Tropic Sprockets / Hard Truths

By Ian Brockway

From Mike Leigh (Mr. Turner) a master of detail, intimate expression and human emotion, “Hard Truths” is another minute character study full of sorrowful power and hidden ghosts. [Showtimes and trailer at TropicCinema.com] The narrative begins with the sundry and pedestrian, only to increase to the stirring and impactful. In true Leigh fashion, he is sneaky and surreptitious, only to emerge at last with a startling punch.

Pansy (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) a middle-aged agoraphobic curmudgeon of Caribbean descent living in England. She dislikes nearly everything including soil and flowers. She has endless conflicts with her doctors and neighbors and appears to have stress disorders. She lives with her plumber husband Curtley (David Webber) and adult son Moses (Tuwaine Barrett). Pansy argues with both of them incessantly.

Pansy is so one track minded in negativity, one feels that she is permanently bogged down in the Netherworld. Moses shuts down with video games while Curtley is monosyllabic. All three exist in silence.

Pansy is indignant with disgust at the natural world, while Curtley invariably looks as if he has swallowed a lemon.

Moses is spinning away, adrift and tuned to cyberspace.

Leigh’s skill possesses laser focus. By isolating and examining the variety of human expression with its combinations and eccentricities, he makes us care, creating both in the audience and within the heart.

Jean-Baptiste goes from Scrooge-like comedy to heart breaking regret in the blink of an eye. Tuwaine Barrett is a study in impassivity, while David Webber’s knotted brow and pained eyes is an encyclopedia of absolute vexation, lost hope, and all weariness in between.

Mike Leigh’s films are human haiku. The film might begin with a simple element and three main characters but through expression, concern and worry, each individual heart and ego leads to volatility, crises, or opportunities too late to be retrieved, reset or re-lived.

Write Ian at [email protected]

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