Sundance 2016 | Weeping With ‘Other People’

Watching a loved one die slowly is an experience I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. But I can recommend a really good movie about it. Writer/director Chris Kelly’s Other People tells the bittersweet, tearful story of a young man who moves back in with his family after his mother is diagnosed with terminal cancer. If you can resist the urge to ditch the theater halfway through this film and call your parents and scream out that you love them, you may find that it is a very funny, thoughtful movie about coping with imminent loss. What a beautiful idea, to try to illustrate such a difficult time, and what a tricky thing to get it even remotely right.

Jesse Plemons plays David, a gay television writer whose career has hit the skids, and whose relationship has just fallen apart at exactly the wrong time. Molly Shannon plays his mother, Joanne, and Bradley Whitford plays his father, Norman, who still can’t bring himself to talk about David’s homosexuality or even acknowledge that his son has boyfriends. Maude Apatow and Madisen Beaty play David’s sisters, but we don’t spend too much time with them because David doesn’t spend too much time with them; Other People is David’s story, and when he makes the encroaching death of his mother all about him, the movie does too.

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That’s not so much a criticism as a sad statement of fact: the death of a loved one is an awful experience and no matter how difficult it is for the afflicted, most of us have difficulty removing ourselves from their equation. Chris Kelly doesn’t shy away from the ugly despair and futile questioning that David goes through, nor does it ignore the impact his blinders have on the rest of his family. You watch his sisters repeatedly try to connect with him during what has to be the most difficult time of their lives as well, and you watch David pass on all their offers to focus on his own needs, and you watch their teenaged faces fall, and you get really, really depressed.

We still like David, though. Jesse Plemons is a remarkable performer in Other People, charming and utterly awkward, usually at the same time and for the same reasons. Although Kelly relies a little too heavily on Sacramento culture for throwaway gags (the supermarket tellers are slow! the gay bars are lame!), isolating his protagonist in a community that he intentionally abandoned in favor of faster, funnier company leaves David with little choice but to stay inside his own head. Look too closely in his eyes and you can see his brain quietly screaming.

Meanwhile, Molly Shannon gives a powerfully fragile performance. Dying from cancer is an unthinkable tragedy in real life, but too often in motion pictures it plays like a plot device. Chris Kelly’s human dialogue and Shannon’s sadly humorous portrayal makes Other People feel like an exception. Joanne’s deterioration is our way into the world of these characters, but she’s such a vital component of every scene – even when she isn’t present – that she feels more like the movie’s lynchpin than its inciting incident.

Other People isn’t the first movie about the death of a family member and it won’t be the last, because unfortunately this is a damn near universal experience. What matters isn’t that Kelly’s film breaks new ground (it doesn’t) but that it emerges as a fresh perspective on the whole emotional affair. Other People has a distinctive point of view, something relevant to say and a pleasing way to say it. Watching a wonderful person die and the toll it takes on their family isn’t (and shouldn’t be) easy, but Chris Kelly makes the experience meaningful.

Photo Courtesy of Sundance Institute

William Bibbiani (everyone calls him ‘Bibbs’) is Crave’s film content editor and critic. You can hear him every week on The B-Movies Podcast and watch him on the weekly YouTube series Most Craved and What the Flick. Follow his rantings on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.

 

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