Another Year

Mike Leigh's ANOTHER YEAR is a film driven by its actors. Leigh always works with his actors extensively before even beginning to film, and here it really shows. This film isn't really about anything, but is driven by mood. Leigh takes us through the seasons, starting with Spring and ending with Winter. In the spring, a happy man and wife named Tom and Gerri Hepple (played by Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen) deal with a sad and occasionally drunken friend named Mary (Lesley Manville). Gerri and Mary both work at a clinic. Mary's a lowly secretary, but goes out for drinks with Gerri (who's a councilor) often and barges into their house every once in a while. Mary, however, is not the typical movie-drunk, but actress Lesley Manville portrays her in a nuanced fashion. Broadbent and Sheen are also wonderful in their roles, and as the film progresses through the seasons, tones changing with each one, Mary's downward spiral becomes more and more apparent. It isn't obvious, but buried beneath a façade of cheeriness. The way that Leigh does this is quite admirable. The pace is slow, but it allows us to seep into the world these people inhabit. Bad things happen and good things happen, people die, but people are born. In ANOTHER YEAR, nothing is obvious, but the ideas that we started out with are broken down, and then reconstructed in a different way.
Another Year: ★★★1/2