriously constructed character studies, with real actors as opposed to movie stars, and generally they can deal with some rather unpleasant subject matter, or at least, something other than a carefree night at the movies.  In other words, Leigh makes films for adults, with mature subject matter, and his films remind me sometimes of the best works of Robert Altman (about the highest praise I can give to a filmmaker), in that they often appear cluttered with too much (too much talk, too much going on, etc.), when in reality what they are is an approximation of the clutter of real life: things are complicated, people have issues, and problems are not always neatly solved during the course of two hours.  I think that it’s this realism in his films that makes Leigh such a great filmmaker, whose works, as I said, may be a bit on the depressing side, but are worth a viewing.  For “Another Year”, he earned an Academy Award nomination for the Best Original Screenplay, but lost to “The King’s Speech”, which is a shame.

“Another Year” follows, through the course of four seasons, an older middle-aged couple, their family and friends.  On paper, that doesn’t sound like much, and it’s true that Leigh’s films are better than a simple description of them could ever be.  His characters reveal themselves through their own words and actions, through their relationships with others, and also through how well identifiable they are with the audience.  The central characters are Tom (Jim Broadbent) and Gerri (Ruth Sheen), and it is through this couple and their circle of family and acquaintances that we move over the course of the picture.  Tom is a geologist and Ruth is a counselor, and the pair share a very active gardening hobby on the side.  The other major character, and the standout performance in the film is Mary, played by Lesley Manville, in a role that won  her the National Board of Review’s Best Actress award last year.  Mary is a co-worker of Ruth, and though she appears a friendly chatterbox, she is in reality a desperately unhappy woman who seeks to drown her loneliness in the nearest available bottle of wine.  Manville’s character is so uncomfortably real that at times she is difficult to watch, especially if you’ve had real life experience with a ‘Mary’ of your own.  Her overbearing flirtation with Tom and Gerri’s son Joe is also embarrassing to watch, as he is nearly half her age, and has no interest whatsoever in  Mary.  A latter scene where she is introduced to Joe’s girlfriend shows her clearly having a meltdown in full view of everyone, which she blames on problems with her car.

Manville may be the film’s standout performer, but that is to take nothing away from the solid work done by Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen who anchor the story and provide a calming center that comforts the viewer.  Their characters have accepted their movement into older middle-aged, while Mary and another friend Ken rail against their lost youth, and fight the passage of time and their own aging.  Exceptional work is also done by noted actress Imelda Staunton (Oscar nominated for her work in Leigh’s “Vera Drake” and more popularly known as Dolores Umbridge in the Harry Potter universe.  Staunton has a small role as a depressed woman who Ruth is treating.  Her character, like Mary, is so painfully real that we feel we are invading this poor woman’s privacy by watching her two brief scenes.  

Not a lot happens in “Another Year”, at least not on the surface.  But underneath, the ebb and  flow of human emotion, the passing of time, and the life experience itself go about like they do.  We glimpse these characters for a single year, and in that span of time, quite a lot actually does happen, as it does every year.  Reflection on mortality, and the passage into older middle-age, which is rarely, if ever examined in American films is done so masterfully in “Another Year”, one of the quiet cinematic treasures of  2010.