In Another Year, Mike Leigh portrays a peaceful couple close to retirement, living in a beautiful balance, who welcome people in search of consolation into their modest home.
D‘From the outset, the tone is set: Jeanne, her face tormented, came to consult in a health center. The young doctor is interested in her with empathy to understand the cause of her insomnia. This is followed by an interview with Gerri, the psychologist, who patiently encourages: many things can be improved… What change would make her happy? Jeanne persists: ” Nothing changes. »
The four seasons of life
History unfolds over the seasons, over a year. In the spring, Gerri and Tom, her husband, work in their vegetable garden, where the rain interrupts their plantations. In their sixties, they are at the end of their professional life. Tom is a surveyor, and Gerri, a psychologist. They are a peaceful couple whose free time, in addition to working in the vegetable garden, is taken up with visits from their son, Joe, and family friends, such as Mary or Ken.
Comes summer. In their modest pavilion in the suburbs of London, the couple welcomes all this little world for a barbecue. Mary, under the influence of a sentimental break, is very disturbed, very excited at the prospect of having a small car… red. She also expresses her interest in Joe, much younger than her, and her aversion on the contrary to Ken, whose overweight betrays gluttony.
Tom and Gerri serve food and drink, listen, take an interest in the concerns of their hosts, whose loneliness breaks out. Their son Joe, whom we discover engaged as a lawyer in the defense of an immigrant, has the same benevolent behavior. Fortunately, there is humour, which makes it possible to keep a reserve in welcoming confidences, not without giving up a certain tenderness.
In the fall, a surprise awaits Tom and Gerri when they return from their vegetable garden: Joe has brought his fiancée Katie, a joyful young woman who is immediately in harmony with this family. A hard blow for Mary, who marks her disappointment! She is all the more sad because her car only causes her trouble, the mechanical problems adding to the fines.
Last step, winter will bring Tom closer to his older brother, Ronnie, on the occasion of his widowhood. Taciturn, in conflict with his only son, Ronnie accepts Tom and Gerri’s invitation to stay with them for a while. And the film closes around the table that brings the family together with the inevitable Mary. The camera pauses for a long time on her closed face, revealing her discomfort, which recalls that of Jeanne at the start of the film.
A bittersweet comedy
The viewer understands that the concern of Tom and Gerri will not be enough to heal the moral suffering of the wounded people they generously welcome. At least they can soften their bitterness, soothe their anxieties somewhat. The dialogue scenes follow the meal scenes, not a banquet, but bread, ham, cheese shared in simplicity, like these many glasses of wine, an opportunity to toast to the happiness that seems to flee these poor people.
Like the earth that Tom takes during his surveying surveys, where a few traces of mica shine, the daily life of this quiet couple is shot through with flashes of benevolent humour, sketches of bittersweet comedy.
In the pursuit of happiness
A figurehead of British social cinema, like his compatriot Ken Loach, Mike Leigh (born in 1943) focuses on middle-class people in search of happiness.
In 1996, he obtained the consecration with the Cannes Palme d’or for secrets and lies. This film is centered on the moving reunion of Cynthia, a poor worker, with the daughter she had to abandon at birth. He offers us in a supporting role an eminently benevolent character: Cynthia’s brother, listening to his sister’s emotional outbursts and his wife’s bitterness.
In his job as a photographer, we see him exercising the same talent for empathic listening, not without humour. Another film by Mike Leigh presents a young woman who spreads the joy of living around her: in be happyPoppy makes a delightful display of contagious good humor, a gift for
all the atrabilaires that life throws its way.
Michele Debidour is a graduate in theology and cinema, and chaired the ecumenical jury of Cannes. It introduces us to the spiritual message of a great film available on DVD and VOD and offers us through the seventh art a beautiful medium for meditating on the condition of man and transcendence.
This article is taken from the monthly Pray.
Your spiritual film of the weekend with the monthly Prier: Another Year, by Mike Leigh