Another Year

Mike Leigh is not a mystery. With over a dozen feature films to his name the British director can be described as an auteur. Frequently working with the same technical team and same ensemble of actors, the director has really cemented his place within British and European cinema.

His latest effort focuses on a couple and their friends and family over the length of a year, told in four parts in four seasons. People talk, drink tea, wine or beer and eat. They talk about being unhappy, about the problems with their cars, they reminisce. They are real people doing real things.

When done right, as it is here, there is so much enjoyment and fulfillment to be had from watching people do the things that we all do everyday. Leigh is occasionally too forceful and too self congratulatory in the mundane in my opinion but with this film there feels justification and true emotion and care for the characters and the situations they find themselves in. A genuine reason to tell the story of these well drawn and honest people.

The whole film can be epitomized in one shot. At the end of one of the seasons Ruth Sheen's Gerri sits cozily beside Jim Broadbent's Tom. After the dialogue between the characters has died out we remain with the characters as Tom turns the page of the paper and Gerri takes a sip of wine. There is no need to stay with them but in these few seconds we are shown that the characters live outside of the scenes that are being presented. They continue with their lives through the exciting and the mundane.