Many comments in this forum gave a me a wry smile, none more so than the disappointed Portuguese couple who'd obviously wanted a feelgood movie to sweeten their jolly to London, and the 'Vampires Suck' lady who believes that a film must have a definable plot and ending. Thank God for films which refuse to pander to us while we munch expectantly on our popcorn.
This film does NOT offer an uplifting story (or even a plot), or special effects, or a happy ending. Follow the signs to Men In Black instead. Another Year is slow, it's sad (even depressing), and it reeks of personal desperation. But I think it is a hugely underrated gem of a film... if you're prepared to put in the work. It is simultaneously a celebration of fine acting craft and a test of the audience's interpretative skill.
It's difficult to think of a more astonishing performance than Lesley Manville as Mary: hers is a slow & excruciating descent from naïveté & painful insecurity to abject, exhausted desolation, from which we don't expect her to return, no matter how much we hope that she will. Her final scene is as haunting and heartbreaking as any which you're likely to see. We know that her hell is probably of her own doing, but it doesn't prevent our pity of her.
The central characters Tom & Gerri are generally considered happy, and towards whom unfulfilled family and friends gravitate as if Tom & Gerri's union was life's ideal for happiness. However, this 'ideal' is shown up by the absence of any obvious elation, joy or excitement in Tom & Gerri 's lives, and we are similarly responsive to their characters: we neither like nor dislike them, because their happiness seems attractive to others only as a foil to risky failure, not as something to genuinely aspire to. I think Mike Leigh presents us with several questions and human hypocrisies: Mary's disgust at fellow lost soul Ken is surely a subconscious terror of her own similar failures, and Gerri's general benevolence towards longtime friend Mary is exposed as mockery and patronisation when she's in private. Had Mary's & Ken's situations been rescued by the arrival of their respective loves on white horses we may well have been celebrating the exhilaration of love discovered after life's tumultuous roller-coaster. Then the colourless contentment & smugness which Tom & Gerri offer up as life's nirvana would've been relegated to last-resort mediocrity.
This film does NOT offer an uplifting story (or even a plot), or special effects, or a happy ending. Follow the signs to Men In Black instead. Another Year is slow, it's sad (even depressing), and it reeks of personal desperation. But I think it is a hugely underrated gem of a film... if you're prepared to put in the work. It is simultaneously a celebration of fine acting craft and a test of the audience's interpretative skill.
It's difficult to think of a more astonishing performance than Lesley Manville as Mary: hers is a slow & excruciating descent from naïveté & painful insecurity to abject, exhausted desolation, from which we don't expect her to return, no matter how much we hope that she will. Her final scene is as haunting and heartbreaking as any which you're likely to see. We know that her hell is probably of her own doing, but it doesn't prevent our pity of her.
The central characters Tom & Gerri are generally considered happy, and towards whom unfulfilled family and friends gravitate as if Tom & Gerri's union was life's ideal for happiness. However, this 'ideal' is shown up by the absence of any obvious elation, joy or excitement in Tom & Gerri 's lives, and we are similarly responsive to their characters: we neither like nor dislike them, because their happiness seems attractive to others only as a foil to risky failure, not as something to genuinely aspire to. I think Mike Leigh presents us with several questions and human hypocrisies: Mary's disgust at fellow lost soul Ken is surely a subconscious terror of her own similar failures, and Gerri's general benevolence towards longtime friend Mary is exposed as mockery and patronisation when she's in private. Had Mary's & Ken's situations been rescued by the arrival of their respective loves on white horses we may well have been celebrating the exhilaration of love discovered after life's tumultuous roller-coaster. Then the colourless contentment & smugness which Tom & Gerri offer up as life's nirvana would've been relegated to last-resort mediocrity.