★★★★★
19 April 2015
This article is a review of 45 YEARS.Seen at the Berlin International Film Festival 2015. (For more information, click here.)
|
“I thought you didn’t like theoretical questions?” Geoff Mercer (Tom Courtenay) to wife Kate (Charlotte Rampling)
Narrative bombs dropped with laser precision for maximum controlled emotional carnage. Theatre production of ‘August: Osage Country’ did something similar on a larger scale; extended family devastated by carefully timed revelations. Writer-director Andrew Haigh (WEEKEND) and his two legendary leads of British cinema bring their A-games. Gentility and gentleness mask a burgeoning inner turmoil. Debate as to blame responsibility will go on well after the credits roll, à la François Ozon’s marriage MEMENTO-like reversal, 5X2.
It is Monday before a big celebration is planned the coming weekend, the 45th wedding anniversary of Geoff and Kate. Now retired, she an ex-teacher and he a former engineer, they live in a countryside hamlet in a tastefully decorated, spacious detached home. Chris, a former student, now the local postman, hands Kate a letter – a prop that is about to change everything. Illusions crack. (Think a metaphorical Julianne Moore on the glass hanging over a cliff in JURASSIC PARK: THE LOST WORLD.)
Narrative bombs dropped with laser precision for maximum controlled emotional carnage. Theatre production of ‘August: Osage Country’ did something similar on a larger scale; extended family devastated by carefully timed revelations. Writer-director Andrew Haigh (WEEKEND) and his two legendary leads of British cinema bring their A-games. Gentility and gentleness mask a burgeoning inner turmoil. Debate as to blame responsibility will go on well after the credits roll, à la François Ozon’s marriage MEMENTO-like reversal, 5X2.
It is Monday before a big celebration is planned the coming weekend, the 45th wedding anniversary of Geoff and Kate. Now retired, she an ex-teacher and he a former engineer, they live in a countryside hamlet in a tastefully decorated, spacious detached home. Chris, a former student, now the local postman, hands Kate a letter – a prop that is about to change everything. Illusions crack. (Think a metaphorical Julianne Moore on the glass hanging over a cliff in JURASSIC PARK: THE LOST WORLD.)
Said epistle contains news for Geoff: His former love, Katya, prior to spouse, has been found in the Swiss mountains. Unable to be reached, Katya’s been frozen in a ravine glacier since 1962. Audiences may well balk at such a plot point; stick with it. Legs cut from under him, Geoff has emotional trouble for the rest of the runtime. No one else to confide in it seems, and used to bouncing thoughts of Kate, he is unable to control himself in unburdening – in excruciating drips. They, him and Katya, had been lovers looking to escape an unspecified danger, and Katya preserved at 27, makes pensioner Kate seethe jealously. Now 78, Geoff has had complete failure of empathy, to comprehend Kate’s start to question, caught up in a resurgence of overwhelming grief. As Riz Ahmed’s Jay in TRISHNA, there is a male failure of imagination.
Initially, one wonders what the big deal is. Ex-lady was nearly half a century previously, and prior to meeting Kate. Feelings of unconventional betrayal, requiring fathoming, slowly evolve grippingly. One night Geoff mysteriously awakens and is heard in the attic. Not assuaged by his explanation, Kate opens Pandora’s box. The scene involving her reaction to decades old slides projected against a sheet is jaw-dropping.
45 YEARS never misses a beat, bar the penultimate moment, which relatively ostentatiously reveals Kate’s thoughts to the outside world – it was unnecessary as her face for the previous minute had said it all. One make-up touch had Geoff’s chest scar revealed, a coronary bypass operation had prevented their 40th anniversary celebrations five years earlier – it is a physical analogy of where his heart once was.
Dread and disquiet, usually reserved for horror films, are employed to startling effect in a septuagenarian relationship drama.