Andrew Haigh’s 45 Years traces the effects of a chilling revelation on a marriage that’s lasted happily for an amount of time you surely can guess. Many have named it one of the best films of 2015, noting especially the shattering performances by Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay. (It won host Best Actor and Best Actress at the Berlin International Film Festival.)
Today, the New York Times posted an “Anatomy of a Scene” with the writer/director, which looks into the pivotal scene that sets “up what exists before it’s about to fall apart.”
Notably, Haigh’s last film was Weekend (and he’s also widely known as the creator of HBO’s Looking), which depicted romance at its very beginning — following the brief but impassioned connection between two British men — and 45 Years, the Times mentions, focuses on a relationship that’s lasted “longer than [Haigh has] been alive.] “This is like a bookend to that film,” Haigh tells the paper. “I’m interested in how we understand ourselves in our relatioships and how we define ourselves… This film is about two people suddenly being forced to look not only at their relationship, but also their whole lives and what has led them to this point.”
Below, watch Haigh detail his directorial choices for the moment where everything (very subtly) changes: