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by Kearin Green
Marianne Jean-Baptiste as Pansy in Mike Leigh's latest feature, Hard Truths (2024)
Film | Hard Truths |
Director | Mike Leigh |
Writer | Mike Leigh |
Country of Origin | United Kingdom |
Production Company | Film4 Thin Man Films The Mediapro Studio Creativity Media |
Produced by | Georgina Lowe |
Starring | Marianne Jean-Baptiste Michele Austin David Webber Tuwaine Barrett Ani Nelson Sophia Brown Jonathan Livingstone |
Rating | 4/5 stars |
Runtime | 97 minutes |
Watched | BFI London Film Festival (2024) UK Premiere |
Six years have passed since the release of acclaimed, British director, Mike
Leigh's, last feature, Peterview (2018). In those six years, the UK has had four different prime ministers, the entire world has been affected by a pandemic, we got the Tories out and in 2021, Leigh admitted that he was having issues securing funding for his next project even with his +45 year experience in the industry. After so much chaos in the world, it is valid to admit we are long overdue another Mike Leigh film as a society.
And finally, in 2024, he's back. This time; with something a bit different. Unlike his many other features, Leigh's new film, Hard Truths, focuses completely on a British-Jamiancian family and steers away from Leigh's default characters who are white, and working-class (High Hopes, Life is Sweet, Meantime).
It's refreshing to see Leigh explore diverse stories and avoid replicating his previous features. This comes 53 years after his debut, Bleak Moments premiered at the 14th London Film Festival (which he made a nod to in his opening speech at yesterday's evening premiere).
In Hard Truths, Leigh reunites with Marianne Jean-Baptiste for the first time since their Oscar-nominated collaboration in Secrets and Lies (1996) where Jean-Baptise was nominated for Best Supporting Actress and Leigh for Best Director and Best Screenplay. The film is considered to be Leigh's most well-known film internationally with his 1993 Cannes winner Naked, and Another Year (2010) and Happy-Go-Lucky (2008) tying for third place. As you can imagine, Jean-Baptiste and Leigh's reunion is, therefore, a pretty big deal.
In modern-day London, Jean-Baptiste plays Pansy; a middle-aged wife to apathetic Curtley (David Webber), and mother to a 22-year-old son, Moses (Tuwaine Barrett), who is shell-shocked by the world around him. As soon as we meet Pansy, she is screaming at Moses for wasting his life in his bedroom and going on a never-ending (yet hilarious) rant at the dinner table about the entire world around her. She complains about charity workers asking for money at the supermarket entrances, dogs who wear jackets (because they have fur) and young women who wear gym tights and crop tops when they're not even at the gym. All whilst Moses and Curtley sit in silence.
As Pansy puts the audience in stitches with her profoundly honest comments and the bizarre behaviour she flaunts about into her everyday life, a dramatic shift occurs in the film's tone after visiting her mother's grave with her much kinder, empathetic sister, Chantelle (Michele Austin, another reuniter with Leigh after appearing in three of his previous films). Suddenly, the misery and stubborn storm that Pansy omits is no longer a laughing matter. We are confronted as the audience with the harsh truths that result in such acts, decisions and the stories that unravel the details of one individual's life.
Leigh's trademark of painting the beauty and magic in everyday mundanity is exercised to explore the layers of the people we know around us who are so troublesome, so complicated and so prickly to death that must ask- why are they like this? And in his commitment to fly-on-the-wall craft, Leigh doesn't spoonfeed us these answers. He allows us to only see the present and depend on our own imagination to understand the past only recalled verbally by characters.
Hard Truths is about the pain, guilt and chronic open wounds we walk around with and how each one of us copes in everyday life. Whilst Chantelle, a hairdresser, and her two grown daughters, Kayla (Ani Nelson) and Aleisha (Sophia Brown) are starting their careers and flourishing with what they have, Pansy's family is a contrast as mother, father and son walk around as living, breathing miseries.
Whilst Pansy's pain and grief are explored, Curtley remains a mystery as he refuses to open up to his wife's family. Moses and Curtley's pain could easily be cited as the result of Pansy's contagious disgust and anger at the world around her, but Leigh opens up the opportunity, especially with Curtley, that there is much more to just Pansy demolishing the quality of life of her family's life.
Leigh's unique directing style relying on collaboration with actors and improv to guide each scene is likely what makes Hard Truths as engaging, funny and gut-wrenching as it is. This allows the film to dodge the bullet, as I would know Leigh intends it to, of playing out British-Carrabian characters through the white man's gaze. In fact, it's the personal, niche touch that makes the film as powerful and mesmerising as it is. The performances, especially Jean-Bapstiste's, are astounding and perform incredibly well as an ensemble.
However, something is missing. As much as ambiguity can be a wonderful thing and hope is present for a few characters by the end of the film, the world of Curtley and Moses' very silent worlds deserved to be further revealed, even if the cracks were just an inch or two further in width.
Leigh may argue that answers are in front of us. Perhaps as film viewers, we tend to overcomplicate things once we've been affected by difficult directors who refuse to give you an answer because they don't have one and, even if they did, have thrown away the key to that secret a very long time ago.
Leigh may recommend we look at the obvious factors. When we meet people, what is the reason they're unhappy? It's barely ever a complicated story on the surface. It's often the everyday mundanities that get us down; bad relationships, issues at work, frustration where we are at in our lives and the circumstances we've been born into by chance.
Perhaps we don't need to be taking a deep breath and expecting these characters to reveal a Bruce-Wayne-dramatic trauma. Perhaps it's much more dull than we think.
But that doesn't hurt us any less. Nor press its' weight less onto our ageing spines for the rest of our lives. It's still bloody painful. No matter how it happened.
Leigh is not going to give us a soap opera, drama-bound twist in Hard Truths. He's going to give us his current, raw portrayal of everyday life.
Without sounding cliche, he's here to reveal the very hard truths of life. KG
Hard Truths will be released in UK Cinemas in January 2025.
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