This movie could be nicknamed “The Brutalist.” The Bullseye’s protagonist, Pansy, who is an elderly housewife and a mother, does not seem to be in good health and has probably never been. For her, the very act of interacting with others be it her family, grocery employees, furniture salespeople, or any one of the millions of people in the world is synonymous with violence and submission to ultrahigh baroque, completely blind to the reality of other people’s feelings. It seems as if she has spent her entire life in frustration.
At what, exactly? When Pansy is asked why she is so angry and this question is raised only at relatively trivial points in the storyline, so this dialogue cannot be regarded as a discussion between equals in a climactic moment, she only privately recalled that they glamorize. I’m sorry, is this a hard question? As audience members, the show lets us gaze into our own truths: the world is the hard truth. Other people. A lot.
Mike Leigh, aged 81, still manages to capture the youthful vision and insight found within the wise while creating his films. His recent film “Hard Truths” certainly reeks of being a juvenile character tragi-comedy that is electrical. It is one of the best films that 2024 has to offer but is too late to enter the race.
Marianne Jean-Baptiste who was a part of a watchful cast for the film “Secrets and Lies” marks a strong comeback in Leigh’s movie, Leigh’s worlds feel distinct and on a completely different level than other movies and that’s not due to over-the-top level of improvisation on set, as a matter of fact, that creativity goes to the movie itself, as the cast and the director are given ample time to modify the movie to their liking. Pansy is not the first character in Leigh’s cinema where their interference with the plot is spelled out. Who can forget David Thewlis’ Johnny in Leigh’s 1993 “Naked,” tipping a frenetic monologue during the rounds of East London which lucidly details how Beep Beep life has become.
Pansy, unlike Johnny, lacks any hints of philosophical thought. Everything in its most basic form is a complaint to her, and that is, “Stop telling me what to do.” Relatively more optimistic is her sister, Chantelle (Michele Austin), who has two adult daughters who are lively and humorous, and does not make such a fuss about the weekend outing to a cemetery, in order to visit the grave of her and Pansy’s mother. The very thought of such an outing is nearly apocalyptic though.
The trivial excursion, and on the other hand, whether Pansy takes it up becomes a big plot point. It has to be said that her lies regarding the day of her mother’s demise abuse her quite a lot. It also emerges with time that she is being coy and is still sensitive regarding the issue. Pansy’s hostility serves to conceal and serve quite poorly at that an excruciatingly keen sensitivity. We begin to get a glimpse of Pansy from this angle, exploring it as we see her in an agony of that sort, so she acts out this way. The film is an empathic illustration illustrating the proverb ‘hurt people hurt people.
A political aspect is often to be found in Leightons’s creations, the one on offer here is restrained and elite at the same time. Imagine that a white film director made a film that has two white characters in it, which indeed he and his ensemble of actors fit into like an old coat. This does not bear the hallmark of any soft-hearted type of universal humanism, but rather a stubborn argument about the cohesiveness of the particular circumstances. Or, ahem, what the aficionados of comic book movies know as “world-building”. The different reality that this movie is placed in is in essence, apropos to everyone. The world is a problem, as the politically progressive musical group Henry Cow has at one point put it.
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