Demolition

Synopsis: Davis (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a young investment banker who loses his wife, the daughter of his boss (Chris Cooper), in a tragic car crash, an event that triggers a major re-valuation of his hitherto unquestioned life. In doing so he meets Karen (Naomi Watts), a customer service representative of a small vending machine company, and her 15-year-old son, Chris (Judah Lewis) and starts to find a way out of his self-created existential prison.

Jake Gyllenhaal has a fondness for playing troubled, if not downright disturbed, characters and he is well served by the latest film from Canadian director Jean-Marc Vallée who continues to add to his impressive C.V (his most recent additions have been Dallas Buyers Club in 2013 and Wild in 2014) with this rather unfortunately titled but engagingly accomplished film.

The title is unfortunate because it leads one to expect a SFX-laden action movie when it is in fact a poetic black comedy about a distraught man so spiritually constipated that following a cue from his father-in-law (a winning performance from Chris Cooper) he feels that he must pull himself apart physically in order to find himself. Of course he cannot do this in reality so he works by analogy, starting with his fridge and ending up bull-dozing his architect-designed home (surely a painful sight to anyone living in humbler digs) as he searches for something true in the never-ending parade of illusions that is his life. In the meantime he falls in with a kindred spirit in the form of dope-smoking Karen and her rebellious son (in what is the film's only really questionable move Vallée takes the opportunity with this character to backtrack to his 2005 film, C.R.A.Z.Y.)

Bryan Sipe's screenplay, despite its essentially dark subject matter, is off-beat enough to be dryly amusing without going overtly quirky whilst Vallée gives it a judicious visual form and keeps the tone light. It is a testament to the director's skill and Gyllenhaal's winning performance that we accept the conveniently redemptive resolution with its simple excision of the Karen character from the narrative.

The film was generally panned on release in North America and is getting a belated limited theatrical release in Australia but if you appreciate Vallée’s films or, one might suggest, those of Michel Gondry and especially if you follow Jake Gyllenhaal’s work, Demolition is a film to seek out.

 

 

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