several times throughout hard truthIn , an unassuming English suburb becomes the scene of an escalating internal civil war when a middle-aged Pansy (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) wakes up from a nap and begins a series of hilariously spiteful rants about her neighbor. Demanding husband Kirtley (David Webber) quietly accepts his wife’s latest venomous outburst, knowing full well that he’s the next target.
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Kitchen sink realist Mike Leigh, now in his 80s, may have at some point come to the bitter realization that some things (and people) may never change. . But in his latest social drama, he’s poignantly and empathetically portraying what it’s like to reach your limits. The film, and Jean-Baptiste’s bewildered performance as a restless wife and mother, seem to exist on the edge of an invisible point of no return, a line. hard truth Walks with amazing precision.
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While her husband is away on a plumbing job and her unemployed 22-year-old son Moses (Twain Barrett) is confined to her bedroom, depressed 50-something Pansy likes to clean – maybe a little too much. However, I wanted to create a temporary shelter for myself where I could take a nap without worrying about the outside world.
This paradise will never last. The real world always comes knocking sooner or later, whether in the form of a stray fox showing up in her garden or the men in her life asking for their next meal. She wants it all to stop because the next inconvenience for her and the next vicious speech about the state of the world and its selfish people is always just a few steps away.
This is a quote from the TV series justified This has since become a general truism. “If you encounter an asshole in the morning, you’ve encountered an asshole. If you encounter an asshole all day, you’re an asshole.” On the surface, it’s all about Pansy and how she navigates the world. The same applies to how you live your life. Her sharp vitriol against innocent strangers in public is a sudden, irreverent release valve, albeit comical. People start walking on eggshells when she’s around. But it’s not that simple and dualistic. The reality is that everyone is an asshole to some degree. Pansy is ready to snap, but she wasn’t born that way. Something or someone (perhaps more than one thing or someone) shapes her over time, an idea that Lee slowly reveals and explores over the course of 97 minutes.
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But before we get any sense of Pansy’s true psychology, the film also shows some bright contrasts in the form of Pansy’s parallel life with her hairdresser sister Chantal (Michelle Austin). Chantal, a single mother, lives with her two adult daughters, young professionals Kayla (Ani Nelson) and Aleisha (Sophia Brown), in a small apartment filled with love and cheerfulness. Through scenes that track the sisters’ daily interactions, hard truth How people on the same journey arrive at markedly different destinations and live lives that convey to the world what they have received, or perceived, or think they deserve. It is detailed.
As Mother’s Day approaches, the two women slowly shift their focus to their lives as housewives, but they also make plans to visit their mothers’ graves, a surprisingly emotional scenario. No matter what problems Pansy has with the idea, she makes excuses first and foremost. “I’m a sick woman!” she yelled at Chantal before launching into an unrelated rant about how she didn’t plan ahead.
As the holidays approach, individual scenes focusing on all of the aforementioned characters, including Pansy, Curtley, Moses, Chantal, Kayla, and Aleisha, paint a portrait of a multifaceted family that ultimately ends with Pansy’s It helps reveal the deep suffering underlying high attitudes.
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hard truth This work depicts every corner of a black woman’s life.
What makes Lee’s film so enjoyable is its descriptive approach to both families, but ultimately sharp focus as it delves into difficult emotional territory. Some of these scenes are set in Chantal’s hair salon and follow daily gossip detailing the lives of her and her customers, all of whom are middle-aged and dealing with the daily monotony of life. is a black woman. But their sense of community is what keeps them alive.
Time and time again, Leigh cuts from the raucous hustle and bustle of the salon to the eerie silence of Pansy’s home, the contrast luring the viewer into her orbit, before she launches into her next series of accusations, be it a dog, a baby, And even towards animals. Right away. She is angry at the whole world, does not have the means to deal with it and ignores any support provided.
The characters’ communal instincts are also accompanied by certain cultural details that speak to the film’s elaborate nature. These women all appear to belong to the British Caribbean diaspora. They may speak with an English accent, but sometimes they code-switch to Patois or West Indian intonation to tell their own story. For Chantal, her clients, and her daughters, this switch usually occurs when they are laughing or actively telling a story. But in the case of “Pansies,” code-switching is a means of exploiting more creative insults, as the film places jet-black humor right next to people’s deeply complex personal concepts. It is a means of eliciting ferocious, jaw-clenching reactions to the everyday. history.
There’s also a sense of pride in these characters’ accomplishments and a sense of inspiring their children to be their best selves. Chantal is thriving with her ostensibly well-adjusted daughters, who have achieved varying levels of success (though they still hide their failures from both mother and daughter). ). Moses, on the other hand, represents the other side of this story. He seems to have no purpose, spending his time eating, making a mess, playing video games, and reading books about airplanes. I rarely leave the house except for occasional walks, and I have no career prospects. Pansy just yells at him to motivate him, but deep down she thinks he might be a waste of time.
Pansy even describes his behavior towards Chantal in negative terms – his obsession, social awkwardness, and especially his inability to maintain eye contact – which suggests that Moses is on the autism spectrum. Or, it suggests that the child has some kind of cognitive impairment that the parents cannot cope with. I don’t recognize it. But even Pansy’s maternal love has (and will have) limits, given that she herself was harshly raised by a disciplinarian single mother.
hard truth The focus is on great lead performances.
Teaming up with Lee for the first time since 1996 secrets and lies Jean-Baptiste, who received Oscar, BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations for Best Supporting Actress for this role, gave the best work of her career in what was probably one of the year’s most challenging performances. The biggest challenge for both actress and director was that even while Pansy goes on a verbose, last-minute Shakespearean rant about how much she hates the world and what it’s done to her, she’s still trying to make a familiar human figure stand out. It’s about maintaining a sense of sexuality.
All the actors give finely tuned performances as the characters sucked into Pansy’s orbit (or, in the case of Curtley and Moses, the characters who contributed to her central black hole). However, Jean-Baptiste is a magnet for the camera, luring it in with her eyes and watching intently, unblinkingly, through the clinic of self-loathing she is exposed to.
An unstable undercurrent flows beneath Jean-Baptiste’s body, and Pansy is on the verge of exploding or imploding. She sometimes reaches both of these difficult places at once as the cameras interrogate her, essentially forcing her to confess about what made her do it. The more Lee refrains from formalistic flourishes, the more he gives his performance control. The result is mesmerizing to watch and will definitely remind you of the worst flashes you may have seen about your friends and loved ones.
In the process, hard truth The characters are forced to turn inward and at least realize (if not introspect and improve) the worst parts of themselves, resulting in humanity’s most bitter, painful and complex showreel. Through long, uninterrupted close-ups and scenes of subtly tense family interactions, Leigh’s harsh naturalism is brought to the fore slowly and violently by the accomplished actress. When her power is at its peak, and when her vulnerability is at its peak. Scene by scene, she slowly chips away at Pansy’s armor until all that remains is sinew, blood, and bone, exposing her to the world’s cruelty, kindness, and indifference. It’s harrowing to watch, but thanks to Jean-Baptiste, it’s impossible to look away.
hard truth Preliminaries will be held in New York City on December 6th, with a limited release scheduled for January 10th, 2025.
Updated: September 25, 2024, 4:33 PM EDT “Hard Truths” was screened from its world premiere at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival on September 9, 2024. This post has been updated to celebrate the New York Film Festival premiere.
