45 YEARS Review

45 Years is the type of film that likes to hold a single, static shot for longer than one might anticipate while simply asking you to bask in it-to soak every moment of it up. It's contradictory to my spastic American mind to take such calming nuances as intentional, but in reality this technique is enlisted to allow audience members to really drink in the subtle, but hugely devastating ideas the film meddles in. It should be noted, I guess, that the main ideas of the film are not inherently devastating, but that more the conditions that can sometimes come along with the institution of marriage are such that we don't consider them until they happen. For a bond that should be built on such trust and assured confidence it is often times shaken by the most delicate of details. In the case of Kate (Charlotte Rampling) and Geoff Mercer (Tom Courtenay) it is little more than what was once an afterthought to Kate, but decides to come back with a vengeance and reveal it may have been much more to her husband all these years. There is no act that was performed on Geoff's part that violates the sanctity of their marriage, but more something completely out of both parties control that informed the way one half would feel forever and the powerlessness of the other to ever allow him to forget it. In a word-it's heartbreaking. One might even call it cruel, the way fate aligned to bring this couple into each other's lives at the time in which it did, forever setting them on this path where they were more or less destined to fail. This fracture is barely visible in the beginning, though. As we come to know the Mercer's as they prepare for a weekend party that will celebrate their forty-fifth wedding anniversary (hence the title) they live a quiet life in the open countryside of England seemingly enjoying the latter years of their lives. It is the resurgence of old memories and "what might have been" possibilities that throws their relationship into a whirlwind of doubt and vulnerability that at least Kate never saw coming.