‘Demolition’ isn’t going for subtlety
Print Edition
WHAT if a young man who just lost his young wife in a car accident experienced none of the stages of grief? What if he felt nothing? What if he, instead, started writing letters to a vending machine company and dismantling every object in sight?
Perhaps that’s just a person coasting in denial, but, to buy that, you would have to believe that the person also had some sort of humanity in the first place. In the case of Davis Mitchell (Jake Gyllenhaal) in director Jean-Marc Vallee’s ambitious, flawed and whimsically sinister “Demolition,” let’s just say that’s not entirely clear.
Davis, for much of the movie, is like the Patrick Bateman of widowers. He is incredibly wealthy, cold, unfeeling and vaguely sociopathic. Instead of bodies, though, it’s objects he’s dissecting.
At first, it’s actually quite captivating as you drift with Davis in the aftermath of his wife Julia’s (Heather Lind) death. He was in the car with her when it got broadsided. He came out without a scratch. She died that night.
He can’t even muster up any emotion as her grieving father (Chris Cooper) breaks down. And then at the wake, instead of socializing, he goes into a study to compose a letter to the vending machine company whose hospital unit failed to give him the Peanut M&Ms he paid for. It’s in this handwritten complaint letter where Davis starts to really dish — about how he only got this job at a US$6 billion investment firm because of his father-in-law, about his daily routines in his magazine-ready glass and steel cube of a house, and about how he never really loved his wife.
Davis starts writing letters to the vending machine company on a regular basis. Of course his life falls apart with it. Subtlety is not what this movie is going for.
Davis might not be someone who exists in the real world, but Gyllenhaal wears his unconventionalities well.
Then the eccentric working class side characters arrive — Karen (Naomi Watts), a customer service rep at the vending machine company who was moved by his confessional letters, and her angst-ridden pre-teen son Chris (Judah Lewis).
Suddenly Davis is finding solace in this single mom stoner with a heart of gold and a young boy who is questioning his gender and sexuality. It’s a bit much for something that had been so focused and streamlined at first.
Perhaps “Demolition” should have stuck with its original premise until the bitter end, or made Davis just a little more human at the outset. The movie doesn’t quite come together, but it’s far from a wreck.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
