“Demolition” Movie Review: Jean-Marc Vallée’s Portrait of a Widower Leveled by Grief
Jake Gyllenhaal portrays a widower who dismantles his life to process his grief
image credit: https://www.movieinsider.com/posters/296095
“Demolition”, directed by Jean-Marc Vallée, is a quirky dramedy that explores the complex landscape of grief, sudden loss, and emotional reconstruction. The film follows Davis Mitchell, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, a successful investment banker whose life is destroyed when he survives a car crash and his wife doesn’t.
In the hospital after the accident, he tries to get a pack of peanut M&Ms, but the bag gets stuck in the vending machine. He begins writing letters to the company about his unfortunate experience, requesting a refund, which becomes a numb outpour about who he is, what his life is, his wife. He admits that maybe he didn’t really know his wife, allowing room for mystery, as death is a vast unknown. The film expresses honestly how isolating grief can be—not knowing what to do, who to talk to, how to move forward.
“Haven’t you ever wanted to smash the shit out of something?”
After spotting an uprooted tree on the side of the road out his car window, Mitchell begins, quite literally, dismantling everything: a $2,000 cappuccino machine. His complaint letters had reached someone by then, Karen, a customer service representative and pothead played by Naomi Watts. She calls him at 2 AM. He proceeds to smash his old life to pieces, including his kitchen counter, which he destroys with a sledgehammer with Karen’s son. He throws a rock into his TV. He literally destroys his house.
“Repairing the human heart is like repairing an automobile,” his father- in-law and boss says to him. “You have to take everything apart, just examine everything — then you can put it all back together.”
The film captures the physical nature of loss, portraying grief as if it involved heavy beams, heavy machinery, a heavy effort to toss a piece of plywood into a garbage bin. Annoying and inscrutable— he dances weirdly in public and drives a tractor into the facade of his house.
Actress Noami Watts described the script as awkward and poetic. “This is just shiny stuff,” Mitchell says, when Karen compliments his house, but loss strips away attachments and possessions; his obsessive dismantling and destruction of his life mirrors his inner unraveling. Director Jean-Marc Vallée invites us into a raw world of chaos, wreckage, and life-altering sorrow, in which a man inhabits the uncomfortable liminal spaces of grief and finds hope and direction in new connections.
Critics admired the film for its sincerity and Jean-Marc Vallée’s sensitivity, but many felt that the symbolism was heavy-handed, as the metaphors are blunt, or “on the nose,” but grief feels like that, a touch too real, and Jake Gyllenhaal’s embodiment of mourning as an emotional wrecking ball resonates as poignant and true. Even how he screams and writhes on the floor when he steps on a nail in a house under construction is moving because he unleashes his pain.
This outlandish dark comedy about the devastating nature of grief is actually cathartic for that reason, so it might just hit the right note for being so blunt and physical.
Final Messages of the Dying
Will I Die in Pain?
