Drama Hard Truths is Mike Leigh's best film in more than a decade

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When Mike Leigh announced Hard Truths as his next feature, he gave little by way of plot details. The director notoriously remains tight-lipped about his projects while they are in production and for this one, he merely described it as a film about family set in a post-COVID world. After the scale—and financial failure—of 2018’s Peterloo, Leigh’s choice to return to more intimate storytelling feels deliberate, and though COVID is only really mentioned in passing, this film is undeniably touched by the ripple effects of a pandemic that forced us to look inwards as our daily lives were turned upside down.

Hard Truths follows the daily routine of outspoken Pansy (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) in the week leading up to Mother’s Day. Although the mentions of COVID are few and far between, there are remnants of that period of intense isolation left behind in Pansy’s behavior. She spends her days meticulously cleaning her house and pestering her son Moses (Tuwaine Barrett) about his lack of ambition while simultaneously warning him of the dangers of going outside. She feels everything in extremes and seems unable to sort through her emotions rationally, instead allowing these feelings to completely overwhelm her and dictate her interactions with others. Though she may initially come across as difficult, it becomes apparent that these are the actions of someone who is still recovering from a time where her interactions with others were few and far between.

Isolation is the thread that weaves together each part of this story, and Pansy’s family suffers from the effects of isolation as much as she does. Moses spends most of his time playing videogames in his room or reading books about planes before going for his daily walk around the neighborhood—a routine that he likely picked up when one walk a day was the only outside excursion allowed during lockdown. Pansy’s relationship with her son inspires as much sympathy as it does pity. She begs Moses not to go for his daily walks for fear of him being arrested for loitering, and although this may come across as overbearing, the danger that a young Black boy will be harassed by the police for simply walking down the street is not fictional. In 2022, a report found that Black Londoners are three times more likely to be stopped and searched by the Metropolitan Police than white Londoners, proving Pansy’s paranoia to be warranted.

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There is much to be said about how this film stands in stark contrast to Leigh’s previous filmography. Not only does this mark his first film set in the modern day since Another Year (2010), it is also the first time that Leigh has employed an almost entirely Black cast. Although Leigh has in recent times turned to the past to find stories worth adapting for the screen, his choice to return to the modern day and focus specifically on the hardships faced by a Black Caribbean family in London signals an interesting evolution in the director’s interests. In post-COVID Britain, Leigh has found inspiration in the contemporary struggle to return to a version of normality that can no longer exist.

Leigh is a dab hand at portraying nuanced and assertive female characters, and Hard Truths adds to his repertoire. Pansy is a thoroughly complex character, the likes of which actress Jean-Baptiste recently stated she rarely gets the chance to play. She’s prickly and acerbic, and Leigh forces us to sit with her nastiness for much of the film. She has bottled her frustrations for so long that when her emotions bubble over and her complaints are allowed out, they come in droves. She can’t stand “disgusting grinning people,” she bristles at any interaction with service staff, and she gets into screaming matches with strangers in car parks. If she isn’t calling her son lazy then she’s berating her husband or a sales assistant for daring to offer her any assistance and insulting their appearance in the process. All the evidence stacks up to build Pansy as one of the most unpleasant characters put to screen this year, but beneath this hardened exterior lies a woman so hurt by her circumstances that she doesn’t know how to move through the world with kindness.

Her mental health problems are never played for laughs, though humor is found in her family’s interactions with her, providing some of the only moments of levity offered throughout the film. Pansy is ultimately shown to be weighed down by the grief of her mother, making her a much more empathetic character. When placed side by side with the life of Pansy’s sister Chantelle (Michele Austin), Pansy’s family life appears more pitiable than most. Chantelle is an affable hairdresser whose workplace operates as much as a confessional as it does an ordinary salon. Her clients are more than willing to share their lives with her, and when her shift is done, she goes home to discuss the ins and outs of her daughters’ love lives. In comparison to the iciness that enshrouds Pansy’s life, Chantelle appears to live the kind of life you’d find in a Hallmark movie. Where Chantelle is able to process her grief, Pansy has allowed it to transform into bitter rage, asserting that she doesn’t need to visit her mother’s grave because “when people die, they die.” It is in these moments that Pansy appears less like a caricature of a bitter old woman and more like the broken child who was left to pick up the pieces after she and her sister were left without a family.

Where Peterloo utilized extravagant set pieces and grand action sequences, Hard Truths is much more reserved and relies heavily on the intricacies of character acting. Leigh has described this film as being about “the pain of living,” and his actors embody this sentiment in its entirety. It’s captured in the way that Jean-Baptiste holds herself when in character as Pansy, who is so exhausted by motherhood and so worn down by grief that she cannot hold levity in her body for longer than a few fleeting seconds. It’s in the slight change in expression from Austin as sister Chantelle or David Webber, who plays Pansy’s long-suffering husband who must endure her never-ending tirades about the state of the world. In focusing so closely on his actors, Leigh has created a film that feels like an empathetic study of how it feels to be left behind as the world ticks on around you.

Hard Truths ultimately operates as a case study on the exacerbation of poor mental health as a result of the COVID-19 lockdowns. With a heartbreaking lead performance from Jean-Baptiste at its center, Leigh has crafted one of the most sincere slice-of-life films to come out of British cinema in recent years. That he struggled to finance this film is unfathomable—it feels obvious that the British film industry should want to invest in films like this one more often. Though a quieter affair than his last few feature films, Hard Truths proves to be just as compelling, and asks us to extend compassion to the most difficult among us. In a post-COVID world where social divisions are cropping up at lightning speed, that call feels more urgent than ever before.

Director: Mike Leigh
Writer: Mike Leigh
Stars: Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Michele Austin
Release date: Dec. 6, 2024 (U.S.)

Nadira Begum is a freelance film critic and culture writer based in the UK. To see her talk endlessly about film, TV, and her love of vampires, you can follow her on Twitter (@nadirawrites) or Instagram (@iamnadirabegum).

Affecting Drama Hard Truths Is Mike Leigh’s Best Film In More Than A Decade