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Andrew Haigh, Director of 45 Years
Andrew Haigh’s 2011 feature film
Weekend announced the arrival of a filmmaker who could convey the lives of gay men with a sense of nuance in the ordinary that bled into the sublime. Haigh followed that film up with
Looking, an HBO television series which ran for two seasons from 2014-15. That series was sniffed at for its lack of melodrama, its plain depiction of a small group of gay men looking for love and connection in the Bay Area. But for those who loved
Looking, it felt like watching something new: a show where the gay sidekicks got promoted to be the leads. Their flawed decisions and imperfect behavior are the building blocks of a character’s interior life instead of pop culture references and Fudgy McPacker quips.
Haigh’s new film
45 Years is and is not a departure from his previous work. Here he applies an even greater degree of attention and scrutiny to the psyches of his characters. Like Michael Haneke’s
Amour (2012) before it, the quiet storm at the center of the story is a long-term marriage, and a heterosexual one at that. Also like
Amour, most of the accolades have gone to the female lead, Charlotte Rampling, who, at 69, received her first Academy Award nomination for the role. But in both cases — Jean-Louis Trintignant in Haneke’s film and Tom Courtenay in Haigh’s — the men’s performances were overlooked. In town for a screening, Haigh answered questions about Courtenay, Rampling and the
Looking movie that will air on HBO later this year.
