Secrets and Lies

One of my favourite movies was on last night -- "Secrets and Lies", by director Mike Leigh. It's a British film, a few years old now, and I have probably seen it about 10 times by now, but I could probably see it another 50 and still not get bored of it. It's about a downtrodden, blue-collar single mother in her late 40s, named Cynthia. Her life is just filled to the brim with sadness, but she is still this very loving, sweet woman. She has a 21 year old daughter who is sullen and hostile and works as a street-sweeper. She also insults her at every opportunity, no matter how hard Cynthia tries to get along with her. Cynthia's brother loves her dearly but is a little afraid of her desperation and his inability to help her. He's married to a woman who hates Cynthia and is obviously jealous of Cynthia's close relationship with her brother. Cynthia's life is nothing but monotony and sadness. All she does is work in a factory and get verbally abused by her daughter and live in a dismal house packed to the rafters with junk. The only solace she has is when her brother comes to visit her. But Cynthia had given up a baby for adoption many years earlier, and the film starts with this baby, now a grown woman named Hortense, deciding to try and find her mother. The kicker is, the "baby" is black and Cynthia is white.

Hortense tracks Cynthia down through the adoption agency, gets her phone number and calls her. At first Cynthia is terrified and hangs up, but when Hortense phones back she agrees to meet with her. When they do meet, and she sees that she is black, at first she tells her, "I'm sorry sweetheart, but they've made a mistake down at the offices." Hortense shows her her birth certificate, her name and address on it, but Cynthia still insists this has to be a mistake. They go have tea and talk a little more and Cynthia says, "No offense, darling, but I've never been with a black man in my life." Then, as she's sitting there staring into space, her expression starts to change and then she looks at Hortense in shock and goes, "Oh, Mary Mother of God!" and obviously remembers something she has tried to forget for many years. She never reveals who the father was, or what happened, but it's obviously nothing she relishes remembering.

Anyway, from that moment on, their relationship starts to build and grow, and it is so beautiful seeing how reconnecting with the daughter she had given up so many years ago starts to transform her and change her life. Hortense is an optometrist, an educated, successful young woman with her own apartment and car, totally different from the kind of life Cynthia has been used to. Seeing her daughter turn out so well starts to make Cynthia realize maybe her life has not been a vast waste after all, and she starts to get the first glimmers of pride and happiness she has had, maybe, ever. She had never told her daughter anything about her giving up a child for adoption, and it all comes to a head at a birthday party where everything is revealed.

As far as I am concerned, this movie is a masterpiece. Mike Leigh is known for letting his actors improvise their dialogue, there are no scripts. The whole movie is just so real and so heart-rending. It's all about how the secrets that we keep and the lies that we tell damage us, but in the end, if we make peace with them, they can actually transform us and lead us to whatever happiness life decides to dole out to us. It may not be what we had imagined; but it is there, all the same, if we know where to look for it.