The British director won acclaim with his 2001 drama Weekend, about a fleeting love affair between two men. His new film, 45 Years, stars Charlotte Rampling and tells the moving story of an elderly couple facing marital crisis. Here he talks about relationships, identity, and the hard slog of making it in the moviesIt could be used as a new critical yardstick: how long does a film stay with you after you leave the cinema? Can it be dismissed in the time it takes to wipe a cheek with a handkerchief? Director and writer Andrew Haigh’s 45 Years, based on a story by David Constantine, is in that rare category of films that continues to move, is subtly shattering and does not loosen its hold. It is about a couple in their 70s, outstandingly played by Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay, who are about to celebrate their 45th wedding anniversary when a letter arrives with news that threatens the balance of their marriage and reminds them – and us – of the unknowability of others. The past, as LP Hartley famously put it, is another country and, in this film, what happened there is open to drastic reinterpretation.On a breezy summer morning, I meet Andrew Haigh – good-looking, bearded, engaging – in a hotel in Holborn which everyone appears to be treating like a second office (the room in which we talk is called “The Study”). The film is a new departure for him: his first features were about young gay men. His debut, Greek Pete (2009), described a year in the life of a London rent boy. His second, Weekend (2001), was a melancholy film about a passion that ambushes two men over a single weekend and which achieved cult status at speed. It won Haigh the London Critics’ Circle award for breakthrough British film-maker and he made it on to the New York Times list of 20 international directors to watch (the only UK director on the list). But he tells me now that the difficulty with making gay films is that “because there is so little gay representation on screen” the gay element tends to overshadow other critical issues. And being typecast as a “gay film-maker” can be divisive: “There is still this weird feeling that gay people are fundamentally different from straight people when, actually, we have similar fears and doubts and hopes – although we might have slightly more emotional baggage to drag along for being a minority.” He needed to unburden himself of some of his ideas in a non-gay framework. Continue reading...
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