Avenue Pictures, Ananta Productions, Metalwork Pictures,
Garrett Hedlund, Richard Jenkins, Jessica Brown Findlay, Anne Archer, Jennifer Hudson, Jessica Barden, Terrence Howard, Amy Adams, Daniel Sunjata, Sterling Jerins
Jonathan (Garrett Hedulnd) is a Los Angeles based musician who travels home to New York because his estranged father, (Richard Jenkins) has decided to take himself off life support where he’s dying of cancer. The family including Mom (Anne Archer) and his sister, really can’t accept that he is really going to die. He was given six months to live over 10 years ago and beat the odds. The range of emotions the family has to face from each of the family members is wildly different. To add to the problem Jonathan and his father have not seen each other in many years, and his denial was helped by the friendship of a young lady in the same hospital who is dying of bone cancer, and the friendship they build as they bond to each other is touching. This certainly cries for the creation of a new category “Tear-jerker” as that is truly what this remarkable movie is.
This is truly a tear-jerker, and one that is very hard to watch, but extremely worthwhile. It is difficult to watch because with the R rating, they can take us through the whole range of feelings this poor family has to go through. There are many question raised and each one is fully answered as we delve through this film. There are so many characters and dynamics and even though it is not overly slow paced, the development of each character was really well explained. We learned where they came from, and why they feel what they feel, and all the actors are able to pull the heart strings as their feeling vary from scene to scene as they must face what will happen in two days. The clock ticks very slowly as we go through the many farewells and last goodbyes as the characters really put forth a fantastic performance. This kind of feels like a play in some way, as it does have a lot of dialog and only a few settings, but the motion picture really adds to the story in a huge way. It’s very well done, and unless you are facing or have recently faced the untimely death of a love one, which would make this hit too close to home, I highly recommend this for adults and older teens. This is an extremely well done story and an great life lesson that we all need to see. Though it feels sometimes like we’re too close to the family and should give them some space, it is very highly moving and you should see it.
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