After the mammoth success of the collaboration with his father, Eugene Levy, Dan Levy has a debut directorial venture titled ‘Good Grief’ currently streaming on Netflix after its limited release. Grief strikes a man in the most unusual, uncanny manner. The stages are the same, but the process is different. Emotions are the same, but the channel is different. In this love story, Dan explores the trenches of grief after losing a loved one.
‘Good Grief’ feels like a know-how-to-guide to cope with grief, but Dan Levy’s stellar writing and his love for the craft of storytelling never show away, but hold our hands and take us through the dark alleys of betrayal, grief, friendships, and pain. It is the story that revolves around Marc, played by Dan Levy, who is in a successful marriage with his husband, Oliver, played by Luke Evans. On Christmas Eve, Oliver meets with an accident, changing the trajectory of his partner and Marc’s friends’ lives.
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‘Good Grief’ Lives To Relieve Pains Of Past And A Murky, Undefined Future
Image Courtesy: Netflix
Dan Levy’s directorial debut, ‘Good Grief’, is a win in many ways. While the tragedy in LGBTQIA+ romance continues, the language is universal for the portrayal of grief. It transcends any boundary of identity to show us the naked face of grief. No one knows about grief; no one learns about it; it is not a one-size-fits-all situation. Marc, played by Dan, is also unaware of how to cope. There are his best friends, Sophie, played by Ruth Negga, and Thomas, played by Himesh Patel. Nothing can fill a void of love lost, even the most loved ones.
Pain lingers from the very frame after the accident with Marc’s husband, Oliver. There are close-ups of Marc. Grief has no face. It bores various masks. It is a masked persona donning masks that live hidden until we go on a quest to unravel them. His friends try to cut his pain with love by setting him up on an app.
Sophie asks him which song his slideshow should have. While the noise of grief varies in decibels, For a person grieving, the noise becomes the song of their lives. Sometimes, it is a silent whisper. Sometimes, it is a soothing wind. Sometimes, there is a jarring noise that one tries to escape from, forgetting the inevitability of its permanence. He does it too as he meets Theo, who later becomes an awakening, a soothing wind, making him realize the inevitability of the permanence of the pain.
Marc is also running away, running away from acknowledgment. Finding a distraction. He succeeds as well. Some hidden truths come to the surface, which angers him, leaving him confused about whether to soothe the fresh wounds or rip the bandage off of the one that he never knew existed. Marc is confident yet timid.
He is fiercely independent, but the dependence comes from an innate sense of loss. The ugly layers of it haunt him. So, he takes his companions on a journey of healing while mothering the wounds of the present, as some past ones are about to be ripped open.
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Marc Grieves On Losing The Love. Not Only That Of The Lover But Also The Beloved Ones
With Sophie and Thomas, as a gift of gratitude, Marc arrives in Paris for the weekend. Ironically, the breeding ground of romance is the remainder of a graveyard for Marc. His financial advisor tells him that Oliver possesses a flat in the city of love, only to find out that the “love” is not his husband.
Oliver broke the rules of an open marriage. The thing with homosexual relationships is that there is the predicament of the absence of a predecessor. A loving relationship. The next generation of that love is as lost as the bygone ones. But human greed and inquisitiveness are so noxious that they are hell-bent on exploring the hurt, again escaping the possibility of it in love. However, in this exploration of such a complex feeling, we forget the simplicities of other relationships, marring them with the ghost of a romantic expedition.
Sophie and Thomas also carry baggage. one an avoidant attacher, and the other an anxious one. Both face hiccups in their respective relationships. Sophie has a walking green flag, but his nature threatens her existence. Here comes Dan’s minimalist writing, where even with the non-existence of a background, we connect the dots. Also, credit goes to Ruth’s vivaciousness and her vulnerability.
Thomas feels that he is the reason for the unsuccessful string of relationships, including one with Marc. So, he reflects on his disappointment in the failure of the relationship every time Marc falters. It happens when the two first meet Oliver’s “love,” Luca. One of the most interesting parts of the film is that one is yearning for a resolution, but it does not provide it to the viewers. It remains open-ended.
Marc goes out with Theo. They sit in a restaurant while they reveal the lies that they have told them. Confrontation with grief. The most difficult one of all. It manipulates us to mask more from the beginning.
During the process, we forget that while everyone cannot see the mask, grief has been the enabler, so when we come face-to-face with it, we do what we do best: escape. But Theo is an anchor. He holds Marc. Theo shields him while he confronts it. He plays a dual role. Pushing and protecting. While putting him in the most uncomfortable positions, he also cushions him with a soothing kiss and a secure embrace.
After coming face-to-face with his grief, Marc feels liberated. But the suspension of belief gets betrayed again as the friends have pains of the past that haunt them. Again, sorrys, love yous, but there is no concrete resolution. Thomas suggests that they have to get their s**t together. They do go on that journey. We never know if they succeed, but they try. They attempt. They heal.
But they stand in the face of adversity while doing so, and whether they win or lose, they stay. Marc not only loses his loved one, but he finds his beloved while making peace with the fact that his lover took the love with him. The love is widowed. But there is no escape. It is etched.
As in the film, there is a line, “To avoid sadness is to avoid love.” Grief withers. But it leaves traces of that sound and touch. As Chimamanda Ngozi writes, “Grief is about language, the failure of language, and the grasping of language.”
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