Falling to pieces
Demolition takes things apart, but leaves a centre that holds strong
Ihave no proof of this, but I’m pretty sure Canada’s top Quebec filmmakers are all using the same playbook. 1: Start small, and in French. 2: Make something English and mainstream, so Hollywood takes notice. 3: Go back to something more artsy, perhaps with Jake Gyllenhaal. 4: Go big.
Denis Villeneuve did this with Incendies, Prisoners, Enemy (with Gyllenhaal) and Sicario. Philippe Falardeau made Monsieur Lazhar, The Good Lie and is now at work on The Bleeder, which features Naomi Watts. And Jean- Marc Vallée gave us C. R. A. Z.Y. and Dallas Buyers Club. Demolition is his Gyllenhaal picture, with Watts costarring. His next big thing is Big Little Lies, for HBO.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Demolition is a little bit art- house, but it’s also grounded in a solid, simple story: What does a man do when he is suddenly cut adrift, unable to grasp the handholds of existence that keep us from spiralling out of control, maybe even out of our minds?
For Gyllenhaal’s character, investment banker Davis Mitchell, this quandary arises after ( in the very first scene) his wife is killed in a car crash. Davis somehow emerges without a scratch; all the blood on his clothes is hers.
It’s immediately clear that he has been knocked akilter by this event. He tries to buy some M&M’s from the hospital vending machine, but they get stuck. In most movies (and not a few actual lives) this would be an excuse to rain down violence on the device; instead, he writes several letters to the vending company, explaining ( just to be clear) his wife’s death, their lacklustre marriage, and his strained relationship with his father-in-law and boss (Chris Cooper).
And then, rather than simply refund his $ 1.50, the company’s customer service rep ( Watts) responds to him. By phone. In the wee hours of the morning. Several aborted meetings later, he and Karen have become unlikely friends, even though it’s clear neither of them knows where this is going, or has any particular hope that it evolve into something beyond the platonic.
Vallée is working from a script by Bryan Sipe, whose only other highprofile work to date was the unfortunate adaptation of the Nicholas Sparks novel The Choice. But he grew up doing demolition for his dad’s construction company in New Jersey; write what you know, son!
Davis becomes interested, then obsessed, with taking things apart. He starts with appliances (his leaky fridge, a coffee maker) and moves upward, until he is moonlighting as a homewrecker (the literal kind), and Cooper’s character is moving his prized grandfather clock out of his office for safekeeping.
The movie is smart enough not to hit us over the head with the parallels between disassembling a machine and dissecting the soul, but it’s also savvy enough not to stay mum on the subject. Says Davis in one of his moments of reflection: “Everything has become a metaphor.”
Eventually, the mild- mannered banker has become an adrenalin junkie, taking Karen’s teenage son (Judah Lewis) on a field trip to try out a gun and a bulletproof vest; fans of Kick-Ass will see where this is going.
Vallée keeps a loose hand on the tiller but he clearly knows where he’s going, and Gyllenhaal — an actor’s actor who takes interesting roles and then elevates them — really gets into the skin of his character, whether in stillness or ( more often) motion. The scene of him grooving through the streets of New York to Sweaty Fingers on his iPod is cinematic poetry.
And the film keeps unfolding as it unreels. Davis imagines he has a stalker, although the thing that troubles him most about this mystery character is that he ( or she) drives a station wagon. He keeps finding Post- it notes and other ephemera from his late wife, including one piece of paper that snaps the tragicomic mood into sharp focus. Vallée has crafted a film about things coming apart in which the centre holds. Demolition opens across Canada on April 8.
DEMOLITION IS A LITTLE BIT ART-HOUSE, BUT IT’S ALSO GROUNDED IN A SOLID, SIMPLE STORY.