Mike Leigh Knows Incentives

There’s a great little scene in Mike Leigh‘s new-ish film Another Year, which like most Mike Leigh films, is wonderful and also rather depressing (or at least sobering). In this exchange, there’s a wife and husband named Gerri and Tom; they are late middle age, mid-middle class, extremely compatible with each another and have their heads screwed on as right as can be. Their friend Mary works with Gerri and is a sad sack, a deluded and downward-spiraling woman who’s desperate for approval and love and, well anything she can get her hands on. The excerpt from the screenplay, below, can hardly do justice to the excellent acting and direction, but it gives you a sense of what makes Leigh’s films so quietly electric. According to his Wikipedia page, Leigh has been in theater and film his whole life, but when it comes to incentives, he sure thinks like an economist.

MARY
I like to get on the train… But you see, the car is cheaper than the train, isn’t it?
GERRI
Not environmentally.
MARY
Oh, what? You mean… (she stamps her feet.) Those are my carbon footprints, Gerri. (Giggles.)
GERRI
Yes, I know.
(MARY laughs uproariously.)
TOM
Financially, cars are cheaper. That’s why there’s no incentive to go by train.
GERRI
What about the airlines?
TOM
No government wants to increase the duty on aviation fuel.
MARY
(vaguely) No.
TOM
And this government won’t invest in the railways, so anything we do is a piss in the ocean.
MARY
Absolutely.
GERRI
And then there’s the big corporations, who keep their lights on all night in empty office blocks.
TOM
And we’re all expected to do our bit with eco-bulbs.
MARY
I know. Should I stop recycling then, Gerri?
GERRI
No.
TOM
You’ve got to set an example.
MARY
Yeah.
GERRI
Plant a few tomatoes.
TOM
Or courgettes.