Another Year

Gerri: “What is the one thing you feel would improve your life, apart from sleep.”
Janet: “A different life.”

Mike Leigh’s Another Year is a character study in walking train wrecks. Lesley Manville’s Mary is a middle-aged lush. Every glass of wine is her second-to-last. Gerri (Ruth Sheen), Mary’s co-worker, and her husband Tom (Jim Broadbent) demonstrate incredible patience as the older couple in their twilight years.

The story begins by introducing us to Tom and Gerri’s work. Tom is a geologist and soil scientist, Gerri is a counselor. Their professions bleed into their personal life as they tend to their garden, their family and their friends. Gerri’s patience is immeasurable, but tested in particular by Mary.

The science of soil, of which my father was an expert for forty years, is the science of enrichment and fortification of life. The place where Mary has her feet planted, metaphorically, is leeched of nutrients by her crippling addiction to alcohol.

The film is a pure character study in four acts, following the changing seasons, and with them a turn of various dramas: Their son Joe’s (Oliver Maltman) relative secrecy about his engagement, the widowing of Tom’s stoic brother Ronnie (David Bradley), Ronnie’s estrangement from his prickly son Carl (Martin Savage), their friend Ken’s (Peter Wight) drunken rants.

Like an irritating refrain, Mary’s inebriation is only a symptom of a larger incapacity. As writer/director, Mr. Leigh superbly explores the depths of despair in Mary’s life—losing her husband, her car, her inhibitions and her friends. A long silence distances Gerri and Mary at work while we’re introduced to Ronnie. Not a drunk, Ronnie is plagued as much by loneliness as is Mary. They respond to their isolation differently, however: She spills over with talk, while he contains his words—perhaps too much.

The filmmakers and actors understand subtlety. Whereas a typical Hollywood production might hammer home Mary’s impositions with lectures from Tom and Gerri about Mary’s impropriety, Mr. Broadbent and Ms. Sheen navigate these scenes with the subtlest of glances that hint at Tom’s irritation and Gerri’s concern, respectively, while rarely ever directly addressing the problem. This is the tightrope that friends often walk, and Gerri and Tom are as guilty as anyone else for allowing Mary that second or third glass of chardonnay.

Lesley Manville, however, is the standout in what might otherwise be a film twenty minutes longer in the tooth than it needs to be. (To wit: one critic at the press screening quipped, “Did an entire year actually pass while we were here?”) The makeup and production design underscore the Mary’s downward spiral into her crippling addiction. When we first see her, she appears younger, energetic, slim. Toward the end of the second act her eyes are framed by crows feet and copious amounts of eyeliner. Garrulous and twitchy, agitated, it’s almost as if Ms. Manville had closely studied the mannerisms of parrots. As the seasons pass, the conversations around Tom & Gerri’s kitchen table darken as does the lighting—colors become drab, dead. When Ronnie and Mary finally connect, platonically, some color returns but ultimately the two are figuratively and literally, through the framing of the two-shot, separated from the other dinner guests.

Ronnie’s marriage wasn’t a particularly happy one—his loneliness is even more evident than Mary’s—but this will pass as he reconnects with his brother and their family. Mary, however, never actually confronts whatever underlying problems lead her to chemical distraction. Her failure is not alcohol addiction. Gerri and Tom are not without their problems or disagreements, but they’ve clearly had years to work out better coping mechanisms for life’s curveballs. Mary is easily unraveled by a car breaking down, failing to see that when the tube was getting her to work just fine that perhaps a car she could barely afford, let alone maintain, was not the wisest decision. In a sense, she manufactures crises to garner sympathy. That, not alcoholism, is her addiction.

Another Year • Dolby® Digital surround sound in select theatres • Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 • Running Time: 129 minutes • MPAA Rating: PG-13 for some language. • Distributed by Sony Pictures classics

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