User Reviews

A bitter-sweet love story, more bitter than sweet. With their 45th wedding anniversary looming, Norfolk pensioners Kate and Geoff Mercer get a letter that tells them the body of Geoff's first great love has been found in a glacier in Switzerland.

I thought for a moment that this was going to be a murder mystery, but it's not. The tragedy was accidental (she fell into a crevasse), but the dead woman now casts a huge shadow over their anniversary plans, and over their marriage.

We see the couple in Norwich city centre, on a boat trip on the Broads and at parties with friends (Geraldine James delivers solid support as Kate's best friend, blessed/cursed with a ukulele-playing husband), but this is essentially a 'chamber piece', with most of the scenes concentrated around Kate and Geoff in their dinky little cottage on the edge of a small village. There's a bedroom scene which is both touching and cringe-making.

Out of bed as well as in, Tom Courtenay and Charlotte Rampling give performances that make you feel every moment of their love and their pain. Rampling is mesmerising in wordless scenes, searingly conveying Kate's inner turmoil; her face in the final frame suggests that the end of the movie is very much not the end of the story.

The pace is slow, intentionally so. Not a movie for fans of high-octane action or smutty farce, but if you have happy memories of THE GO-BETWEEN (remake shortly to be seen on BBCtv), you will savour this. I did.

At first I thought this movie was a bit slow or contemplative. No such thing, actually. Every moment has its own precise purpose, depicting and, at the same time, uncovering the truth about the 45 year long marriage of Kate and Geoff. The film starts with the couple, or rather just Kate, planning their 45 year wedding anniversary. Geoff seems a bit of an aloof guy, disinterested and irritated about everything and everyone, but Kate has the quiet loving patience of a woman who learned to see the good man underneath the grumpy appearance. Geoff perks up significantly when he receives news of the recovery of the body of his former girlfriend, Katya, who died in a tragic accident in Switzerland before Geoff ever met his wife. The news seems to agitate him to the point of arousing Kate's suspicions. As the film progresses Kate's fearful investigations reveal that Katya was also pregnant with Geoff's child when she died, and she begins to understand how much Geoff loved her. We realize that he told her very little about Katya, hiding from her how important Katya was to him and how completely shattered he was by her death. But most of all, that he selfishly spent 45 years married to a woman he took for granted and didn't allow himself to truly love or even enjoy life because he was emotionally stuck in his past tragic experience that he subconsciously grieved about for the rest of his life. In a poignant moment, Kate tells him what she learned and how hurt and confused she was about being married to a man who, she feared, might have been dishonest and not loved her as much as she thought. Her words seem to have a catalytic effect on Geoff, who maybe realizes he has had 45 years with a wonderful woman that deserved much more. As if truly seeing her for the first time he offers her heartfelt reassuring words and from that moment he behaves cheerfully and attentively towards her, including holding a speech filled with loving gratitude at their anniversary party. Kate seems willing to believe him, until the coup de grace - the dance. While planning the anniversary party Kate chose "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes", as the opening dance song, because it was what Geoff chose as their wedding song 45 years ago. As the couple danced, we hear the lyrics and we see Kate paying attention to them too, as if for the first time. They're the words of someone grieving for their lost love, and in the context of what she learned about Katya, Kate finally faces the cruel and irreparable truth: her husband's choice for their wedding song was about his grieving for another woman, and the 45 years of her marriage were spent with a man who longed for someone else.

William Shakespeare wrote (Sonnet 116), "Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove: O, no! It is an ever-fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken." Though Shakespeare would not admit impediments to the marriage of true minds, Kate and Geoff Mercer in Andrew Haigh's ("Weekend") 45 Years find that their marriage may be on shakier grounds than they thought when a letter arrives in the mail that causes them to question the truth of their lifelong connection. Winners of the Silver Berlin Bear at the 2015 Berlinale, Charlotte Rampling ("The Forbidden Room,") and Tom Courtenay, ("Night Train to Lisbon") deliver remarkably enduring performances as the childless couple looking forward to the celebration of their 45th wedding anniversary until it is upstaged by an unwanted reminder of the past.

Based on David Constantine's short story "In Another Country," the film is set in the flatlands of Eastern England and takes place in the course of one week, delineated by intertitles. It is restrained and subtle yet manages to convey deep emotional hurt without shouting matches or theatrics. The couple, now in their declining years, live a comfortable life close to the town of Norwich, famous for Julian of Norwich, a 14th-century mystic and author of the first published book in the English language written by a woman. Most days consist of mundane events such as Kate taking the dog Max for walks in the countryside, both going into town to do some shopping, or joining friends on a riverboat excursion.

Their world is turned upside down, however, when only one week before their anniversary, Geoff receives a letter telling him that the body of Katia, his first love, has been discovered, preserved under the ice on a Swiss mountain where she died in an accident fifty years ago. Although this happened before Geoff and Kate met, the letter leaves them both shaken. Outwardly oblivious to the harm the revelation has caused, his actions show that it has affected him deeply. He resorts to smoking again after many years, looks in the attic for old photos of Katia, thinks of going to Switzerland to identify the body, and wanders aimlessly in the town.

When Kate finds out that Geoff is officially listed as Katia's next of kin and uncovers a very revealing photo of Katia from the past, she begins to question whether or not their relationship was based on a lie. Although the film is told from Kate's point of view, Haigh refuses to comment on the rightness or wrongness of the circumstances and does not question the way in which the characters react, content to observe rather than judge. Geoff and Kate go through the motions of planning for the party as if nothing has happened but there is the ever present elephant in the room. Rampling's facial expressions, even when she is attempting to hide her feelings, reveal deep-seated weariness and pain.

There are no heroes or villains in the film. Shot with loving attention to the silent vistas of the English countryside, 45 Years conveys a sense of isolation, of two people being together yet growing apart, a dream that has been shattered, and a lifetime of security undermined by a moment of doubt. It is a thorny subject but beautifully told with gentleness and love.

Andrew Haigh's 45 Years is a seismograph of internal feelings, suppressions and revelations.

From his first remark, "My Katya," Kate feels her relationship undermined. He hasn't forgotten his first great love, nor fully informed her. As she later says, she fears he did not think she was wife enough for him. Perhaps it was in order to shield her from such discomfiting knowledge, Geoff kept back secrets from her, including that Katya died pregnant and that they had passed themselves off as married. His protection — ostensibly of his wife but perhaps primarily of himself — over the years undercuts her trust and security now.

The discovery of a body buried in ice is the film's most compelling metaphor. It signifies any secret or passion attempted to be hidden. Geoff didn't tell Kate enough about that relationship because he didn't want to confront it fully himself. Burial seems easier.

In her most crucial speech Kate says that Katya's constant but unrecognized presence in their marriage lay behind all their major and even minor decisions. Geoff bought her Katya's perfume, chose their holiday trips to avoid his Swiss memories and probably decided they would have dogs but not children. Having lost his first pregnant love he would not risk another. His aversion was contagious: Kate plans to buy him an anniversary watch but declines when the display is of Swiss watches.

So, too, Geoff's rejection of family photos. He preserves his cache of Katya pictures, however secreted in the attic, but they have not taken and hung pictures of Kate and him, or the dogs. The film's first metaphor occurs in the opening titles, which appear to the click of a slide projector. This sets up the attic scene where Kate discovers the slides of Katya, including the disturbing image of her pregnancy. The early scenes are in the shadow of that heard but unseen projector and the Katya truths it withholds.

The other major metaphor is fissure. Katya fell into a fissure in the glacier. Now her rediscovery creates a fissure in Geoff's and Kate's marriage. As Kate discovers Geoff's secrets she realizes she has had to bear the unequal share of their responsibilities. The third fissure is within Kate, as she incrementally falls out of love with Geoff and decides to escape their marriage. Once a teacher, now Kate learns a new truth about her marriage.

The breakup happens at their anniversary party, within the appearance of convivial celebration. Kate has expressed her desire to leave but urged him to go through with the party so others won't sense their fissure. He vows to "start again" — in the usual way: buying her a little necklace, bringing her tea in bed, making her scrambled eggs, shaving for the event and making the obligatory speech off love and gratitude, ending in the obligatory — and predicted — tears.

For most of the party Kate's gallant conduct and smiles suggest she may have forgiven him and is willing to start anew. But as they take the floor to dance to The Platters' Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, her demeanour subtlety changes. As Geoff dances with increasing flash and flair she seems to sense an empty performance in him, which may also reflect back upon his speech. At one of his flourishes she snatches her hand away and steps back, signifying the end of their dance, probably of their marriage. The smoke has cleared from her eyes and she sees that his entire devotion to her has been based upon deception, his denial of his lost passion.

She also realizes that she has put up with his falsity and inadequacy for too long. Kate has had to make all the accommodations to sustain their marriage while he did what he wanted and didn't do what he didn't want to do. She married him at 20, when he was older and on the rebound from Katya. Having just lost her mother, she was vulnerable for a marriage that granted her duties rather than rights. Some marriages are like that.

Several long shots show Kate as an isolated figure in the open landscape. But Geoff is always shot close-up and encased or framed. She is the open and expansive one, he the restrained and secretive. Hence his glasses, which hide his eyes, and his beard, which hides most of his face and which he removes only for the party, after he has been exposed.

When Geoff describes his German he says the nouns are easy but the verbs are hard. He knows what things are but not what their relationships are, what the nouns, whether people or objects, do to each other or what happens between them. Relationships, the verbs, are the obedient wife's preserve.

Nor is Geoff entirely without our sympathy. He does love his wife and has acted as much as his understanding would allow in her interests. When he decides not to go to Switzerland he seems finally to have come to terms with the secret he left partially buried for the 45 years. We can believe he is grateful for Kate and wants to continue their marriage.

There have probably not been this year two film performances as subtle and powerful as the two leads here. Had Rampling been allowed a vehement eruption she'd be a lock on the Oscar. But this film is all subtlety, her experience all interior, and her eruption no louder then stepping out of the Platters' dance. The film's stage or arena is clearly Kate, so we often get long closeups of her quiet, nuanced responses while Geoff speaks. Rampling's inflections are astonishing. If this were a novel, her fleeting glance at the ukulele player would by itself warrant five pages of description.

This film is a privilege.

Beautiful yet melancholic film with two live characters and a shadow between them. Maybe one's love and passion for a previous partner may fade away over a long successful new relationship, but not the insecurity and jealousy inspired in the new partner. How can one compete with a past love tragically lost, especially when this love was never worn out by daily routine and everyday problems and conflict. How to be sure one is not simply filling a space left empty? Of course, it does not help to have to deal with such issues afresh after 45 years building a whole life around a marriage, without even the comfort of children. Even the character's names seem chosen to reinforce the idea of living in one's shadow – the dead partner's name was Cathy, and the present wife is called Kate. I found the story very similar to James Joyce's short story The Dead (from Dubliners), also turned into a beautiful film featuring Anjelica Huston. However, while The Dead has a truly pessimistic perspective, 45 Years ultimately lets the viewer decide whether there's still hope for this marriage or is it doomed to be always a patch up business.

It felt like 45 years watching it. Rampling is OK without being stretched. Courtenay is awful. Nothing really happens in the film and it is fairly pointless. Two dull people, one little secret. I'm shocked that she did not already know most of his secrets. Can't have been a very good marriage. If this dull mess is anything to go by those 45 years must have felt like 300 years. Confused about its high-rating. Critics a different breed from ordinary folk? This film makes me sad that so many people have wasted 90 minutes of their actual lives watching it.

I am only going to review the final scene for those who just don't get it, and those who thought they did.

Rampling is finally realizing that her entire marriage has been a manipulated, molded sham, a substitute for Courtenay's ideal, real love. She finally understands that their song was always just his song.

If you can't imagine what that must be like, you need to live a little longer.

This film is a perfect representation of the miscommunication that happens between people at any age, but more poignantly, during a couples senior years. Here we have a comfortable couple who maybe don't do exciting things anymore but happily get on with their lives twiddling about doing senior things. A letter arrives. It is a bit of a bombshell - news arriving 50 years after a very dramatic event. Geoff (Courtney) has quite a bit of emotional processing to do but the film makes it clear that he is respectful of his wife's displeasure of the remembrances this brings about. He keeps his thoughts to himself. Meanwhile, Kate (Rampling) is imagining all kinds of personal slights. Imagining being the operative word! You see both characters deep in thought but only one point of view is expressed. Yes, folks, that's the misdirect because poor Geoff is a generous, giving, honest and jolly good chap. Kate very nearly destroys it all.

Greetings again from the darkness. Relationships are messy and complicated. Even the best ones. Even those that last 45 years. Writer/director Andrew Haigh (Weekend, 2011) understands this and delivers a film not about older people, but instead about the secrets, the doubts and the regrets experienced by anyone and everyone who is part of a committed relationship. His message is delivered through the extraordinary performances of Tom Courteney and especially Charlotte Rampling.

Just four days prior to a planned party to celebrate their 45th wedding anniversary, the stillness and quiet of Geoff's and Kate's long-established familiarity is disrupted by the startling news that his girlfriend of 50 years ago has been discovered preserved in a Swiss glacier. What could have been a simple blip on the radar turns out to be a slow revelation of true emotions that have clouded this marriage. Kate's realization that her seemingly fine life is now undeniably tainted is gut-wrenching to behold.

Ms. Rampling's performance is subtle and brilliant. The camera captures the whirlwind of emotions through her facial expressions and telling body language. She carries herself with grace and dignity, even as she emotes devastation. A scruffy Mr. Courteney seems oblivious to how deeply his reaction has wounded his wife, even as he dives more and more into the past … a journal, a slideshow, smoking cigarettes, a trip to the travel agency.

Haigh's script and direction are such that the intimacy and personal pain is evident even in scenes that feature only one of the two leads. The lack of raised voices or outbursts belies the pain felt by both Geoff and Kate, and the pain is never more evident than when we finally reach the anniversary party. As Geoff delivers a rambling speech about the ups and downs of marriage, the camera equally captures the face of Kate as she expertly dons the façade required in public for those who are lost emotionally. The couple then dances to The Platters' "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" and Kate's faces hides little of her internal turmoil. Haigh ends with one of the most soul-crushing final shots one could ever expect to see. It's the perfect ending to a dose of reality most of us hope to never experience.

And with 'Nothing happened' I mean that absolutely nothing happened. The best thing about this movie is the reviews that it received. No idea why.

The movie is as tedious and slow as movies in the fifties, has hardly any humor and every option the script gives for any action is left unused.

After Kate discovered that Katya was pregnant, ... nothing happens.

Even at the final event, their celebration, with all tension built up, Kate an emotional volcano en Geoff about to have a heart attack, ... nothing happens and end of movie....