Another Year

Rating ***1/2

Movie Review: Another yearThere is little sadder than lonely old age,except being in the company of friends or family members who are just perfect together. Another Year explores one such year in the life of the incredible companions Tom (Broadbent) and Gerri (Sheen),their devoted son who is about to enter into one such relationship himself,and the miserable souls who they encounter that year – in their worlds,but worlds apart from them.

When Tom and Gerri invite them in,is it an act of kindness or inadvertent cruelty? Who comes out happier at the end of that year then the people who began as such?

The first such person to cross their paths is an anxious and depressed housewife and mother who has had trouble sleeping for an year. Played by Imelda Staunton,she has a dam of sadness waiting to burst out of her,but almost with her pursed lips alone,she holds it all in. On a scale of 1 to 10,she puts her happiness level at 1. But all she is asking for is a good night’s sleep.

Gerri,who is her counsellor,tells her to keep coming in – but we don’t see her again.

The other three folks who bring their sorrows into Tom and Gerri’s warm and always replenished hearth are Mary,Ken and Ronnie. Ken is an overweight alcoholic,unmarried,who is dreading the thought of retirement. Ronnie is Tom’s elder brother who loses his wife and whose son whom he hasn’t seen for years arrives for the funeral after the service is over.

But if Another Year belongs to anyone,it is Mary (Manville). She is beautiful,slim and dressed in the trendiest of clothes – all that she clings on to as her portals into a new beginning for herself. But years are slipping by,and the guys who are interested in her are only so till the point they discover how old she really is. In her desperation,she even imagines the kind words of Gerri’s son Joe as some kind of a sign of interest,and is spiteful when he brings home a girlfriend.

Her last desperate act of “making herself whole” includes buying a car. But the slow disintegration of Mary’s life happens right before our eyes,from the way she speaks,to how she leans in,how she uses her hands to talk,to how long she clings on during a hug.

Leigh’s slow-moving,at times almost static film,makes Tom and Gerri the kind of old couple you rarely see out of films (ironically played by kind of faces you rarely see in them). The kind who read in bed together,cook together,and when they go out,it is to their “allotment”,where they grow vegetables and where,under a shed,they sit next to each other on a rainy day drinking tea.

That’s perhaps the drawback of Another Year. More than admiration for Tom and Gerri,or empathy for the others,you feel sorry for the poor sods to whom they are a necessary example — year after year,each perhaps more painful than the next.