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Another Year
(2010)
 
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Director:
Mike Leigh |
COUNTRY
United
Kingdom |
GENRE
Drama |
NORWEGIAN TITLE
Another Year |
RUNNING
TIME
129 minutes |
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Producer:
Georgina Lowe |
Screenwriter:
Mike Leigh |
Review
As skilled as Mike Leigh often is at conveying ordinary people in
everyday situations, he occasionally has a tendency of slightly
caricaturing his characters while at the same time expecting his viewers
to read more into his films than what is actually there. Or rather, the
average critic seems to be inclined to do this - irrespective of Leigh's
intentions. Another Year falls into this category. It
has some interesting observations and valid points about modern urban
life, but at the same time, the drama which is meant to carry these
observations and points is too eventless to keep our interest up, and,
ostensibly in order to embellish his points and make them stand out from
an otherwise underwritten script, Leigh overwrites key character Mary -
and/or allows Leslie Manville to overact it.
The result is a film which despite wanting to deal with the ordinary
lives of average people, instead comes off as a self-indulgent version
of reality. And not a reality most people will identify with, but rather
a cynic's take on reality. And not only a cynic's take on reality, but a
cynic's dull take on reality. There is warmth and dramatic potential in
the relationship between Tom and Gerri, Another Year's emotional
hub, but Leigh never actually explores it beyond his shallow (and
prematurely disclosed) thematic stance. Instead, what he focuses on is
a well of dysfunctional and borderline caricatured supporting characters
who may be interesting individually, but who are picked up and left
behind without us really getting to get under their skin (the Imelda
Staunton character is especially annoying). The exception, of course, is
Leslie Manville's Mary, who starts out as a very interesting character
study and ends up in semi-ridicule. There's nothing wrong with message
movies, even if the message is as slight as in Another Year, but
we should be able to expect more dramatic material and more narrative
depth than what Leigh comes up with here. In my opinion, this is one of
the most undeserved script nominees at the Oscars in a long time.
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