BEFORE: Liam Neeson carries over from "Retribution", and I'm back on relationships for one last time, since this doesn't connect to anything else on the romance/relationships list, I'll burn it off here, as close to February as possible. So that's ONE less film I'll have to try to work into the mix next February, it just makes things a tiny bit easier.
Speaking of linking, I have a path to Easter, which is on April 20. I'm not saying it's the only path, or the best path, but it's a path. I may change my mind, but I needed to figure out a path TODAY in order to determine which Liam Neeson film (and there's a week's worth after this one) needs to come LAST in the sequence. Which film has the best cast with the most connections to the other films on my list, to give me the most options? Well, now I know - so it doesn't matter too much what order I watch these middle ones in, as long as I end his sequence where I need to. Still, I know which of his films needs to go on St. Patrick's Day, and then roughly how I want to group the others.
This means I now have the links that will get me to the end of March - and it's just Liam Neeson, Atanas Srebrev, and Jason Statham. Geez, that sounds so easy after the fact, but it took me a couple hours this evening to determine that's the direction I want to go in, so I can land a particular film on Easter. Then I've got a couple options from there, I can either link to Mother's Day or jump straight on into the Doc Block - I don't want to decide now, let's keep it open and only program a month at a time. I'm not ready for a long commitment with the 2025 plan, it's got to be month-to-month.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Wit" (Movie #4,464)
THE PLOT: An extraordinary look at the lives of a middle-aged couple in the midst of the wife's breast cancer diagnosis.
AFTER: Well, it's great to know that the chain won't be broken before Easter - and then if I can figure out Mother's Day, Father's Day, the documentary chain and the Fourth of July, then I'm like 2/3 done with the year at that point. Last year's doc chain took me past the 200th film for the year, and at that point I can maybe almost square the circle by linking to the start of a horror chain, and as we all know by now, after that there can't be more than 20 or 30 slots left to use for wrapping up the year and making a bee-line for Christmas. But let's not get ahead of ourselves here, I can only do this in stages, it turns out. OK, let's table all that linking and just get to today's film.
It's an honest (perhaps too honest) look at what happens to a couple's marriage when a woman is diagnosed with breast cancer. Here the surgery is believed to be successful, but she still needs to complete chemotherapy to be sure that they got it all. There's a learning curve, for the characters and for the audience, with regards to the treatments - perhaps you know someone who's gone through this so you may already have some insight. I guess I'm lucky that I haven't had a family member go through something like this. We're more of a heart disease family, I guess. Yeah, humor will get you through some things, even black humor.
This couple already lost their daughter, though they don't really talk about it much, so we don't know how she died (does it matter?) and Joan doesn't want to go to the cemetery any more to visit her daughter's grave because she doesn't want her dead daughter to know about her diagnosis and be overly concerned. Yeah, that doesn't make much sense but I guess a lot of people visit family members' graves and talk to them, that's their way of connecting with their memories. So Tom goes to visit their daughter's grave alone and he ends up spilling the beans, even though he's the more reasonable one, and he knows their daughter can't hear him. Well, wherever her energy is in the universe, heaven, hell or the great void of space, he feels the need to connect to it somehow, and that's OK.
Through the MRI scans, the surgery, the chemo, the reactions to the chemo, Tom tries his best to understand what Joan is going through, but still all the trips to the hospital take their toll on him (and her, duh). Sometimes they can't help but fight because resentments build up, and he accuses her of playing the victim, and she accuses him of not being there enough for her. Well, that's what married people do sometimes, they bicker and they fight, and little resentments sometimes boil over, but the main thing is to be there for each other, because they're both going through this.
The foil character here is a teacher from their daughter's school, Joan recognizes him at the hospital, he's also there for chemo treatments. His cancer is terminal, though, and so we see the different effect that knowledge has on him, and on his life partner. Joan and Peter discuss their mortality, and what it all means in the end. Peter, meanwhile, meets another man with cancer who still smokes outside the clinic. Well, at some point you might as well, I guess.
It's hardly a feel-good film, but it seems true to something that many people may find themselves experiencing, the illness and possible loss of a spouse. Even when someone is deemed "cancer-free" that statement can have many meanings, it could just mean that they can't detect any cancer at that point, but it could just be the start of another round of treatments, because the different therapies fight the cancer at different stages and sizes. This can be a maddening process for anyone, not knowing if or when the cancer may come back. So yeah, an important film even if it's not an exciting thriller or an entertaining musical...
The story is based on the real-life experiences of playwright Owen McCafferty, ones he and his wife went through. Any retired middle-aged couple might find themselves in a similar situation, so obviously there's something potentially universal here, to experience the big questions, sometimes all a movie has to do is focus on the little things, and hope that people find something that strikes a chord with them. So I'll cut it a lot of slack today because there are some good intentions here - I like how the film comes full circle, they're arguing at the start about taking down the Christmas decorations, and we know that it's a year in their life at the end because the decorations are up again.
Directed by Lisa Barros D'sa and Glenn Leyburn
Also starring Lesley Manville (last seen in "Secrets & Lies"), Esh Alladi, Melanie Clark Pullen, Matthew Sharpe, Geraldine McAlinden (last seen in "Zoo"), Maggie Cronin (ditto), Stella McCusker, Eoin McCafferty, David Wilmot (last seen in "Calvary"), Amit Shah (last seen in "Pain Hustlers"), Vivien Monory, Olivia McDermott, Lalor Roddy, Fo Cullen, Chloe Ne Dhuada, Desmond Edwards, Mary Lindsay, Rosemary Henderson,
RATING: 6 out of 10 brussels sprouts
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