Grace is Gone
by Rob Smith ~ May 27th, 2008. Filed under: .
As much as small films tend to get lost in the shuffle of the holiday release schedule’s Oscar lead-in, and this film certainly did, the shorter DVD window for the very same films now offers only a second chance to be lost in the shuffle. And it has again. No one will be talking about Grace is Gone this week as it is released on DVD. The boys will be talking about complaining about Indy 4 and the girls are all already focused on Sex and the City. Even I wouldn’t have been thinking about it had I not gotten a screener DVD.
Winner of the Waldo Salt Screenplay Award and the Audience Award for dramatic films at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, Grace is Gone is writer/director James C. Strouse first feature in the hyphenate role. The film tells the story of a former soldier, who was discharged because of bad eyesight, who takes his two young daughters on a road trip from Minnesota to Florida in lieu of telling them that their mother was killed in action. It’s a leap and a bound better than Strouse’s previous effort, a script called Lonesome Jim that was directed by Steve Buscemi, but that’s not saying much at all.
The story begins normally enough, getting to meet Stanley (John Cusack) at his home appliance job, and the girls, Heidi (Shélan O’Keefe) and Dawn (Gracie Bednarczyk), as Grace (Katie Honaker) leaves a message on the answering machine. It’s almost a Rockwellian setting, aside from an awkward try at double entendre while Stanley is at a military wives support group. Then the gut punch comes. Grace is gone, of course. The set up of the chaplain knocking on the door has lost all meaning after Saving Private Ryan and ought to be retired from cinema language, but it’s one of those first act clichés that you just have to get used to dealing with.
During the ensuing road trip, ostensibly one last moment of happiness for the girls before they find out, Stanley’s problem becomes apparent: he doesn’t know how to talk to or deal with his children. He doesn’t know how to tell them about their mother, but that’s a hard one for anyone. Stanley can barely manage basic communication with them, and it’s a strain on his already overloaded mind. There are minor bits here and there about Heidi reaching puberty and doing the stupid things you tend to do as you reach puberty that have to be dealt with along the way, but they are in passing. He deals with them like a solider, doing without thinking. The quiet moments are the hardest, and a road trip is nothing but down time. But thats really the only source of conflict on offer, and it’s hard to say it was enough to hang the film on.
The screenplay is not necessarily the failing here, however. Nor is it particularly Strouse’s direction, though it’s seemingly not his strong point, or any of the actors. The problem is, really, that the trailer gave away too much of the film. I didn’t discover anything important about the story that I didn’t already know from having seen the trailer. The only new point of intrigue is just how long Stanley can go in avoiding both the truth and a nervous breakdown. Even that can easily be figured out with a very basic knowledge of screen story pace. I liked the film, but I found my mind wandering too often and that’s the cardinal sin of a film, not keeping the viewer engaged throughout.
Buy it from Amazon.com.