“Life’s not always kind, is it, Gerri?” observes Mary, played by Leslie Manville, to her friend, played by Ruth Sheen, in
director Mike Leigh’s new film “Another Year.” A truer statement has perhaps never been uttered, and it might as well be the film’s thesis statement -it’s either that or Henry David Thoreau’s profound quotation from “Walden: The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
In its multilayered chronicle of a modern family and friends over the course of four turbulent seasons, “Another Year” is closer to Leigh’s 2002 drama “All or Nothing” than his more recent pictures, the shattering historical drama “Vera Drake” and the dread-laced comedy “Happy-Go-Lucky.” Counselor Gerri and her geologist husband Tom (Jim Broadbent) are the film’s problem-free glue: atoms of strengths around whom clusters of unstable particles orbit. These include Mary, a delusional, depressed divorcee with a pathetic crush on Gerri’s son Joe (Oliver Maltman); Ken (Peter Wright), an obese winesop who resembles Bill Bennett on a perpetual bender; and Tom’s brother Ronnie (David Bradley), a newly grieving widow forced to deal with his absent, antagonistic son (Martin Savage).
Though Broadbent and Sheen receive top billing, Manville’s Mary is undoubtedly the movie’s standout performance, a tragic tour de force. She’s the third or fifth wheel in every social situation, erecting a false front of happiness one moment and sobbing herself to sleep in the next. She’s one of a few casualties of the film’s overriding theme: the inevitable reality of aging. All of the characters grapple with it; retaining health and happiness after physical and social desirability has faded is an everyday struggle for abandoned souls like Mary.
Leigh’s seemingly extemporaneous script – in fact workshopped to death in preproduction – stings with relatable authenticity and brutal honesty. While it’s fair to say that Leigh cruelly lingers on the wrinkles in Mary’s face when she awkwardly prompts Joe to guess how old she is, Leigh proves by the film’s end that he has deep reservoirs of compassion for all of his characters, despite and because of their flaws.
“Another Year” opens Friday at Regal Shadowood in West Boca Raton, Regal Delray, Frank Theaters Gateway in Fort Lauderdale, AMC Aventura and Regal South Beach.
