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Reviewer: Pete Luisi-Mills
Grief has no timeframe—not only does it stretch on far longer than many realize, it has no definable end point or resolution. It goes away for a while, lies dormant, until a song comes on the radio, or a stranger with a certain brand of cologne walks by, and the pain comes roaring back in full force—often to the bewilderment of friends and loved ones, who feel helpless in the face of inconsolable sorrow. Having recently gone through this with someone myself, I can say there were at least two things that surprised me. One was the raw intensity of the grief itself; the other was the sheer number of details that attend the death of a human being, a hundred banal little things that suddenly take on great significance. Telemarketers call, asking for the deceased. Acquaintances ask sunnily how so-and-so is doing. The bank, the post office, the library, and every place the person frequented becomes another ordeal. Each last wrapping-up of affairs is emotionally exhausting—and often infuriating, because what is painful for the bereaved is sometimes annoying or inconvenient for others. Your life is falling apart, and the rest of the world is looking at its watch. Moonlight Mile is a film that not only understands grief, but families and romantic relationships as well. Here is a rare movie that when you listen to the characters talk, you say, “Yes, that’s right. That’s exactly how it is.” Moonlight Mile, which takes place in 1973, is the story of three people who are dealing with loss, and failing more often than they succeed. Mourning the death of Diana Floss, a college girl who was shot by a maniac while sitting in a diner, are her parents, Ben & JoJo Floss (Dustin Hoffman & Susan Sarandon), and her fiance, Joe Nast (Jake Gyllenhaal). They deal with the death in completely different ways, all of which will be familiar to anyone who has gone through this sort of thing. Ben spends all his time trying to make everyone else feel better, excusing even the tackiest behavior (he apologizes to someone for not having picked up the phone until the ninth ring). Ben jumps right back into work, and eagerly focuses on the plans he and Joe have made to work together (the day after the funeral, workmen are changing his sign to “Floss and Son”). JoJo, on the other hand, is merciless; as the three slump exhaustedly in the living room and discuss the day, no one escapes her barbed tongue. When Ben continually extols JoJo to “put herself in their shoes”, she shoots back, “We’re the ones who lost a daughter! Let them put themselves in our g-----n shoes!” JoJo has no patience for the fatuous comments and gestures of friends and family; she sits before the fireplace, tossing in all the books on grieving she has received (“funeral party favors”, she calls them). Joe, the fiance, seems to be in a kind of trance, barely able to respond, on the verge of a total breakdown. As Joe slowly emerges from numb shock, we begin to see that there are secrets about his relationship with Diana that he has not revealed to the parents. Though we don’t learn the secret until well into the film, we can see in his eyes that it’s corroding him. Joe is struggling with a new attraction to the local postal worker, Bertie Knox (that’s not the secret). Like Joe, Bertie Knox has lost someone she loved. She has been “helping out” at a local bar for the past three years while the owner (her boyfriend) is MIA in Vietnam. She is unwilling to accept that he is dead, and is afraid of her feelings for Joe. Joe is guilt-ridden about his attraction to Bertie, which he sees as betrayal of his fiancee’s family. Moonlight Mile starts out simply, with three people whose lives have been completely derailed in the wake of tragedy. The early scenes are filled with keenly observed small moments and sharp dialogue that never rings false. What surprised me was how genuinely...well, entertaining the film is. Though serious about grief, Moonlight Mile is never dour. It’s filled with humor, and romance as well—Silberling consistently tweaks the solemnity of the proceedings, never allowing it to become ponderous. Moonlight Mile could easily have degenerated into sappy contrivance in the hands of a less skilled director; it also could have gone the other way, and been unbearably somber and heavy-handed. What a pleasure it is to see characters who are allowed to feel more than a single emotion at a time. The performances are uniformly excellent. Sarandon is in her element as the sardonic JoJo, marinating in bitterness and alcohol, yet still able to show surprising tenderness to Joe and Ben. Hoffman is excellent as Ben, barely suppressing copious amounts of rage behind a forced smile until you can almost hear the bile eating away at him. And Jake Gyllenhaal, probably the best young actor working today (see Donnie Darko and Lovely & Amazing), is perfect as Joe, a young man straining under the weight of a secret, frantically trying to keep all the plates in his life spinning, convincing himself that he can make everyone happy. Moonlight Mile is one of very few films to accurately portray the complex emotions of personal tragedy, and for that reason alone I would highly recommend it, though it is more than that. It would be unfortunate if this film languished on DVD and video the way it did in theaters. This is not a depressing movie. It is equally enlightening and entertaining, and the best film I’ve seen in recent months. Editor’s note: Brad Silberling, the writer and director of Moonlight Mile, has based his story on autobiographical fact. In 1989, his girlfriend, TV actress Rebecca Schaeffer, was murdered by a crazed fan. In the following years, Silberling became very close to Rebecca’s parents. Silberling’s real-life tragedy brings authenticity to every frame of his film.
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