Elizabethtown by Cameron Crowe

Films are exits from reality. They allow you to escape into your own fantasy—but they can offer more than just that. Films are a way of broadening our perspectives and of learning things that we have yet to experience. Without a doubt, Cameron Crowe’s Elizabethtown helps us understand what it means to deal with loss and discover who you are. Elizabethtown is a coming-of-age, (slight) drama, romantic-comedy (though mostly comedy) of a young man who doesn’t quite understand death, or even life.

The story follows Drew Baylor (Orlando Bloom), a young man who feels like he just made the biggest mistake of his life by costing his company nearly one billion dollars with a failed shoe design. With this loss, he loses his girlfriend, his job, and hope in himself, causing him to want his own life to end. While planning the ends of his life, he learns his father had passed away while visiting his hometown of Elizbethtown, Kentucky. On his way there, Drew meets Claire Colburn (Kirsten Dunst), a young, energetic flight attendant who helps Drew understand the death of his father and his own grasp on life. When Drew reaches Elizabethtown, he doesn’t know how to act towards his extended family because he never truly had a chance to get to know them. Figuring everyone in the town knew his own father better than he did, Drew gives everyone his condolences and receives none in turn. When he visits the funeral home, Drew enters a small chapel filled with his family and gives them all his consolation. Afterwards, his cousin tells him that they should give their condolences to Drew. Drew’s situation is not uncommon: sometimes we may feel like we have to offer support to others, when in fact, we are the one’s in need of support.

Credit: fanpix.net

As Drew stays in Elizabethtown, he begins to feel guilty for never having cultivated a relationship with his father. His biggest regret is the constant reminder of the road trip that he promised his father years ago, in which they planned to go from Oregon, where they live, to Elizabethtown. Director Cameron Crowe says that the movie is somewhat based on his own experience with his father’s passing. Cameron, too, never took the road trip he promised his father; neither Cameron nor Drew were able to get to know their fathers as adults.

Aware that the passing of his father is distressing, Drew lies to his sister about having cried because he feels guilty for not doing so. [SPOILER ALERT] After all the ceremonies, Drew takes a road trip with his father’s urn and spreads the ashes through all the places where they would have stopped on their road trip. Finally releasing his emotions, he becomes vulnerable and begins to cry.

Elizabethtown touches on loss, but mostly with the regret one may feel after a loss. It shows us that although losing a loved one is difficult and triggers a plethora of emotions, it also provides an opportunity to see life through a new perspective.

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