Another Year Directed by Mike Leigh The Company Men Directed by John Wells Despairing Brits and laid-off suits

In Mike Leigh’s Another Year, a galaxy of sad planets orbit a resolutely radiant sun. Over the course of four seasons, a happy and too-cutely named couple, Tom and Gerri, entertain their friends and family, most of whom are miserable as they try to latch on to even a sliver of the contentment their hosts enjoy. Companionship is the film’s focus, though in one case, a woman who’s asked what she’d like to be different in her life responds simply: “A different life.”

That woman is played by Imelda Staunton, so brilliant in Leigh’s Vera Drake and who here has a face so pinched in misery, just watching her makes you tense. Alas, she’s only in the film’s opening scenes as an uncooperative patient of Gerri (Ruth Sheen), a therapist. But Staunton’s indelibly unhappy expression—and her masterful rendering of torment—is matched by that of Lesley Manville, who plays Gerri’s co-worker Mary. Mary is the only constant throughout Tom and Gerri’s seasons (the film starts in spring and ends in winter), a hyper and emotionally needy woman who’s determined not to look or act her middle-age. When she’s at Gerri’s house—which is often—she babbles about her avalanche of problems, from a new car that keeps breaking down and getting her lost to her failed past relationships, one involving a married man. She’s so desperate for affection that she even hits on Gerri’s son, Joe (Oliver Maltman).

Mary grates, to be sure, with her ever-moving mouth, inappropriate clothes, and seeming inability to take a breath and relax. But Manville bookends Staunton’s expression in an exquisite final scene: By winter, Mary’s wavering optimism is spent, and her relationship with Gerri strained. Still, she’s at her home, surrounded by others who are chattering happily. But then Leigh muffles the chatter and trains his camera on Mary, tuning out both the get-together and, Leigh suggests, life. Her face is etched in despair. It’s an exquisitely sad image.

Tom (Jim Broadbent) and Gerri, meanwhile, are an aging couple who seem to have beaten the odds and are approaching retirement with decades of cheery memories and a home big enough to welcome the less fortunate in their lives. That includes Ken (Peter Wight), an overweight heart attack waiting to happen who turns to food and alcohol in an attempt to quell his personal and professional dissatisfaction, and Tom’s brother, Ronnie (David Bradley), who’s lost his wife and is estranged from his very angry adult son. Tom and Gerri feed them and listen to them, smiling and nodding and offering whatever advice they can without pandering. Broadbent and Sheen are warmth incarnate, their Tom and Gerri comfortable in their lived-in bodies and sympathetic perhaps to a fault. At any rate, you can understand why the waywards gravitate toward them.

Another Year is a gentle roller-coaster of highs (Joe’s introduction of a girlfriend) and lows (Ronnie, nearly silent, is heartbreaking after his wife’s death, as is Mary’s falling-out with Gerri). It’s typical Leigh fare—both happy and sad, about as realistic as a film can get. Its message is perhaps best summed up in one of Gerri’s asides as she talks to Mary about one of her other guests: “Life’s not always kind, is it?”

The Company Men Directed by John Wells

There are only lows in The Company Men, a film about corporate layoffs. At least, that is, until an ending that’s so whiplash-positive it nearly undoes the fine work that came before it in writer-director John Wells’ big-screen debut.

The film begins with shots of huge houses, fancy cars, and giant flat-screens as the high-ranking men of GTX, or Global Transportation Systems, suit up for work. Bobby (Ben Affleck) is a hotshot sales exec who greets the day with cheerfulness and a flip attitude until he finally realizes the somberness of those around him: “What happened, somebody die?” He’s oblivious to the fact that branches of his company have been shut down; an urgent call to meet with a supervisor (Maria Bello) means that he’s the next to go. He responds with a “Fuck off!”, gathers his things, and heads home in his Porsche to his wife, Maggie (Rosemarie DeWitt). Bobby pouts for sympathy but is confident that his three months’ severance will be more than enough for his family to continue their lifestyle without adjustment while he finds an equally lucrative job.

Still employed but sweating the downsizing are veterans Gene (Tommy Lee Jones) and Phil (Chris Cooper). Gene is the conscious of the company, getting on the CEO (Craig T. Nelson) about his office Degas, outrageous salary, and lack of concern over the laid-off employees under Gene’s supervision. Phil, meanwhile, is an equally concerned but looser cannon, claiming he’d “take an AK-47 to this fucking place” before he let himself be fired. Whatever their ultimate fate, it’s clear that their days of three-martini lunches and expensed business trips are largely over. Meanwhile, their company is building a fancy new headquarters.

You don’t have to be a suit to find much of The Company Men wrenching; anyone who’s earned a paycheck and paid a bill will feel the pink-slipped’s pain. (Though some will certainly find it difficult to empathize with men who whine about driving a sensible car or admit, “I liked $500 lunches.”) Bobby, however, initially doesn’t seem to feel any. He refuses to go along with Maggie’s attempts to cut back, even getting angry at her when he finds out that she’s had to forgo his country-club dues in order to pay the mortgage. When her blue-collar brother (Kevin Costner) offers Bobby work, he responds, “I don’t exactly see myself hanging drywall” before walking away. Yes, you’ll want someone to punch him, but it’s a testament to Affleck’s cocky, angry, spot-on performance.

After all this stress, ending the film on a down note might have thrust it into why-should-we-bother territory. Who wants to see the effects of a fictional recession during a real one? (2009’s Up in the Air handled the same topic with some humor and, thanks to a central romance, more heart.) But Wells has miscalculated by yanking our chins up so fiercely in the film’s final minutes—it doesn’t feel organic, just tacked-on for the sake of some uplift. Worse, unlike losing a job or tightening a belt, the options offered these men aren’t exactly relatable to the majority of viewers. Which, ironically, leads to why-should-we-bother, anyway.