I was listening to a local radio station’s musical tribute to Michael Jackson this morning, grooving to the beat of the wonderful music of this incredibly talented man, songs that are so much a part of the culture, classics like Beat It, and Thriller, and Billie Jean, and I’ll Be There, and it occurred to me that the doctor who is apparently going to be charged with administering a lethal dose of what Jackson apparently called his “milk,” is not the only one who should be faulted or even perhaps charged in this case.  This is so typical of what we do in this culture, focus on one convenient scapegoat to the exclusion of all others who should bear equal or even greater responsibility.  What about the plastic surgeons who agreed to operate over and over on a man with a terrible dysmorphic disorder — to the point where his nose was falling off? What about the social workers and other authorities who allowed an obviously mentally ill man to be the primary caretaker for three young children, without even so much as an investigation?   This last doctor, Dr. Murray, was only the latest in a long line of professionals who at the very least didn’t live up to their very clear professional obligations in connection with Jackson. Social workers, psychologists, and physicians are among those who MUST adhere to professional ethics, and be forced to do so by their own ethics boards. Why does celebrity and money seem to top all?

Last but by no means least on my top ten “Grief on Film”:

10) Six Feet Under

Even though this multi-award-winning drama about the Fishers, a Los Angeles family of funeral directors, was a television show and not a film, for me, it was, and remains, the most accurate, authentic, multifaceted and complete portrayal of grief ever filmed, particularly effective in its portrayal of death as part of life. Created by Alan Ball, who wrote American Beauty, Six Feet Under ran for five seasons, from 2001 to 2005, and can still sometimes be seen on HBO on demand, or rented. It’s well worth it. On one level, Six Feet Under is a family drama that deals intelligently with such issues as relationships, sex, religion, infidelity, sibling rivalry, and mental illness, but its brilliance stems from quite another level, namely its bold and daring focus on death and grief and its willingness to employ an inventive array of fictional techniques to illuminate the subject. Psychologically sophisticated, often surreal, with a strong measure of irony and dark humor, Six Feet Under regularly brings the world of the living in contact with the dead in ways that show how people actually deal with loss, as the dead taunt and/or comfort, explain and/or question, frighten and/or anger, and illustrates its complex, authentic characters’ interior monologues and psychological issues by exposing them as external dialogues. This technique has enormous emotional, philosophical, and metaphorical payoffs; I employed a similar approach with the ghost in my 2000 novel, Saving Elijah, which was inspired by my own experience of losing my son. Each Six Feet Under episode begins with a death –anything from a heart attack, to SIDS, to old age, to murder, to a pool accident—and that death sets the tone for the drama to come as each of the characters live and reflect on their own lives with the introductory death and preparations for the funeral service as a backdrop. Six Feet Under stars Peter Krause as Nate, the older prodigal son who returns after his father’s death to reluctantly become a partner in the family funeral business; Michael Hall as the gay, younger son David; Lauren Ambrose as the artist rebel daughter Claire; Frances Conroy as bewildered, stymied matriarch Ruth; and Richard Jenkins as Nathanial, the patriarch killed in the first episode who regularly returns as a ghost. Smaller but no less powerful roles are played by Mathew St. Patrick as David’s boyfriend Keith; Lilly Taylor as Nate’s first wife; the wonderful Rachel Griffiths as Nate’s second wife, Brenda Chenowith; Jeremy Sisto as Brenda’s bipolar brother, and many others. The last episode in which each character ultimately embraces life and finally death left me (and every Six Feet Under fan I’ve ever met) deeply moved and weeping. So many scenes remain with me, but I have to say that the entire show is worth watching just so one can feel the full measure of the last amazing sequence as daughter Claire rides away from Los Angeles to meet her life and her fate, and each character in turn does the same. The ending is the perfect coda to all that came before it. True genius.

Here are numbers 5 through 9 of my top ten Grief on Film list, originally published at www.opentohope.com 

5.) Ordinary People

       Based on the moving novel by Judith Guest, Ordinary People tells the heartbreaking, intensely real story of a seemingly happy upper class couple who have lost the older of their two sons in a boating accident. Grief is subterranean here, as it often is, and is complicated by long-standing familial dysfunction; these people cannot speak openly of their pain. Timothy Hutton plays the surviving teenage son, Conrad, who blames himself for his brother’s death and has attempted suicide. Mary Tyler More is extraordinary as the repressed mother, Beth, who always preferred Conrad’s brother and can’t support Conrad. And Donald Sutherland is deeply believable as the father, Calvin, trying to hold the family together. Only when Conrad begins to see a psychiatrist, played by Judd Hirsch, does the family’s carefully cultivated veneer of coping begin to crack. Ordinary People is an admirable and honest examination of how pretense yields to grief, and the complex and difficult emotions experienced by grief’s survivors.

6) The Door in the Floor

      This 2004 film is another that honestly examines a marriage breaking apart after child loss. Adapted from the first (and best) part of John Irving’s best-selling novel “A Widow for One Year,” the film is set in the affluent beach community of East Hampton, New York and takes place during one critical summer in the lives of famous children’s book author and artist Ted Cole, played by one of my all time favorite actors, Jeff Bridges, and his beautiful wife Marion, played quite effectively by Kim Basinger. The Cole’s once-sweet marriage has curdled in the aftermath of the tragedy of losing their twin teenage sons in a car accident, and their attempt to fill the void with a new child, now six-year-old Ruth, has been disastrous. Marion remains despondent and unable to mother the new child, and Ted has become a philandering alcoholic. Eddie O’Hare, a young man Ted hires to work as his summer assistant, becomes the couple’s pawn in the destructive game that has developed between them. I found this film deeply moving and devastating as a kind of cautionary tale, for its portrayal of the destructiveness that can occur in two people with no resources to cope with a tragedy of unbearable proportions. It’s hard to sympathize with these two, but I recognize in them the narcissism and self-absorption of grief, and when Marion takes all the photographs and negatives of their dead sons, I wept like a baby.

7) The Sweet Hereafter

      This somber, difficult film directed by Atom Egoyan, based on the 1991 novel by Russell Banks, is set in a small town in the aftermath of a school bus accident that has killed most of the town’s children.  Into this devastating scene descends a slick, big city, ambulance-chasing lawyer, played by Ian Holmes. He is a man pursued by the demons of losing his own daughter to drugs, and he visits each of the victims’ parents to stir up their anger and coax them to participa te in a class action lawsuit to profit from the tragedy. The case depends on the few surviving witnesses to say the right things in court, particularly Nicole, played by Sarah Polley (whose recent film Away from Her nearly made this list), who was sitting at the front of the bus and is now paralyzed. She accuses the driver of causing the accident, and all hope of receiving money vanishes. Everyone knows she’s lying, but only her father knows she is exacting revenge on him for having molested her.  With great performances against a bleak, somber landscape, the film isn’t for the faint of heart, but does a great job of depicting how grief searches for restitution, but can never really find it.

Under the Sand

     Francois Ozon’s “haunting” film Under the Sand stars the courageous British actress Charlotte Rampling, playing Marie, a professor of English Literature in a Paris university, happily married to Jean for twenty-five years.  When Jean disappears one day while the couple is sunbathing during their south of France vacation, Marie doesn’t know what happened to him, whether he left her for another woman, committed suicide, or drowned.  Unable to accept that he is gone, she still talks and thinks of him in the present tense. This beautiful, sad, languid film, in French with subtitles, makes artistic use of film language, camera angles, mirror doubles, and unforgettable ocean images, to help us understand Marie’s inner thoughts and feelings and depict the psychologically traumatizing effect of grief.  In its brutally honest portrayal of a woman confronting her identity, age, body, sexuality, emotions, and even her intellect, Under the Sand shows how grief forces total reexamination of the soul and spreads its tentacles into every aspect of a person’s life.

9.) The Big Chill

       Okay, so this 1983 film directed by Lawrence Kasdan is a quirky departure in the list of sober and difficult dramas I’ve compiled. Some may object to its inclusion over other more serious films, such as Polley’s Away from Her, Mark Foster’s Monster’s Ball, plus Reservation Road, Grace is Gone, Iris, Things We Lost in the Fire, One True Thing, Terms of Endearment, Iris, Night Mother and many more. I include it not only because it is one of my favorite films of all time, groundbreaking in its use of an ensemble cast, musical score, and many other ways, but mainly because it is that rare comedy that deals realistically with grief.  With a terrific cast including Glenn Close, Kevin Kline, William Hurt, Meg Tilly, and Jeff Goldblum, The Big Chill tells of a group of thirty-something former college friends who come together for a weekend of reconciliation and reflection after the shocking death of one of their own, Alex (Kevin Costner, in a role cut in the final take), who committed suicide in the home of physician Sarah and business executive Harold, where the weekend takes place. Alex had been living there with his young girlfriend, Chloë, while trying to figure out what to do with his life. Powerfully demonstrating the ripple effect of suicide on the survivors, the group turns to each other to try and figure out why Alex ended his life and explore what happened to the ideals of their youth.  Yes, the film doesn’t deal with “high grief” such as that with comes with the loss of a child, parent, or sibling, but The Big Chill beautifully demonstrates that friendship and humor can be healing, and the scene of Sarah crying alone in the shower, within the context of the rest of the film, is a potent reminder of the loneliness of grief.  

3) In the Bedroom

In the Bedroom is a terrific but brutally frank film about a marriage crumbling in the face of child loss, probably the most honest cinematic portrayal of the subject I have ever seen. This multi-award winning drama directed by Todd Field centers on an ordinary middle class couple in Maine called the Fowlers, Matt and Ruth, played with bravery by Tom Wilkenson and Sissy Spacek, whose son Frank is killed by the violent ex-husband of the older women he loves, played by Marissa Tomei.  The couple’s anger in this case is centered on the failure of the justice system to appropriately deal with the killer, but the film does a remarkable job of portraying how the self-absorption and anger of grief can erode the very foundations of a marriage, no matter what the circumstances.

4.) Sophie’s Choice

Based on William Styron’s magnificent novel of the same title, directed by Alan J. Paluka, Sophie’s Choice centers on a beautiful Polish immigrant and Auschwitz survivor named Sophie, played by Meryl Streep, and her mad, Auschwitz-obsessed lover Nathan, played by Kevin Kline.  They share a boarding house with Stingo, the film’s narrator, played by Peter MacNicol, a young writer from the south who travels to post-World War II Brooklyn and befriends the couple.  Through the course of the film, as Sophie reveals to Stingo pieces of her devastating history, Stingo falls in love with Sophie and in his earnest naïvety begins to believe he can save her. I include Sophie’s Choice in my list because while the film has a broad historical significance and is about much in addition to grief, Meryl Streep’s Oscar-winning performance as the inconsolable Sophie is so deep and accurate, nuanced and real, that the film’s power as an illuminator of grief cannot be denied.  So much of this film is indelibly embedded in my consciousness, but I particularly want to mention the final scene, during which Stingo reads from Nathan’s book of Emily Dickinson poems, “Ample Make this Bed.”   

Originally posted on www.opentohope.com

Grief is both the thematic underpinning and the overarching aura in this low key, but absorbing and powerful film.  Although “The Visitor” is humanistic and realistic, memories of the dead loom over the characters here like silent watchful ghosts. Written and directed by Tom McCarthy, “The Visitor” explores issues of identity and place, belonging and connection, as well as immigration and other post 9/11 issues, but it primarily revolves around a bereaved economics professor named Walter Vale, played by Richard Jenkins, the subtle actor who so memorably played the ghostly Fisher father in my favorite television series of all time, “Six Feet Under.” Jenkins literally inhabits the character, and while the circumstances of the wife’s death are never specified, he carries the weight of grief in his hunched shoulders and furrowed brow, in his every moment, movement and nuance.

When circumstance forces Vale to present a paper at NYU, he finds a pair of young, undocumented squatters at his long unused Village apartment, Tarek, a Syrian musician and his Senaglese girlfriend, Zainab.  He begins a kind of comeback, as a warm and paternal relationship develops between him and Tarek, and when Tarek introduces him to the New York City jazz scene. Particularly powerful is a scene in which this balding white man joins in an African drumming circle in Washington Square Park, and the scenes between Vale and Tarek’s mother, who arrives when Tarek is detained by the authorities.  This woman is also burdened by grief over the death of her government-murdered Syrian husband, and the relationship is believable and adult, the rare vision of an astute director who although young understands these two grieving people who reach out to each other.

“The Visitor” is memorable for its deep understanding that the journey back from grief is composed of small, often unexpected steps rather than a giant leap, but also for its remarkable embrace of life in all its complexity, ambiguity, and possibility. 

This post was originally published on www.opentohope.com

A few months ago, my husband and I saw Danny Boyle’s ingeniously plotted Oscar-winning film Slumdog Millionaire. It mesmerized and horrified me with its gritty, realistic portrayal of the plight of India’s slum orphans as seen through the eyes of eighteen year old Jamal, whose poverty stricken childhood provides him with the answers that help him win 20 million rupees on India’s version of “ Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.” And then came the last fifteen minutes.  Now I like a Bollywood (or Hollywood) musical as much as the next person.  But in the context of this disturbing film, I found the end—a romantic wrap up and rousing dance number—strangely out of place.  This is how I usually react to feel-good endings tacked on stories purporting to be about grief.  We who’ve taken the grief journey know there can be light within it, but to suggest that it’s easily or quickly found, as many novels and films do, negates the potential for real human growth after tragedy, and contributes to the delegitimizing way we deal with other people’s bereavement. As I wrote in my novel, “Saving Elijah,” “The miracles (that come with grief) are of the deepest truest kind, because those miracles have to do with the giving and the cherishing of our blessings rather than the getting of them or the asking for them.  Miracles of friendship and forgiveness, hope and peace and faith, can always be found by those willing to search, can be found even in the darkest of packages.”

       With that in mind, I wrote a piece for www.opentohope.com on the ten films that I think best illuminate grief without stereotyping, sugarcoating or sentimentality and thus, like all true works of art, tell some real truth about the human condition.  Here’s the first one:

1) The Savages

Written and directed by Tamara Jenkins,”The Savages”is a nuanced, closely observed film about a middle-aged brother and sister reckoning with their guilt, responsibility, and ambivalent feelings when their long estranged father develops vascular dementia and has to be placed in a nursing home.  Funny and tragic, with amazing performances by the gifted Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney as siblings Jon and Wendy, with incredible work by Philip Bosco as their father, Lenny,The Savages lacks a single false moment. It fully and believably conveys complex characters and their tragic situation without trying to impose closure, false hope or catharsis. The film is particularly notable for its frank depiction of the messiness of grief, which itself springs from the complexity and messiness of human relationships. For all its tragedy, it manages to achieve real moments of grace in the only way grace can be achieved in such situations, in small moments of mercy and discovery, with bruising honesty, comedy, pathos, and irony.

More grief on film to come  

These photos were taken by my friend Luc Hardy, adventurer and all around great Frenchman.  For more of Luc’s wonderful photos, go to his website.

I’m pleased to report that Perigee, a respected online literary magazine, has published my essay, “Kissing Stanley.” This is “creative non-fiction,” and even though it’s about a very small event in my life that happened a very long time ago, I stand by its significance. I’ve changed some of the names to protect the innocent, the guilty, and the dead.  Here’s a teaser.  For the rest of the essay, follow the link at the end:

KISSING STANLEY                                           FRAN DORF

The biggest, baddest cooties in my whole high school belonged to Stanley Gluck, and I was simply not going to kiss him. I had turned seventeen that December, my friend Merry and I had spent the previous summer practicing oral sex on bananas, and I’d already had actual sex with one boy, but I had my standards. If I kissed Stanley Gluck, I’d be tainted with his cooties and no matter what the consequences of not kissing Stanley, I wasn’t going to do it.  

It wasn’t that Stanley was ugly, or fat, or smelled, or had obvious canker sores; he may have been a rather good looking young man, even if he had a cartoonish triangular head.  But it’s one of those unfortunate facts of high school that some get singled out for universal derision, often for reasons that aren’t necessarily clear. Other than the triangular head, Stanley’s main offense—and the reason I was so dead set against kissing him—was that he talked like a professor, and not just any professor, but some upper crust Wasp professor with a pole up his butt. We all spoke American teenage vernacular of the groovy anti-establishment era, and there was Stanley with his peculiar, patrician affectation, enunciating each syllable to within an inch of its life, using odd, formal sentence structure, and speckling his speech with ten dollar words that no one our age used, like “impertinence,” and “erudite,” and obsequious.” As in, “Mr. Shis-sler, Char-lie is sleeping in the back of the classroom. I simply cannot fathom why you would tolerate such impertinence!”

To continue, click here to go to Perigee, then click on “Non-fiction.”

I’m taking a break from the election (Please!  Please!  When will it be over?) to announce that my poem immortalizing my beloved pooch, Molly, has just been published in June Cotner’s DOG BLESSINGS. See the poem below, and here’s the link to June’s website where you can buy the book and read bios of all the contributors. (You can also get the book in the usual other places.) This little book is a sweet compilation of “Poem’s, Prose, and Prayers Celebrating Our Relationship with Dogs.” Divided into sections including “A Dog’s World,” “Puppies,” “Our Bond,” “Devotion,” “Aging Gracefully,” “Partings,” “Reflections,” and “Prayer’s, Blessings, and Inspiration,” the book includes work by wonderful dog loving poets from all over the country. A great gift for a dog lover…. Really!  

Below left: This serious (although very cute) dog posing with the book is June’s.  

Below right:  Whereas that extraordinary dog below is Molly and her friend Huddie. (Molly’s the chocolate)

WHAT? YOUR DOG DOESN’T TALK?

Mine does. Mine talks a blue streak.

Has a full English vocabulary, colloquial and formal,

uses simple and complex sentences,

and muscular prose,

accompanied by a full range of gestures, tricks and expressions.

Grammatically iffy sometimes, but always deeply felt.

A fine sprinkling of Italian and Yiddish, too.

Here is a sampling:

·      Welcome to our house. I’m Miss Molly. See. It says so on my chair.

·      Mom, can you believe it? This guy won’t get out of the car. He thinks I look fierce. Ha. Ha. Ha.

·      I prefer THIS chaise lounge (chair, rug, hole) right now, and if I turn around three times first, it’ll be even more perfect. Ain’t life grand?

·      I’m really, REALLY sorry, Mom. I didn’t feel well.

·      Move over, would you? And by the way, I was here first.

·      I’ll come when you show me the goods.

·      Okay then, if I lie down and put my face on the floor between my paws, will you PLEASE give me some?

·      Are you upset, Mom? Here. Let me love you . . . put my head on your thigh . . . lick your face . . . rub your nose . . . put my paws around your neck . . . make you laugh with a brilliant antic. Or we can just sit here, if you want.

·      Are you talking AGAIN about what a great dog I am? Talk on, and I’ll listen and thump.

·      Ummmm. Get a load of these lilacs . . . carrion . . . goose (horse, dog, rabbit) poop . . . new mown grass . . . fish . . . birds . . . air . . . the weird smell in the hallway. Life is delicious, and smells SOOOOOO great.

·      Okay. If I can’t come, I’ll just wait here until you get home.

·      Oooooh! I just LOVE it when you brush me . . . tickle my ears . . . rub my belly . . . my hind quarters . . . that place on my back . . . no, not there! THERE!

·      Ahhhhhhh! This is the life.

Readers, I’m quite a busy girl these days, so I haven’t had as much time to offer my Bruised Muse musings as regularly as I had been doing.  Today I’m going to cheat a little, and offer a reader’s comment in this space, with only the following as a brief introduction.  People everywhere keep trying to come up with analogies from books and film and television to describe McCain/Palin world. 

I personally feel either I’ve entered “1984,” complete with double think and double speak, or perhaps as if I’m stuck in the room with crazy General Jack Ripper from “Dr. Strangelove” perseverating on those crazy Rooskies and our precious bodily fluids.   Matt Damon feels as if Sarah Palin potentially being President is like a bad Disney movie. On the Huffington Post, Jake Tapper of ABC News compared the whole McCain/Palin campaign to a Saturday Night Live routine.  Gail Collins wonders who the candidate of the week is, and compares whoever he is to “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”.  Bruised Muse Reader Michael wrote this:

Watching and listening to McCain/Palin reminds me of an old storyline I read as a kid in the Superman comics, of all things. Every once in a while, Superman would go to a planet called Htrae (earth backwards)where all actions and words were opposite of those on earth. Their version of Superman looked more like Frankenstein. What we considered good, they considered bad, and so forth. This planet was called, appropriately, Bizzaro World.

In order to keep a steady, sanity check in the midst of the constant stream of McCain/Palin lies and obvious disingenuousness, combined with the fact that certain people are actually swallowing this garbage, I can only chalk this up to the fact that Bizzaro World exists on our planet and in our country.

Dr. Strangelove.  1984.  Bad Disney Movie. Invasion of the Body Snatchers.  Saturday Night Live Skit. Superman Comics Bizzaro World.  Readers, let’s come up with some more bizzaro world analogies.  It won’t change anything, but it’ll make us feel better.