45 Years,
directed by Andrew Haigh
(R, 95 minutes)
Every happy marriage is at least partly an illusion projected by people who have negotiated a strange compact. Lives do not mesh seamlessly; what might appear to us as natural and relaxed is likely the result of compromise and experiment. Couples keep secrets, invent private languages and endure intimate indignities. They come to an accommodation. And so we ought not to presume to know much about anyone else's love affair.
Andrew Haigh's 45 Years is about an English marriage. It begins with a long shot of a quiet house in rural Norfolk, the tranquil home of Kate (Charlotte Rampling) and Geoff (Tom Courtenay) Mercer. It is Monday morning, the beginning of an important week in their lives. Kate is planning a party to celebrate their 45th anniversary, designed to make up for the 40th anniversary party they had to cancel when Geoff needed emergency heart surgery. And a letter has come for Geoff.
It's written in German, and his is rusty. But Kate knows where the German/English dictionary is and soon the code is broken. "They found her body," Geoff says, "they found my Katya."
Before we even know who this Katya was, or who she was to Geoff, we know that it has devastated Kate.
Turns out Katya was Geoff's girlfriend before he met Kate. They were lovers hiking in Switzerland when she took a misstep and fell into a fissure in a glacier. Now, 52 years later, the planet is warming, the glacier has retreated, and the authorities have found her frozen body, preserved intact.
While Kate has always known at least a little about Katya, the true love lost, she could not have anticipated her returning in this way. She could not have imagined the emotional impact the news has on her or on Geoff, now sputtering something about maybe needing to travel to Switzerland to look at the body. To do something. And so another fissure has opened.
Adapted from a short story by David Constantine, 45 Years is a potent, shattering movie about the way that living in the world eventually forecloses all choices. Just when you think you know the person who has been standing by your side for decades, you realize you can be nothing but alone.
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MovieStyle on 06/17/2016