★ 7 / 10
A sobering but warm look at the meaning
david s
A sobering but warm look at the meaning of life and success. The story of a Phil (Greg Kennear), a dentist who, while successful, is depressed, and wants badly…
A sobering but warm look at the meaning of life and success. The story of a Phil (Greg Kennear), a dentist who, while successful, is depressed, and wants badly to understand why some people flourish in seemingly perfect lives. He stalks his patient, Michael, with one such perfect life, until the man kills himself. Then he ham-handedly weaves a web of deception to investigate why Michael would do such a thing. We hold our breath for an hour and a half, just waiting for Phil to be caught out as he deceptively weaves himself into the needs and life of Michael's family.
The thing has heart, though, despite all the ways that Phil violates boundaries in his need to know. And in the end, he does seem to come to terms, at least a littly bit, with the unknowable.
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★ 10 / 10
Apologies in advance. This review might contain spoilers
syncopated h
Apologies in advance. This review might contain spoilers. According to statistics from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, the majority of suicides…
Apologies in advance. This review might contain spoilers.
According to statistics from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, the majority of suicides in the United States are committed by white men, almost four times as many as women, accounting for more than 70 percent of suicides in the United States since 2017. Middle-aged men are especially susceptible, they say.
Phil is a lost, lonely, middle-aged dentist. Both he and his life is a shambles. Although he never comes out and says so, he considers himself and his life a failure. One might get the sense that he started years ago with ambition, hopes and dreams, but he started working as a dentist, and then 20 years went by.
The film opens with the song "I Never Promised You A Rose Garden," Phil perched on a bridge contemplating jumping. A passerby shouts insults at him while shooting video on his phone, taunting him to jump.
Divorced, Phil's daughter (Megan Charpentier) seems to want to have nothing to do with him, asking to spend the weekend with the mother instead. Not only can she not study in his dark, neglected apartment, it seems she can't even stand to be there. His younger brother (Jay Duplass) dutifully endures his company as he struggles to sort out his broken feelings.
Greg Kinnear, starring in his directing debut, plays one of the least glamorous leading men imaginable. For the duration of the film, I can't tell whether Phil's baggy eyes and deep wrinkles suggest he just had a good cry, or that he hasn't slept for days. I think the ambiguity was intentional.
Knowing that Kinnear is a career-minded actor, who wants people to like his character, so the film is a success, and he keeps getting cast in money-making roles... I kept waiting for the makeover scene, the part of the film where he turned his life around with his hair combed, smiling, in an expensive suit. I kept waiting for that. And I waited.
Phil becomes obsessed with one Michael Fisk (Bradley Whitford), a successful man with a beautiful family who briefly appears in his dentist office, smiling and talking of his love for Greece, his fond memories of his friend Stavros. Fisk encourages Phil to take the trip, to live his life. "The unexamined life is not worth living," he quotes Socrates.
Phil becomes obsessed with Fisk. Clearly this man has found "the secret." Phil watches Fisk smiling and laughing with his beautiful family on the town one night, then again during the day in front of his house.
Then, one day, Fisk somberly exits his home, alone, gets in the car, and drives to the woods, where Phil follows him and find him, hanging from a tree, killed by his own hand.
Fisk is a success in every way Phil is not. He even managed to take his own life, which Phil proved incapable of doing.
Why? Why did Fisk do it? He had everything, everything Phil could ever dream of.
Considering the statistics I cited at the beginning of this review, aren't we all wondering this? If not, why not? How could we not?
Phil's dark obsession with Fisk leads him to cry out over his grave in the pouring rain, where he wakes up to find Fisk's widow, herself unmoored and adrift in the wake of her husband's sudden inexplicable passing, wonderfully played by Emily Mortimer.
She demands to know who he is and why he is sleeping at her husbands grave. Not knowing what to say, Phil claims the identity of Stavros.
If there is a flaw to this film, it might be that Phil didn't claim to be Fisk's college buddy from Wausau, Wisconsin or some other American city. Kinnear assumes an unconvincing Greek accent and fools Fisk's family into believing he is a colorful, old family friend from a distant time and country.
This gives him access to Fisk's home, his papers, his effects, his family. Fisk's glamorous home has the effect of disguising this film as a romantic comedy for the time Phil inhabits it. When Phil is not there, his apartment seems as dark and barren as the rest of his life. His dentist office seems cramped and dull. His dental assistant, played with perfect pitch by April Cameron, seems bright, enthusiastic, and maybe a bit annoying (albeit comically and appropriately so).
By creeping his way into Fisk's home, and endearing himself to Fisk's widow, we are lead to believe that Phil might have found the path to love and happiness. And perhaps he has, but maybe not in the way we think.
This film surprised me. I saw it three days ago and I can't stop thinking about it, and the reason I can't is because it is one of those increasingly rare films that turn out to be more fun to think about after it is over than it was to watch. It was a lot of fun to watch, despite its meagre and unimportant flaws.
The worst thing about this film is the marketing. The trailer makes it look like a romantic comedy. It is described everywhere as a "dramedy." That's grossly inaccurate. It is only wearing romcom clothes. This film is dark.
The worst part of that, though, it that it probably means men are less likely to see it. That is too bad, because men are the ones who might enjoy it most.
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This movie is confusing and is a real yawner. Not much makes sense so if you like a movie that moves along at a good pace I would say forget watching this