Like - Hard Truths

Mike Leigh has once again proven himself to be a great humanist filmmaker. His new movie Hard Truths tells the story of Pansy Deacon, a woman who is impossibly trapped in her own miserable life. Pansy, who is marvelously played by Marianne Jean-Baptiste, is an anxious, rude, germaphobic mother to an underachieving son who is wasting is his life named Moses. She’s also the wife of a humble plumber named Curtley, who is lost in life, stuck in an unloving relationship to Pansy, and having a nonexistent one with his son. Hard Truths, as its name suggests, is not an easy film. Pansy is relentless in her inability to navigate the world. She can’t handle basic social interactions and is always getting into fights with strangers. She has a vicious tongue and she’s not afraid to use it, although she’s always using it because she is deeply, deeply afraid. She doesn’t want things to be this way. She doesn’t want to feel like she’s hated. But she doesn’t know how to feel or be any other way either. Pansy is the unknowable mystery at the center of the film. Even her own sister Chantelle, played with genuine empathy by Michelle Austin, can’t understand her no matter how hard she tries. There’s something innate about Pansy, a hard truth that can’t be fixed. What it is, Leigh won’t say exactly. He knows people are too complex to be explained away by easy answers. Instead, he gives you something you’ll keep thinking about long after the credits roll.¹

1. For instance, there’s a brief moment where Covid is mentioned and one has to wonder what the impact of it was on Pansy, Curtley, and Moses. Did it radically alter their lives? Or were they always like this? Hard Truths doesn’t go deep on the matter but the ideas linger.