Movie Another Year
Around a couple of charming sixties, Mike Leigh observes the little theater of human life going. Exciting. We enter the new film by Mike Leigh (Secrets and Lies, Vera Drake, Be Happy) as they begin a waltz. The grace of movement takes us round and soft, the steps are linked together using a mechanical tempo impeccably well-oiled. Because Another Year, Story on a year in the life of Tom and Gerri, a couple in their sixties many trainers, and their friends and acquaintances more Borderline, first and foremost question of pace.
The seasons that pass in the first place. Spring, summer, autumn, winter and each table has its own color, its own tone but no light without being too pressed. Rate still loves going, coming, friendships that formed and dissolved, relationships that fluctuate. Pace and most importantly, life goes. This life full of little things and big everything from tiny pleasures of simple joys and sorrows that are inevitable and the real heart of Another Year, impressionistic sketches of everyday life for those who were young in years 60-70 and now share their nostalgia for days between amused and quiet resignation.
In great watchmaker, Mike Leigh observes with undisguised affection this fascinating dance making the mundane beautiful, the ordinary extraordinary. Between the garden of Tom and Gerri cultivate with passion and the kitchen table where they serve their traditional tea and Mary between the ball of nerves in constant need of attention and Ken’s friend Rabelaisian full laxity between temporary depression and anxiety deeper, everything passes lightly, with subtlety, delicacy, softness. And a certain melancholy. As time goes by, more wrinkles to the edges, also bumps the soul, beating heart. Of those who do go over and with which we must learn to live. The love, cruelty, loneliness and solidarity go hand in hand in this web of fair scenes and neat.
Mike Leigh and how he manages this small miracle? The simplest way: actors of accuracy and a phenomenal natural (its regulars Lesley Manville, Jim Broadbent and Peter Wight, newcomers Ruth Sheen or Oliver Maltman, all wonderfully endearing) characters in the service of rich and complex as Leigh has always known how to offer its actors, precise dialogue and filled with subtle humor and lively lively, staged with the line, elegantly designed simply to highlight this little human drama.
A return to basics so that here as well controlled, despite a final a bit faster and a musical color sometimes too heavy, enough to make a door that opens exciting. Last year, Another Year walked away empty-handed from Cannes where he was in official competition. It’s a shame. But this should not stop to appreciate this movie for what it is exactly, to know a little happiness.
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