Hard Truths, bitter endings
HARD TRUTHS directed by Mike Leigh (UK , 2024)
Mike Leigh specialises in bitter-sweet films so that just when you think you’re watching a comedy the story twists. You suddenly realise you’re witnessing something tragic instead. This is never more true than in his latest film, Hard Truths , which ends with more questions than answers and more bitterness than sweetness.
A lack of resolution is not usually a problem for me but in this case I found the conclusion overly harsh. I didn’t expect a happy ending but I did hope for a finale that was less desperate. Everyone will have a different take on this and this is borne out by the fact that the universal acclaim from critics on Metacritic is not matched by users. Many viewers have reacted negatively to the complex character of Pansy played so convincingly by Marianne Jean-Baptiste.
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Drug addiction, sex, rape, power, corruption and lies. This ‘adult’ novel seems a long way from the world of Hogwarts.
Once, in my former life as a pen-pushing civil servant in North London, a typist at the office where I worked had, what with hindsight, must have been a nervous breakdown. She was a polite, quietly spoken and well turned out middle-aged woman who, one morning, was restrained in the high street in front of the office where she had been shouting and screaming at passers-by.
