Tea and empathy

Tea and empathy

Not every year does a new movie come out. When we are given one, however, it is filled with love for humanity and deep understanding of it. I don’t mean comedy like stand-up comedy, but the type of comedy that makes us laugh at ourselves when we see it in others. Another Year by Mike Leigh is like immersing yourself in empathy for two hours.

Tom (Jim Broadbent) and Gerri (Ruth Sheen) have been married for a long time. They live in North London and they’re happy. See how far Leigh is willing to go right from the start? A good marriage between two good people who are kind-hearted and smart? Not stereotypes, not clichés, just two characters I’d love to know personally? I would look forward to visiting them each time I went over there, and then I wouldn’t want to leave.

Mary (Lesley Manville) feels the same way we do about Tom and Gerri. She works in Gerri’s office; Gerri is a behavioral counselor. We all know someone like Mary: still single at her age, drinking too much, looking for Mr./Ms. Perfect as an excuse not to be involved with anyone real down here on Earth. The woman visits Tom and Gerri a lot. When she comes over yet again, let’s remember Robert Frost: Home is where, when you have to go there/They have to take you in.

The lady needs help; she needs sobriety; she needs healing badly every other sentence Mary utters might as well be Needy though what she doesn’t need from Tom and Gerri is lectures (though sometimes they drop gentle hints), because “It’s a shame,” he observes to her after another sad visit has ended ,and that says it all. Nothing else: no condemnation; no blame.

In their personal life together as well as outside of it, they are always in agreement. Gardening, working (Gerri is a counselor at a hospital and Tom is an engineer), fixing dinner for their friends, hoping their son will someday bring home the right girl all things done with love. And he does! And he’s in love with them too. Joe (Oliver Maltman) is 30 and happy.

Some directors have a gift for shooting scenes where people get embarrassed in public places; what makes us squirm isn’t that the characters are embarrassed but that we would be. At Tom’s sister-in-law’s funeral, this happens again: We’ve never seen any funeral like it, but we’ve probably been to many funerals like it. Leigh has a way of seeing how people show their pain without knowing it.

No one part of this movie depends on another part; no scene feels obligatory; life comes alive once you plug in the characters. Mary lives in such a small world that happiness seems unlikely for her. The car she buys gives her more “freedom,” but no one as drunk as she can possibly find freedom behind the wheel. She starts thinking about their son Joe as a possible mate for herself I mean.

Joe brings Katie (Karina Fernandez) home to meet his parents one day after work, and they fall in love with her just as much as everyone else does who sees her.When Mary meets Katie and hears what she is to Joe, it destroys something inside of Mary not everything.

All the actors are perfect at what they do. Mary (Lesley Manville) is a master at being pathetic without becoming a caricature, and notice how her speech patterns change with drink. Also watch how Tom and Gerri respond to her over the course of a visit or for that matter Ken (Peter Wight), Tom’s friend, who isn’t much of a catch but might date and maybe marry Mary, because who could do better? Certainly she doesn’t think so.

Now on to chins. A lot of what makes Mike Leigh great is that he’s not afraid to star ugly people. Jim Broadbent has too much chin; Ruth Sheen doesn’t have enough. In most movies everyone has just about the right amount of chin.

Let me put it this way: In 40 years as a director Mike Leigh has never once cast a conventionally handsome or beautiful movie star type in the lead role and I apologize to all the other members of his repertory company by saying so. Instead he has consistently enriched British cinema by casting against type, and given us such unforgettable performances as those by Imelda Staunton, Sally Hawkins, Timothy Spall, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Brenda Blethyn and David Thewlis.

Another Year gave me characters I could love or feel uneasy about or identify with or be appalled by I see so many movies where characters only have attributes instead of personalities; I like James Bond as much as anyone but tell me one thing: In what way is he human? Every single character in Another Year is human; some are all too human. That enriched me.

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