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Director Mike Leigh's gift for finding rich drama and humor in ordinary human lives remains as strong as ever in Another Year. Plot is almost nonexistent: Tom and Gerri (Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen), a happy and settled couple, both support and try to fend off the neediness of their less fortunate friends--particularly Mary (Lesley Manville), whose fantasies of romance with Tom and Gerri's son Joe (Oliver Maltman) come crashing down when Joe brings home his new girlfriend Katie (Karina Fernandez). Leigh's ability to draw astoundingly fully realized performances from his superb casts can turn a simple bit of anxious flirting into nerve-wracking comedy, or make the audience feel the cruel sting of a sudden disappointment. Manville (who's appeared in previous Leigh movies, as has most of the cast) turns in a remarkably alive performance, making Mary's yearning and fears almost uncomfortably vivid--but everyone in the cast is thoroughly natural, with the ever-dependable Broadbent (familiar from Moulin Rouge and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince) and Sheen anchoring the film with a quiet, confident affection. Another Year is a gentle addition to Leigh's oeuvre; it doesn't have the head-to-head conflict of Secrets and Lies or the musical fervor of Topsy-Turvy. This movie's emotions are more rueful and reflective, pondering the nature of contentment. Much as Happy-Go-Lucky questioned the essence of cheerfulness, Another Year asks, What makes one person able to find love, while another flounders? Not a common topic for a movie, but Mike Leigh is not a common filmmaker. --Bret Fetzer
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3.0 out of 5 stars
Start miserable and begin digging down ---,
This review is from: Another Year BD+DVD Combo [Blu-ray] (Blu-ray)
Surprisingly many reviewers have judged Tom and Gerri's stultifying marriage as happy and settled and loving --- on screen it is a stifling convention, complete with station wagon and allotment. They look down on various damaged souls, all of whom have the courage to fail and say so. Ronnie's violent estranged son Carl is terrific --- at least he's alive. Leigh posits that a house-owning professional couple in London who have glued themselves together with a daily diet of platitudes is the pinnacle of human contentment. Yukk.Friend Mary is depressed and drunk, and I don't blame her; likewise big fat Ken. Sadly neither of them attacks the bourgeois conformity that makes them outsiders condescended to by the awful Gerri and Tom. They should have joined with Carl and picked up guns. "Happy Go Lucky" was more entertaining because Poppy was such an obvious fascist with no redeeming virtues. "Home Sweet Home" was more authentic. "Vera Drake" was simply brilliant, moving, the pinnacle of Leigh's movies. God protect us all from what Mike Leigh seems to present as the desirable life. The horror. The horror.
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