Tales From The Script: Another Year

Another Year

By Mike Leigh and Juliette

(INT: a Doctor’s surgery. Imelda Staunton is sitting with a Kindly Female Doctor.)

Imelda Staunton - Hello, I’m Imelda Staunton. You may recognize me from such films as Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which wasn’t bad, and Vera Drake, which was absolutely fucking awful. And whose inexplicably superb reviews were only equaled by the infinite bum-numbing relentless suicidal tedium of the film itself.

Kindly Female Doctor - This one has the same director. Mike Leigh. Similar rave reviews, too. Ominous. What are you doing in this thing?

Imelda Staunton - God knows. I’m nothing to do with the story, such as it is, at all. I just get counseled by the heroine for about five minutes in about an hour or so. But I’m depressed and can’t sleep.

Kindly Doctor – Well, sit through the next hour of this turd. It’s separated into quarters marking the passage of the seasons, beginning with ‘Spring’. If you’re not wandering into the land of Nod by the time ‘Autumn’ rolls round, I’ll eat my stethoscope.

(EXT: middle aged woman in rainy allotment)

Geri – (wisely) Hello viewers, I’m Geri. I work with a bunch of depressing old gits in a boring little doctor’s surgery, I live in a bog standard semi, I drive a battered Volvo, and my social life revolves round tending this manky-looking allotment. I look like a geriatric rabbit with special needs, and have a wardrobe that Susan Boyle would raise a quizzical eyebrow at. Oh and I’ve spent my entire adult life married to the Tolkienesque-looking Jim Broadbent at his most annoyingly jovial and hand-knitted-jumpery.

Passing Viewer - Christ alive. You poor, poor cow.

Geri – (wisely) No, you don’t understand. Everyone envies me and my life. We’re the perfect middle-class couple. Everyone we know wants to be like us.

Passing Viewer – Fuck me backwards. What sort of sad freaks are you hanging out with?

Mary (staggering in wearing age-inappropriate pink hoodie, cackling hysterically and precariously clutching vast glass of white wine) Well, people like me for a start. Hello, viewers. I’m a desperate unhappy single alcoholic who longs for a man in my life. This is conveyed by the subtle means of Mike Leigh following me around with a big sign saying ‘DESPERATE UNHAPPY SINGLE ALCOHOLIC WHO LONGS FOR A MAN IN HER LIFE.’ And an enormous great fuck off arrow pointing at my head.

Geri (wisely) Well, we’re all like that in this film, dear. Mike Leigh gets universally praised for his subtle three-dimensional characters, which is a bit like praising the late Bernard Manning for his racial sensitivity and brilliance at the hundred-metre hurdles. There’s not a single, solitary one of us who’s more than a lazily snipped-out paper-thin cut-out with a few words scrawled on it with a biro. If you look closely, you can see that me and my husband have ‘nice cosy middle aged couple’ written on us. And that sad lonely fat bloke we hang out with sometimes has ‘sad lonely fat bloke’ written on him.

Mary (swilling back more white wine) I’m so unhappy. I hate my life. Why can’t I be in a decent film instead of this breathtakingly overrated pile of old poo? And don’t even get me started on the funereal pace. My granny moves faster than this thing, and she’s dead.

Tom (jovially) Cheer up, Mary. Listen to this dialogue. Mike Leigh’s universally acclaimed for his lifelike conversations, which he achieves through encouraging his actors to improvise and randomly make up things that sound like real dialogue.

Mary (swigging more wine) - Yeah, but the thing about real dialogue is that it’s fucking dull - and just wanders about aimlessly for hours on end like an old lady with Alzheimers who’s forgotten where her house is. You think Billy Wilder wrote the sparkling screenplay for Some Like It Hot by getting a bunch of tiresome old luvvies to talk shit among themselves for an hour?

Mary (wisely) Well, Some Like It Hot didn’t have as much artistic credibility as a Mike Leigh film. Because it wasn’t all filmed in suicidally depressing-looking shades of corpse grey and drab olive green, and didn’t have so many long boring silences.

(long boring silence)

And it didn’t have as many banal pointless remarks about fuck all, that are supposed to be funny in a wry understated English way, and are actually about as funny as Victoria Wood on Mogadon. On Mogadon.

Tom (jovially) I see the weather’s nice again.

(long boring silence)

Geri (wisely) For the time of year, I dare say.

(long boring silence)

Tom (jovially) Want some tomatoes, Mary? We grew them on our allotment.

(long boring silence)

Geri (wisely) Critics love this sort of thing. Oh, Mary, please don’t cry.

Mary (swigging down wine and sobbing hysterically) I’m so bored I’m struggling to keep my eyes open, and I just managed to check my watch, and we’re not even halfway through the bloody thing yet. And I paid eleven quid for this shit. And I’ve finished all my popcorn. Why do I never learn from my mistakes in life?

Geri(wisely) Oh Mary. There there.

Mary – (swigging down white wine) And why is everyone in this film so fucking ugly? The last time I saw such a cosmetically challenged cast, I was watching Tod Browning’s Freaks. Christ alive, I’m the best looking person here by a street and a half, so it’s kind of ironic that I’m the one who can’t get a man. In Mike Leigh Land, I should be the acknowledged Megan Fox of the ‘hood, just because I don’t scare small children and nervous horses.

Son (amiably) Hello, I’m the cosy nice couple’s son. I’m supposed to be a nice eligible attractive young man way out of the predatory drunk single woman’s league, which is fucking ridiculous, because I actually look like David Cameron’s hideously deformed kid brother who’s spent the last thirty-five years eating cream buns in a hidden cellar. The casting director on this movie should be shot.

Mary – (swigging down white wine) For some inexplicable reason, I think you’re hot, although to be fair, there’s not much competition - if Quasimodo walked in right now, the standard of male totty in this room would actually go up a bit. But I’m an unhappy desperate single alcoholic, so I’ll flirt blatantly and embarrassingly with you while swilling back more white wine. Can I feel your big strong muscles? You’re a naughty boy! Jesus H Christ, would anyone really say that in real life? My flirting techniques would look crass, fake and unrealistic in fucking Hollyoaks.

Sad Fat Bloke (sidling up to Mary); In order to convey my tentative attraction to you and clumsy willingness to try and please you – which you foolishly reject out of hand – I’ll kindly offer to light your cigarette, only to have you snap ‘no thanks,’ contemptuously turn your back on me, and carry on your implausible flirting with David Cameron Jr. Then you can make a fuss about driving me home, and say you’d rather just drive the younger man on his own, and then you can say upfront you don’t fancy me and fuck off.

Son (amiably) On the subject of Billy Wilder again, his key to great scriptwriting was ‘make the subtleties obvious’ - but Mike Leigh clearly doesn’t believe in that. Mike Leigh believes in making the obviousnesses obvious, and then making them a bit more obvious, and then just saying what you’re hinting at flat out in the most boring, obvious way imaginable, just in case some five year old retard at the back didn’t quite get the point the first three times round. Yet this is all achieved without compromising an artistic vision of suicidal snail-paced boredom that Lars von Trier would be proud of – or the integrity of characters so richly nuanced and three-dimensional, they’re almost worthy of Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbour.

Old Lady On Rainy Allotment – And now the subtitle says it’s Autumn - which means we’re just over half way through. I know, it feels like you’ve been sitting in the cinema for the last three days already. How in the name of crap did this get five stars in the Mail? Fuck alive, I wouldn’t have given it two.

Son’s New Girlfriend – Hello, I’m a nice friendly suitable girl who’s started going out with the Son. We’re very well suited, not least because I’m incredibly boring and look like a cow’s arse.

Mary –(swigging down white wine) I’m hurt and jealous. And you can tell I’m hurt and jealous because the director’s waving a huge sign over my head saying LOOK AT MARY, SHE IS HURT AND JEALOUS. And I’m rude to the son’s new girlfriend in a hurt and jealous way. And then I look hurt and jealous a bit more in a wordless close-up that feels about eight minutes long. Just in case anyone missed the point here, I’m actually very hurt. And jealous.

Son’s New Girlfriend – (amiably) Actually, you’re not that rude to me. Just a bit ratty. But so mind-bogglingly little ever happens in Mike Leigh Land that the most cursory and trivial put-down is greeted like the first plane flying into the Twin Towers.

Geri (wisely) – Now, some old relative of ours you’ve never seen or even heard of before has died, and we’re all off to the funeral. Just to liven things up a bit. Ever had to go to an under-attended funeral for some moth-eaten great-auntie you’d last seen when you were seven years old and didn’t know from a hole in the ground?

Tom (jovially) – Well, that funeral was a private box at Cirque du Soleil compared to this fucker. I swear to Christ, it feels like you’re watching it play out in real time.

Random Mourner - How the hell much longer before this shitty film ends?

Another Random Mourner - Fuck knows. Another year?

THE END