Marianne Jean-Baptiste Is a Brutally Kind Person Who Inspired Mike Leigh in ‘Hard Truths’
The house where the British couple Pansy lives (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) and her husband, Curtley (David Webber), IN Mike Leighnew movie tough, awesome The Harsh Truth as sterile as a corporate apartment. There was little decoration, the furniture was dull and uniform, the bookshelves were mostly bare. The house was bright but cheerless, a space where no one seemed to really live. That coldness was offset—or perhaps explained—by the constant, provocative criticism of Pansy, a woman who was angry at almost everyone and everything.
She rants at dinner—amusingly at first—about the tiresome friendliness of the charity workers, about the fussy care a neighbor shows her dog, about the perceived lack of care another neighbor gives her newborn baby. (Whom Pansy declares to be fat.) Pansy is a deeply unpleasant person, leaving no room for politeness or care. She is suspicious and, like many people with uncontrolled anger problems, deeply fearful. She is reasonably concerned about her son’s safety in a racist police state, but less reasonably fearful about her perfectly pleasant backyard, keeping a wary eye on any animal that lands on the lawn or wanders under the fence. Pansy sees the world as a hostile place and is therefore hostile to it.
Pansy’s sister, Chantelle (Michele Austin), lives in a nearby apartment. Her balcony is a lovely, green haven of potted plants, warm and lively furnishings. Her two twenty-something daughters, Kayla (Ani Nelson) and Aleisha (Sophia Brown), loud and boisterous, has an almost sisterly relationship with her mother as a shy girl recounts her night out with a boy.
Their dynamic stands in stark contrast to Pansy’s interactions with her child, a lonely 22-year-old boy named Moses (Tuwaine Barrett), who mostly spends his time walking alone around the neighborhood or playing video games in his room. Pansy is constantly frustrated with her monosyllabic son, berating him for his messiness and lack of motivation. Meanwhile, Kayla and Aleisha are seen toiling away at their careers, stumbling a bit but still plowing ahead in good spirits.
How could two sisters like Pansy and Chantelle, still grieving the death of their mother five years earlier, be so different? What could drive someone like Pansy to such a terrible, stifling misanthropy? To answer some of those questions, Leigh cleverly weaves in the differences in Pansy and Chantelle’s upbringings; Pansy was the more pressured sister, having been forced to care for the family from a young age. How painful it must have been for Pansy to feel rejected in her young life, overlooked in favour of an older sister who now lives with such a likable outlook, who is surrounded by two ambitious and charming daughters.
Such injustices can harden anyone, looking over the fence and seeing how easy things seem to others, ignorant and stupid of the dangers and indignities of life. Pansy’s paranoia, her obsessive cleaning, her bouts of depression that keep her in bed all day all suggest a serious mental illness at work. She admits that she is “not a healthy woman,” but then she will point to migraines, or jaw pain, or stomach problems instead of addressing the storm inside her mind.
She’s a terrifying and pitiful presence, one played with tireless rigor by Baptiste, who had her breakthrough role nearly 30 years ago in Leigh’s terrifying film. Secrets and Lies. It’s fascinating to see the pair reunite for another deep character study, this time with Baptiste in the lead. It’s a surprisingly complex and powerful piece of work. Baptiste operates with a high level of anger for much of the film, and one begins to yearn for new levels, to see Baptiste turn inward and excavate the pain that burns so fiercely at Pansy’s core. Leigh holds that change back far beyond the point of comfort. And even when something like a breakdown occurs – painfully portrayed by Baptiste – Leigh resists a neat or light resolution.
The Harsh Truth is an accurate portrait of being stuck in a life of dissatisfaction, of throwing your bitter bile around in the hope that someone it burns might finally notice where it came from, howling with pain. It’s also about an unhappy marriage, about life choices slowly building up against prison walls over the years. And it’s a film about a certain kind of depression, its painful sensitivity to anything light. Leigh confronts the audience with the enduring fear many of us have as we age, that we too can become rabid cranks, made bitter and unlovable by the constant erosion of hope and possibility, and the steady accumulation of disappointment.
Some of the dialogue in the film suggests that Pansy was probably never the most sociable or optimistic person. But there must have been a little hope at some point. Hope for a child, hope for a modest house to buy on a quiet, sunny street. The Harsh Truth find all that was lost—but not necessarily lost forever. In the film’s final moments, Leigh allows the faintest hints of something better: an unexpected act of kindness here, an outstretched hand there. It may not be enough. The bright world may simply leave Pansy behind. But, one must believe, it need not do so for you or me.
