45 Years...and I felt every minute

Tom Courtenay & Charlotte Rampling

In my blog on The Man from UNCLE a few weeks ago I took exception to  Guy Ritchie’s hyper-active directorial style. He never lets you forget he’s there, he’s always doing something to remind you that he’s in charge. That’s a bad thing. Andrew Haigh, writer and director of 45 Years, is the very opposite. There are times when you would never know that he’s there but that is not necessarily a good thing.

Geoff and Kate, played by Tom Courtenay and Charlotte Rampling, are about to celebrate their 45^th wedding anniversary with a bit of a do. Geoff and Kate have no children but they have a wide circle of friends and, even though they are not the partying type, the event is being marked by a big celebration.

Five days before the party, in a plot twist that would be hilarious if everyone didn’t take it so seriously, Geoff gets a letter to say the body of his late German former girlfriend has been recovered. She fell down an Alpine crevasse 45 years earlier and has been frozen in the ice ever since; now, presumably thanks to climate change, she has put in an appearance again.

Geoff had told Kate about his previous lover, he thinks, but evidently he didn’t tell her everything. In the days leading up to the party Kate is riven by doubt both about the extent of Geoff’s previous relationship and the validity of their own relationship. Does he love her? Did he ever? Is he telling her the whole truth?

The answer to this last question would appear to be no after she roots around in the attic and discovers some slides of the dead woman. Matters appear to be building to a climax at the party, and then they don’t. The film doesn’t end so much as lurch to a halt.

To be honest 45 Years isn’t a film at all. It’s a novella masquerading as a film; it is a story where everything happens internally and the worst place in the world to place a camera is inside a character’s head. We are given few clues about the nature of Kate and Geoff’s relationship prior to this week so it is impossible to gauge just how devastating or otherwise the news should be.

This lack of filmic quality extends to the visual aspect, not least in the choice of a dull palette of muddy greens and browns. Apart from the heavy handed metaphor of a plot device frozen in time – just like Geoff, geddit? - Andrew Haigh breaks his film up with endless medium-long shots of the Norfolk broads which are not only visually uninteresting but narratively useless. You could of course argue that the flat, unchanging landscape is another of his heavy-handed metaphors but I am choosing not to go there.

I read an interview with Haigh in which he said he preferred not to rehearse with his actors too much and directed with a light touch. The result is a succession of long takes in which Courtenay and Rampling pretty much appear to direct themselves; this is the very opposite of what Ritchie does. This is just stuff happening in front of a camera and being captured for the screen. There is no attempt to vary the pace or create a dramatic arc for any of the characters. They seem like two characters in different movies.

The performances are fine, how could they not be with these two? However there are actors who are very good at letting the audience see them think – Kevin Spacey leaps to mind – but neither Courtenay nor Rampling do this. Consequently there is no emotional heart to this film. It is the job of the director to find the emotional core of the story, protect it, and communicate it to the audience. Haigh, in my opinion, has singularly failed to do that.

He can argue he is going for naturalism, maybe in the style of Ozu, Bergman, or Mike Leigh who are no strangers to long unchanging scenes. They however have layered their scenes with emotion and depth of characterisation which is absent here and without that I really didn’t care about either Geoff or Kate.

I’m not arguing for helicopter chases or fight scenes but there is no drama here, or at least none that the audience can share. And with no drama there is just, as I say, stuff happening in front of a camera.