Chris Knipp Writing: Movies, Politics, Art


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PostPosted: Tue Dec 18, 2007 8:23 pm 
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A long wait for the inevitable

It's hard to dramatize a man who can't talk. In Grace Is Gone Stanley Philips (John Cusack) is such a man. Stanley learns that his wife has died in Iraq and cannot bring himself to tell his two little girls, 12-year-old Heidi (Shélan O'Keefe) and 8-year-old Dawn (Gracie Bednarczyk). This is a sensitive, well-acted tale (with terrific work by Cusack and the girls), but it's rather excruciating to watch. The movie is a long slow wait for the moment when the father finally finds the courage to tell his daughters about the tragic event.

Cusack is remarkable especially in the early scenes where we see him as a manager of a big-box home supplies store, plodding, bespectacled, ordinary: even his walk bespeaks disappointment and lowered expecations. He had lousy eyesight but cheated to get into the Army because he wanted so badly to serve. Later his deception was discovered and he was expelled, but in basic training he met his wife Grace, who has been sent to Iraq, leaving Stanley behind with the girls. He's grumpy with them, bossy in a way that might work better for a couple of boys, but mostly reflecting a depression and guilt he can't admit to. He pretends everything is okay, but in the opening he is awkwardly attending a military wives' support for women in his place, left behind while their spouses are in harm's way in the Middle East.

He can't speak, even then. When the two soldiers come to the door with the bad news, he at first won't let them in. And he refuses their help and just sits.

It goes on like that. Stanley takes the girls out of school, avoiding his job, driving to Enchanted Gardens in Florida. It's a long detour around the elephant in the room. For the audience it's an increasingly painful and tedious wait, suspense over a moment that will only be the beginning of the real story of coping with grief (such as was depicted, for instance, in Nanni Moretti's film The Son's Room).

On the way south Stanley detours to visit their grandmother's house, and instead finds his younger brother, John (Alexander Nivola), a bearded, smoking, unemployed high school dropout working on his GRE and thinking of law or medical school. John is an angry and honest 32-year-old who provokes a political conflict. He calls Bush "your monkey President" and shows himself to be violently opposed to the Iraq war. Stanley insists it is noble to serve. He will not hear of anything else and stifles the girls when John asks their opinion. Is the movie saying one reason for Stanley's implosion is that what's happened calls all his patriotism into question, and that his non-communication with the girls comes from his rigid politics?

Heidi also is a doubter, or a worrier. It emerges that she has not been sleeping at night. When she calls school to tell them they're away, she meets understanding and pity. The subtlety of first director Strause's screenplay is the delicacy with which he hints at the suspicions of the older girl, and perhaps of the younger girl as well. Before the moment of truth arrives, it's more and more clear that nobody thinks anything is okay.

Grace Is Gone is a sensitive movie but it goes weak in key places. Strause cuts the sound in the revelatory scene just when Stanley gets to the hardest part of telling the girls the truth. The film in effect cops out just the way the father has been doing all along. In the end the film turns into a Hallmark card. We and the accomplished cast deserved better.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.


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