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Another Year
(directed by Mike Leigh, 2010)
Somewhere around London, an aging, single woman named Mary (Lesley Manville) is drinking a glass of champagne or wine. Drinking and drinking and drinking. She is not an alcoholic, I guess, but she is single. Lonely. Depressed. Needs someone to talk to.
Her co-worker, Gerri (Ruth Sheen) has been happily married to Tom (Jim Broadbent) all her life. Gerri lives in a nice house and she has a thirty year old son, Joe (Oliver Maltman), who is also single and comes around a lot. He still has a bedroom at his parents' place, still decorated his way, but most of the time the bedroom is occupied by Mary, when she has drunken sleepovers at the place. Mary is so close to the family, and has known them for so long, that to Joe she is practically "Auntie Mary." Which is why when she now flirts with the thirty year old Joe, it's just a little... too much. And you should see the look on Mary's face when Joe surprises her with his own girlfriend!
Another Year is a two hour long (actually, just a tiny bit over two hours) study of this Mary character, although the examination really isn't that deep. The film is divided up into seasons: spring, summer, autumn and winter. We begin by meeting Mary where she works with Gerri and then, as the seasons go on, we realize that the whole movie is basically Mary, Mary, Mary! It's practically comical. Autumn was a short segment dedicated just for us to watch Mary as she seethes with rage when she visits Tom and Gerri and runs into their son, Joe, with his new girlfriend. A butcher knife is seen and you practically expect Mary to reach out and grab it and stab the new girlfriend in the chest!
The interesting thing about Another Year -- and this is basically going to be very spoilerish -- is that, in another movie, you'd expect good things to happen to everybody by the end of this film. You figure that by the end of this movie, something good will eventually happen to Mary. There's a character named Ken who wants to kiss and cuddle with Mary, but she's not interested because he's fat. Will she eventually accept his obesity and be with him? In another movie, that may happen. In Another Year, if it ever happens, we certainly don't see that happen. There is a possibility that someone may be there for Mary, but the film ends on a dark note, focusing on Mary as she sits at the dinner table with Tom and Gerri and their family as they discuss their comfortable lives, their future travel plans, their happiness, etc. Mary is seen as a nuisance all through the movie, but a funny one, and it's painful to watch her openly destroy herself in front of everyone. But by the end of the movie, I felt like we could actually understand her side and her misery. This is a woman who has nothing, surrounded by people who have everything.
The movie begins with Imelda Staunton playing a very depressed woman named Janet, who is visiting a doctor for a checkup and then she sees a psychiatrist. She is severely depressed. On a scale of 1 to 10, she rates her happiness with life as 1. We never see this character again after these two scenes, but I think her story is transferred over to Mary. It is through Mary that we see how miserable someone can be -- although, Mary seems quite different from Janet, and who knows what brought Janet down.
I am surprised that I even watched this movie. I had never heard of it before until tonight and didn't expect to be watching what I watched, but I made it through it and I liked it very much.
It's a funny movie -- in an odd, kind of insulting way. It deals with misery, but it treats it as both a hoot and a form of Hell. I was expecting doldrums, but Another Year was actually kind of wicked and snarky and rather like a TV show or something. The Mary character -- whether it was the character or the actress or both -- reminded me a lot of the woman who played Rose on the British show Keeping Up Appearances. The second woman who played Rose, that is -- Mary Millar. This certainly added a fascinating touch for the film for me.
Give Another Year a watch sometime if you haven't. If you don't see it, you won't be missing much -- just two hours of observing a really neurotic mess. But I thought it was a really good film and I honestly would love to do a movie commentary for it sometime so I could laugh at Mary's unfortunate existence with someone else.
(directed by Mike Leigh, 2010)
Somewhere around London, an aging, single woman named Mary (Lesley Manville) is drinking a glass of champagne or wine. Drinking and drinking and drinking. She is not an alcoholic, I guess, but she is single. Lonely. Depressed. Needs someone to talk to.
Her co-worker, Gerri (Ruth Sheen) has been happily married to Tom (Jim Broadbent) all her life. Gerri lives in a nice house and she has a thirty year old son, Joe (Oliver Maltman), who is also single and comes around a lot. He still has a bedroom at his parents' place, still decorated his way, but most of the time the bedroom is occupied by Mary, when she has drunken sleepovers at the place. Mary is so close to the family, and has known them for so long, that to Joe she is practically "Auntie Mary." Which is why when she now flirts with the thirty year old Joe, it's just a little... too much. And you should see the look on Mary's face when Joe surprises her with his own girlfriend!
Another Year is a two hour long (actually, just a tiny bit over two hours) study of this Mary character, although the examination really isn't that deep. The film is divided up into seasons: spring, summer, autumn and winter. We begin by meeting Mary where she works with Gerri and then, as the seasons go on, we realize that the whole movie is basically Mary, Mary, Mary! It's practically comical. Autumn was a short segment dedicated just for us to watch Mary as she seethes with rage when she visits Tom and Gerri and runs into their son, Joe, with his new girlfriend. A butcher knife is seen and you practically expect Mary to reach out and grab it and stab the new girlfriend in the chest!
The interesting thing about Another Year -- and this is basically going to be very spoilerish -- is that, in another movie, you'd expect good things to happen to everybody by the end of this film. You figure that by the end of this movie, something good will eventually happen to Mary. There's a character named Ken who wants to kiss and cuddle with Mary, but she's not interested because he's fat. Will she eventually accept his obesity and be with him? In another movie, that may happen. In Another Year, if it ever happens, we certainly don't see that happen. There is a possibility that someone may be there for Mary, but the film ends on a dark note, focusing on Mary as she sits at the dinner table with Tom and Gerri and their family as they discuss their comfortable lives, their future travel plans, their happiness, etc. Mary is seen as a nuisance all through the movie, but a funny one, and it's painful to watch her openly destroy herself in front of everyone. But by the end of the movie, I felt like we could actually understand her side and her misery. This is a woman who has nothing, surrounded by people who have everything.
The movie begins with Imelda Staunton playing a very depressed woman named Janet, who is visiting a doctor for a checkup and then she sees a psychiatrist. She is severely depressed. On a scale of 1 to 10, she rates her happiness with life as 1. We never see this character again after these two scenes, but I think her story is transferred over to Mary. It is through Mary that we see how miserable someone can be -- although, Mary seems quite different from Janet, and who knows what brought Janet down.
I am surprised that I even watched this movie. I had never heard of it before until tonight and didn't expect to be watching what I watched, but I made it through it and I liked it very much.
It's a funny movie -- in an odd, kind of insulting way. It deals with misery, but it treats it as both a hoot and a form of Hell. I was expecting doldrums, but Another Year was actually kind of wicked and snarky and rather like a TV show or something. The Mary character -- whether it was the character or the actress or both -- reminded me a lot of the woman who played Rose on the British show Keeping Up Appearances. The second woman who played Rose, that is -- Mary Millar. This certainly added a fascinating touch for the film for me.
Give Another Year a watch sometime if you haven't. If you don't see it, you won't be missing much -- just two hours of observing a really neurotic mess. But I thought it was a really good film and I honestly would love to do a movie commentary for it sometime so I could laugh at Mary's unfortunate existence with someone else.