Hard Truths

We've all known someone at least a little like Pansy (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), making it immediately identifiable that director Mike Leigh has turned her personality traits up to eleven. Nearly every word out of her mouth is a complaint, she's judgmental as all get out, and ready to yell at strangers for the smallest slight. She's even quicker to snap at her lazy husband Curtley (David Webber) and layabout son Moses (Tuwaine Barrett). She assumes the worst of everyone, reacting to them with a torrent of anger and frustration, accusing them of having it out for her. About the only person who has any time for her diatribes is Chantelle (Michele Austin), who makes endless efforts to drag her out of her house. Whereas her husband and son quietly resent her outbursts, her sister views them with sadness and pity, giving us the sense Pansy wasn't always this way. Maybe that's why Chantelle is the only person willing to push any deeper, to converse with her and get her to talk about her.

This experience dominates the entire first half, maybe even two-thirds of the movie. It's unrelenting. Pansy goes about her life and runs errands, a tinderbox ready to explode. She freaks out about animals in her yard and dirt on the floor. She yells and yells and yells. She complains to Curtley about how awful people were to her all day, while he looks on with boredom, communicating the monotony of such complaints their "sky is falling" nature. In turn, she doesn't feel heard, and so eventually finds things to yell at him about. And on and on.

While it's frequently hilarious just how easy it is to set her off (not to mention her undeniable way with words), overall, the onslaught is just exhausting. It's broken up a bit by Chantelle goofing around with her daughters Aleisha (Sophia Brown) and Kayla (Ani Nelson), but Leigh mostly keeps us in the fury of Pansy's existence. The effect is that as we're worn down, it gets harder and harder to miss the core of fear which underlies it all. Pansy lashes out at people she worries are taking advantage of her or mean her harm or don't respect her. Even worse, it seems she's no control over it, it just happens. And once she's begun, she can't stop. In one key scene, she berates a furniture store saleswoman simply for asking if she needs any help. Tellingly, after demanding to talk to her manager, Pansy scampers out of the store before the employee can return, a single action which communicates that despite her tough as nails exterior, even she's capable of being embarrassed by herself. Her entire attitude is based around defensiveness, no matter how aggressive it comes off.

Putting an even finer point on it are the days she can't get out of bed. Allegedly, it's due to migraines, but the way she wakes with a start, cowering and enveloping herself in her comforter emphasizes the anxiety and terror which define her every moment. Which builds and builds until a profound and heartbreaking scene between Chantelle and Pansy in front of their mother's grave on Mother's Day, a scene which peels back, just a little, the pathology underlying Pansy's attitude. A reality which will make your heart ache, no matter how much of a nightmare she is.

This is the process that Leigh goes through in concert with Jean-Baptiste in order to break down the character of Pansy. I don't know she ends up in a place you could call "sympathetic", but through the many layered interactions and snippets of backstory dispensed across the days we begin to better understand her. The series of events which led to the woman she is today start to come into focus, and you see how getting dealt a crap hand helped push her towards self-destructive behavior which made some of her worst fears become a reality, further trapping her in this downward spiral. Even more heartbreaking and frustrating are the handful of chances for change that slip through her fingers, some tossed aside by the passive aggressively vengeful act of a loved one. Leigh is most concerned with painting a portrait, and it's a brutally honest one, which means there are no easy, clean answers within the bounds of the film.

Throughout awards season, Jean-Baptiste's name has been on everyone's lips, and it's clear why from the very first frame. Maintaining the energy required to play such an angry character across the weeks of filming is an incredible achievement, and her ability to imbue that character with endless depth through facial expression and body language is remarkable. While we've seen other performances of this tenor carried off wonderfully before, even recently (e.g. Penelope Cruz in Ferrari last year), few have managed it as the lead in a feature. The movie rests heavy on Jean-Baptiste's shoulders, and there isn't a single moment she slouches. While the Academy has neglected to give her the recognition she deserves, at least a host of critical bodies and other awards shows have stepped up, with quite a few giving her their top acting award.

The movie isn't perfect, as it starts to drag a bit in the back third while clearly working its way towards the finale. It overstays its welcome, taking far too much time to maneuver the characters into their admittedly wonderful final positions, draining a lot of its built up energy in the process and reducing the gut-punch impact of that ending. Some of the stuff with her family feels a bit underbaked, such as the insinuations that there's something up with Moses' periodically walks, without really paying it off. So it's a bit shaggy.

But that doesn't ruin its overall effectiveness. The only reason such minor complaints stand out is due to the contrast with the powerful and spellbinding performances and storytelling through the rest of the film. They make for an awkward landing, but do not negate everything that came before, which is well worth your time. This is only the second Mike Leigh film I've seen (after his 1993 masterpiece Naked), and he once again proved himself adept at creating thrilling and engrossing depictions of people whose paths you never hope to cross.