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Another Year film review (DVD)
Mike Leigh’s Another Year (2010) is one of the most depressing films I’ve ever seen, but its sadness failed to induce any real moistening of the eyes and I think that the biggest reason for this is that too many of the characters are annoying. While this doesn’t necessarily mean that you feel no empathy for the central tragedy, it’s just that throughout it all you’re just too distracted by how insanely annoyer the other characters are to really get into it.
The story centres around long time, infuriatingly harmoniously married couple Tom and Gerri Hepple (played by Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen) as they welcome their fractured singleton friends and family into their perfect little hum-drum, allotment tending, po-faced, better than everybody else effing life while cycling through the four seasons of a year.
While the tragic, single lives of jilted Mary and widowers Ken and Tom’s big brother Ronnie are engaging and interesting I struggled to feel truly sorry for them, because given a choice between being depressed and broken in my middle age like Mary or happily married Tom, I’d pick Mary’s lot every time. At least she can find someone nice. Tom’s stuck with his holier than though wife forever and they can giddily dish out harshness and compassion as they see fit from their seats of married superiority. It’s in this aspect that the film fell down for me, robbing me of the empathy that I should truly be feeling for the misfits.
While Another Year is an interesting and engaging film it is ultimately unsuccessful at its central theme of finding happiness with another and the loneliness of those that fail in this. The acting is excellent for the most part, especially Lesley Manville as Mary, but there are a few cracks in some of the delivery from the likes of Ruth Sheen, who just comes across as ultimately unlikable, and Martin Savage, who was more convincing as the über-camp editor on Extras than he is here as the leather clad angry biker nephew Carl.
DVD & Blu-ray film review – 2.5/5
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