This movie won the Audience Award for dramatic film at Sundance 2007 (and a screen writing award), but I found it to be the most disappointing and shallow of the films I saw at the festival. John Cusack gives a great performance as Stanley, a father who's trying to figure out how to tell his two daughters (8 and 12) that their mother has been killed in the Iraq War. The movie is a big-time tearjerker, but aside from the broad-stroke melodrama, I found it to be emotionally vacant.
We're never given any real indication of what's going on in Stanley's head. At one point, his hippie dropout brother (Stanley is a conservative war supporter) provides some helpful exposition about Cusack and his late wife, but the writer/director never seems to have heard of the "show, don't tell" rule. The only concrete demonstrations of Stanley's distress we ever get are a series of shots of him staring into space. We never find out if Stanley's political beliefs have been challenged (or strengthened) by his experience, or whether his belief that his wife died fighting a just cause made it any easier (or harder) to cope with his loss.
In fact, the movie seems to have decided to portray Stanley's emotional confusion by not having him express any emotion at all, and the only insight we gather is that it's really, really, really, really, really hard to tell your children that their mother has died.
And in the end, any tears generated are not due to any particular skill in writing or directing, but simply because of the audience's reaction to how horrible it is for ANY parent to have to tell their young children that their other parent has died. To me, that's a cheat; the movie doesn't provide any sort of insight into Stanley's feelings and relies on the audience to provide all the emotion.
Cusack supplies a fine performance with the limited material he's been given (as do the two daughters), but this movie doesn't supply much else besides cheap tears. Watch for it to become a monster hit and pick up a basket of Oscar nominations.
We're never given any real indication of what's going on in Stanley's head. At one point, his hippie dropout brother (Stanley is a conservative war supporter) provides some helpful exposition about Cusack and his late wife, but the writer/director never seems to have heard of the "show, don't tell" rule. The only concrete demonstrations of Stanley's distress we ever get are a series of shots of him staring into space. We never find out if Stanley's political beliefs have been challenged (or strengthened) by his experience, or whether his belief that his wife died fighting a just cause made it any easier (or harder) to cope with his loss.
In fact, the movie seems to have decided to portray Stanley's emotional confusion by not having him express any emotion at all, and the only insight we gather is that it's really, really, really, really, really hard to tell your children that their mother has died.
And in the end, any tears generated are not due to any particular skill in writing or directing, but simply because of the audience's reaction to how horrible it is for ANY parent to have to tell their young children that their other parent has died. To me, that's a cheat; the movie doesn't provide any sort of insight into Stanley's feelings and relies on the audience to provide all the emotion.
Cusack supplies a fine performance with the limited material he's been given (as do the two daughters), but this movie doesn't supply much else besides cheap tears. Watch for it to become a monster hit and pick up a basket of Oscar nominations.