Review: Demolition

Though problems the size of fault lines pervade nearly its entirety, there is something strangely compelling about Demolition, which stars Jake Gyllenhaal as a man in crisis following the death of his wife.

Davis Mitchell (Gyllenhaal) has the beautiful house and the beautiful wife (Julia, played by Heather Lind). He has a cushy job working in the Manhattan investment firm co-founded by his father-in-law Phil (Chris Cooper), who is not particularly fond of his daughter's husband. He's a slimeball at the office, which makes him great at his job, and slightly less of a slimeball at home where the exasperated Julia is constantly leaving Post-It notes reminding him of tasks he never gets around to doing. It's a shell of a life and he comes to realise just how hollow it all is when he's suddenly widowed.

Davis goes back to work immediately after his wife's funeral, much to the surprise of his co-workers and Phil who takes him aside, notes how they both keep their emotions in check, and advises, "If you want to fix something, you have to take everything apart. Figure out what's important, what'll make you stronger. You have to examine everything, then you can put it all back together." Davis, already fascinated by noticing things he never saw before (or maybe he saw them but never noticed, he muses), takes Phil's advice to heart. Everything is ripe for dismantling - whether it be the fridge at home, the computer at work, or even his marriage to Julia, which is represented by their glass-and-concrete house in White Plains.

Did he ever know her? She always said he didn't pay attention. Did he ever really love her? He can't even pretend to cry at her funeral, so maybe he never loved her at all. It was just easy to marry her. He shares all this and more with the Champion Vending Company in a series of wincingly candid letters that began as a complaint about a bag of Peanut M&Ms being stuck in the hospital vending machine and quickly turned into a peculiar form of self-analysis. Except these letters are not being sent into the void, there's someone in customer service actually reading them and that someone turns out to be Karen Moreno (Naomi Watts), a cannabis-smoking single mother having an affair with her boss and who is struck enough by Davis' epistolary outpourings of emotions that she not only begins stalking him during his commute but also phones him in the middle of the night to offer sympathy.

Karen is as cuckoo as Davis, a fact that her rebellious, smart and sexually confused young son Chris (an impressive Judah Lewis) is quick to point out to the stranger who's suddenly staying over and joining them at the dinner table. Davis and Chris subsequently bond, with the classic rock-loving latter even providing Mr. Big's track "Free" as the musical accompaniment to the former's dance through the streets of Manhattan. The film, already on tenterhooks with its heavy-handed symbolism and debatably admirable whimsical and quirky approach to the processing of grief, completely implodes in the final stretch. Yet for all the narrative recklessness that abounds in that third act, Demolition manages to not feel contrived and disingenuous in its depiction of a privileged white male experiencing first world problems.

Director Jean-Marc Vallée and Gyllenhaal deserve the credit for imbuing Demolition with its oddly mesmeric quality. Vallée has proven himself adept at extracting natural and emotionally authentic performances from his actors - Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto in Dallas Buyers Club, Reese Witherspoon and Laura Dern in Wild - and his stylistic choices are off-kilter and yet serve the individual scenes and the overall tale so well. Having either bulked up (Southpaw) or slimmed down (Nightcrawler) in his most recent work, Gyllenhaal - devoid of such tricks and crutches here - turns in a superb performance that does not lack for heart or humour. What's particularly noteworthy about the actor's rendering of Davis is how he remains a prick par excellence throughout the film even when his near-sociopathic lack of empathy is tempered by film's end.

Demolition

Directed by: Jean-Marc Vallée

Written by: Bryan Sipe

Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Naomi Watts, Chris Cooper, Judah Lewis, C.J. Wilson, Polly Draper, Debra Monk, Heather Lind