Another Year

Mike Leigh's last film, Happy-Go-Lucky, was an exploration of what makes some people preternaturally happy, while other people seem doomed to wallow in their own misery. This exploration continues in Another Year, which has at its center a married couple who are almost too content to be true, but are surrounded by those who struggle with unhappiness.

A plot summary would make this film sound amazingly quotidian, as its four acts, each taking place in a different season of the same year, don't have a lot of action. Mostly it's the interaction of Tom (Jim Broadbent) and Gerri (Ruth Sheen), who are a happy married couple. What is the secret to their happiness? Well, the film isn't a primer, but it offers clues: they love their jobs, they have a dutiful son (Oliver Maltman), and they have outside interests such as gardening and cooking. What they also seem to have is a knack for collecting friends who are desperately unhappy.

Foremost of these is Mary (Lesley Manville), Sheen's co-worker, who presents a chipper, charming exterior, but in actuality is an emotionally needy person who instantly sucks the energy out of any room. In one scene she arrives at a barbecue and immediately launches into the details of how she bought a car, her conversation flattening everything in its path. Over the course of the film Manville will get drunk, be rude, and have an emotional crisis, but the causes are difficult to pinpoint--indeed, the car will serve as a kind of metaphor for her life. Though her misery seems vague, I think it's authentic--many who are unhappy can't really sum up the cause for it, nor can they supply the solution.

This is exemplified in the opening scenes of the film, when a woman (Imelda Staunton) visits Sheen, who is a counselor. When Sheen asks Staunton how happy she is, on a scale of one to ten, Staunton quickly replies, "One," and when Sheen asks her what could improve that, Staunton blandly answers, "To have a new life." A simple answer, expressing a complicated concept.

As usual, Leigh works with his actors closely. Many of the cast are Leigh veterans, and they work with him over many months, defining their characters and improvising dialogue that ends up as the working script. This creates a remarkable bit of verisimilitude, with naturalistic dialogue and performances. Sheen, for example, as a counselor, tends to speak in platitudes. One wonders if there really could be someone who is such a rock, or if someone could be as eternally patient and cheerful as Broadbent. But even they have their limits in an interesting scene set in the fourth act, Winter, when they attend the funeral of their sister-in-law. She had an errant son, who shows up late and creates crackling tension that seems spot-on in its authenticity.

Another scene that is brilliantly done is when Manville visits. She had been flirting with Maltman, who picks up on it but tries to deflect her interest. When she discovers that he has a girlfriend, she's openly rude to the woman, which creates a kind of uncomfortableness that can be felt in the audience. Manville's performance, which is creating award buzz, is problematic. Technically she's great, as she more than succeeds in presenting a fully realized character, full of tics and mannerisms. The problem is that its a character most of us would cross the street to avoid. Leigh is canny in the way he has the audience's patience with the character ebb as it does with the other characters in the movie.

I'm not sure this film answers the question of why some people are happy and some aren't. Is it genetic or environmental? Is it based on our own choices, or is it based on external circumstances? For instance, if Manville had been able to buy a car that wasn't a lemon, would that have made her any happier? I think the film says otherwise, but it could make for fascinating after-movie conversation.

My grade for Another Year: A-.