In 45 Years, the only certainty of love is its uncertainty.
In Sophie Fiennes’s 2009 documentary The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema, the philosopher and psychoanalyst Slavoj Zizek said the realization of our deepest fantasies often adopts a more nightmarish quality than we might expect.
This idea is brought to life in 45 Years, in which Geoff Mercer (a bumbling, flawed, brilliant Tom Courtenay), who, after fantasizing for years about seeing his departed ex-lover one more time (she died in a ski accident nearly half a century ago), receives word her body has been found, preserved in a now-melting block of ice, as if stuck in time.
Although life takes on a quality certainly bordering on, but not completely, nightmarish for Geoff, life becomes an unignorable hell for his wife, Kate (Charlotte Rampling in the year’s best performance — male, female, or otherwise).
Plagued by jealousy, uncertainty, and an overwhelming sense of betrayal, Rampling portrays Kate slowly breaking down as the eve of their 45th wedding anniversary approaches.
The film’s climax comes at the event — something I barely expected to even happen, given the tumultuous nature of the couple’s relationship in the days leading up to it — when, after what should have been a celebratory, commemorative dance, Kate jerks her arm out of Geoff’s hold as the crowd applauds. Her expression is still uncertain, even in what should be the couple’s brightest hour.
The film’s main drama comes on slowly, as if leering at the couple from a distance before burrowing its way into the interstices of their relationship, and plays much like that in 2013’s exceptional Force Majeure.
In Force Majeure, a family are having lunch on the terrace of a resort in the alps when an avalanche appears to be heading for them. In the moment of need, the husband flees the scene in a panic, leaving his wife and children at the mercy of the (apparently) incoming blow.
Instead, however, the avalanche misses the terrace, and everyone is safe. The rest of the movie tracks the aftereffects of the father’s abandonment, exploring how one demonstration of mistrust can fundamentally alter a relationship.
Like the avalanche in Majeure, the call from the past in 45 Years acts as a plot device intent on disrupting the status quo. At the beginning of Majeure, we are led to believe the film will be about an upper-middle class European family on vacation, and in the beginning of 45 Years, we are led to believe the film will be about an upper-middle class couple preparing for a grand celebration of the decades they’ve spent together and in love.
While the general premise of both films stay true to this, the subtexts get dramatically modified and end up completely consuming the original plots.
45 Years is one of the rare movies that displays the intricacies of love honestly and directly, in all of their many confused, contradictory states.
Kate and Geoff are at times tender, passionate, irrational, and nostalgic. Throughout the film, the audience is uncertain of the certainty of their relationship, never knowing what might be around the next corner. But that is where the genius lies.
