The cinematic miracle of humanism
The character study of Pansy Deacon (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), the middle-aged London housewife in Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths, goes so far beyond the “people-who-look-like-me” clichés that the emotional specificity of her familial and social distress is scarily recognizable — and universal.
Like so many in the Covid world, Pansy wakes up screaming. Then she proceeds through her day as an on-edge clean freak. The master of her own small domain, she keeps her husband Curtley Deacon (David Webber), a self-employed plumber, and her introverted, overweight son Moses (Tuwaine Barrett) on the defensive against her rage. A “No” sign decorates the front door of their middle-class house. In public, Pansy is quick to attack shoppers, clerks, anyone intruding on her path or even when she sits idle — indecisive — in her parked car.
Although detailing only a single Covid mask, Hard Truths reflects the social collapse caused by the lockdowns. Few filmmakers acknowledge this truth, but it is part of Leigh’s hyper-awareness, as was the abortion dilemma that became the subject of his mid-century (1950s) history Vera Drake. Through Pansy, Leigh examines our quality of life — the daily activities affected by complications that are social as well as personal. Hard Truths also rectifies the “what-it-means-to-be-human” cliché manipulated by film, theater, literary activists, and TV hacks.
In scenes contrasting the wired Pansy to her pragmatic sister Chantelle (Michelle Austin), a gregarious beautician with two lively daughters, Aleisha (Sophia Brown) and Kayla (Ani Nelson), Leigh displays the range of coping strategies practiced by the extended family and in the larger world. The characters’ habits — slipping in and out of Jamaican patois with that emblematic tongue-clucking exclamation, or listening to Chaka Khan’s “Sweet Thing” — creates an authentic cultural ambience.
This allows cinematographer Dick Pope’s superb lighting to provide clarity that transcends realism. The skin tones of these black actors, seen in mundane settings, achieve an aesthetic advance that elevates Leigh’s sociological vision. It’s as if we’ve never seen black people in movies before, or at least not this vividly since Ernest Dickerson’s imagery in Do the Right Thing and Mo’ Better Blues — an effect partly created by convincing acting subtlety. Credit the appreciation for behavioral nuance that has long been Leigh’s special gift. The image of agoraphobic Pansy looking out her backyard window is so powerfully understated that Leigh’s psychodrama reaches the margins of Antonioni and Ingmar Bergman.
The hard truths in this movie are a distillation of recognizable conflicts — the obvious psychological problems family members cannot act on, the competition that is always part of the social contract. As in Leigh’s Naked, these pathologies don’t simply belong to a subculture; each exchange highlights the idiosyncrasy of communication that only art can reveal.
Pansy’s tirades unleash anger that at first is hilarious (a rant on “accusing, harassing, intimidating, insulting”) and then is shocking, especially in the tribal harangue she brings down on overgrown, autistic Moses: She goes from “We hold up our heads” to “Loitering with intent” to ”Don’t you have any hopes and dreams?” She’s part of the black bourgeoisie whose complications are shown without pathos. (Pansy’s ambitious niece is featured in a perfect Leigh set-piece about the antagonistic subtext of business-world competition and decorum. It’s Career Girls 2.0 and just as funny.)
Marianne Jean-Baptiste’s infectious smile as the estranged mixed-race woman in Secrets and Lies was a means of forbearance, but Pansy’s knotted-up anxieties stem from uneasy depths. Her husband Curtley’s empathy carries a sense of failure that’s persistently resisted by her sister’s compassion. Neither of them understands why Pansy cannot enjoy life; looking at her, they stare into an abyss. These extraordinary characterizations complicate love over mere pity. That’s why a cemetery-memorial confrontation closes eccentrically — with a comparison to how other people experience grief.
When Pansy raves, “Don’t try to hijack my grief!” Leigh touches on something unresolved in her nature and in the state of the world, especially now when so many people easily lose grip. Just as Poppy (Sally Hawkins) in Happy Go Lucky was a secular saint like Fellini’s Cabiria, Pansy endures the misery and panic that denote secular humanism’s lack of belief. (Jean-Baptiste embodies that battle modestly, heroically.)
Leigh’s movies have often evidenced a socialist tendency while resisting typical political bias — except for the unfortunate mixed-bag Peterloo. In Hard Truths, Leigh not only dares to oppose the racial segregation popular among progressive-nihilist filmmakers, he also avoids the patronization seen in films from Precious and Moonlight to The Piano Lesson and Nickel Boys. By defying proscriptive shibboleths, Leigh insists on uncompromising behavioral truths about our current state of being, which means he’s back on top.