Sometimes it isn’t about the death of a loved one that marks your journey in life, but the way that death lingers and colors everything you touch. That’s the difficult road that Daniel Levy’s character goes down in his feature-length writing and directorial debut, Good Grief. The Netflix film follows Levy’s Marc after his husband dies unexpectedly at the start of the film, and how he attempts to grapple with the loss in the following year. But Marc, like all of us, isn’t an island. It’s his friends Sophie and Thomas–complicated characters themselves–who attempt to usher Marc through his grief.
Much can be said about the film and Levy’s performance as both the main character and the writer/director. While his masterful skills are evident in this sad-yet-hopeful film, I can’t be the only one who saw themselves in another character entirely. In addition to Marc’s one-track minded grief, there’s Sophie’s self-sabotaging spirals and Thomas’s barely concealed loneliness. While there’s much to identify with here, it’s Thomas’s speech on the ferris wheel toward the end of the film that hit me the hardest.
The trio heads for Paris around the one year anniversary of Marc’s husband’s death. All the barely concealed stress and drama and heartache of the last year coalesce in dramatic fashion for the three friends. Just before they part ways at the end of the trip, they take a moment to reflect on the Roue de Paris ferris wheel. It’s at this moment that Thomas voiced the feelings that had clearly been plaguing him from the start of the film.
“It’s never me. And I don’t know why. Not just with you, it’s just not ever me. I’m never the one. It’s like people can smell it on me.”
With as little context as I can give, so as not to spoil it for the people who have yet to watch the movie, it’s about Thomas wanting to be loved, but never being the one who gets picked. So he watches on the sidelines and is happy for everyone else who finds someone, but worries why it doesn’t happen to him.
I can’t be the only one who relates so much to him in this moment. So many of us wonder what’s different about us. Why does everyone find love but us? So few movies have characters going through something like this, let alone explaining it so succinctly and emotionally. And much of this is due to Himesh Patel’s flawless performance. We can see that sadness surrounding him like a cloud through the movie.
We all relate to someone, right? Some might relate to the complicated nature of grief that Marc suffers through. Others might see themselves in the whirling dervish that is Sophie–an intense character (and great performance by Ruth Negga) in her own right. But us lonely hearts? Our souls meld with Thomas’s as we hope that eventually the universe will show us that we’re wrong about ourselves. That we needn’t have worried. That maybe we just aren’t the one yet.
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