Father-in-law (Chris Cooper), Phil, pressures Davis (Jake Gyllenhaal) to pull it together
Jake Gyllenhaal, Davis, and Judah Lewis, Chris, learn how to use tools together.
DEMOLITION
By Marlene Ardoin
Jake Gyllenhaal plays Davis, a man dealing with his wife’s sudden death. He can’t quite put his finger on it, but something is off about the event.
He feels that he was married to a stranger. Her last words to him were about using his tools. This triggers a psychosis in him to take everything apart with his tools. He didn’t even know he had tools. His main way of making a living is in big finance, not using tools.
Both physically and psychologically, he begins to examine his life and his marriage relationship.
He communicates his discoveries and frustrations in a series of complaint letters to a vending machine company. While he was waiting in the trauma floor of the hospital, he tries to purchase some peanut M & M’s, but they get stuck in the vending machine.
His series of letters reveal a surprising effort on his part. He is frustrated that he was not able to get his M & M’s, because, we discover that almost everything else in his life was obtained easily and effortlessly.
He discovers in his process, that not only did he not know who his wife was, but her well-to-do parents had even less of a clue than he did.
His wife was their only child, so they wanted to create some kind of a legacy to keep her memory alive. What they come up with as a legacy had no relationship to what their daughter really cared about.
Meanwhile, a female customer service rep, Karen (Naomi Watts), at the vending machine company responds to his letters. She is pulled into his struggle and web of exploration out of curiosity and concern.
She is a single mom with a rebellious teen son (Judah Lewis), who has some questions about his sexual orientation. Clearly, she has a lot on her plate, but her heart goes out to Davis. She is on a different social status, and her life is even more desperate and unexamined than his. He has a lot more money than she, and she does not have any money to waste.
What this film triggers in me is the old adage that an unexamined life is not worth living.
How can one raise a child without having some kind of understanding of who they are? And, the same goes for a marital partner. How can you be married to someone without learning anything about them?
Like, what do they really care about? What makes them come alive? And, what can you do to nurture the best in them?
Davis is open to these questions in himself and proves to be very non-judgmental in his discovery of others.
I have the sense that this is just the beginning of his self-discovery. So far, he has just done what was easy, without much effort on his part. Like Karen’s teen, he is full of self-loathing. He feels dead, without goals, excitement, striving or challenge. He is in the process of rejecting the easy way, which did not serve him, or do him any real favors.
This film concerns itself with truth and love, as each character serves to reveal and nurture one another in surprising ways.
Why just include ones children or ones marital partner, why not extend it to teachers, neighbors, employers, spiritual leaders and political leaders, to name a few possibilities?
4/21/2016 # Demolition