The mind is wider than the sky – Emily Dickinson
The mouth moved between the two couples as the eerie background piano stomps and emerge with subtlety. I slouched back, unaware of the horrors and the questions to come.
I mean what the hell, this movie made me question my own mind.
If you’re still reading this now, you better go back and make yourself a hot tea and better watch that film now. Consider yourself warned, because it’s a really good story. One that’ll stick with you for a week or months tops.
A good mess
If the title did not give an impression that this is a hell of a confusing story, then wash your eyes because it’s gonna be a sore.
If you’re a fan of stories with plucked out narratives, an untrustworthy point of view, then this is for you. For us. And no, I’m not talking about Batman v Superman with that cluttered narrative and inconsistent characters that is worse than listening to a drunkard tell a bullsh*t story. Because unlike that, this has focus (and I like stories that has focus, i.e. A Quiet Place), that revolves around finding his own daughter after having an accident from a construction site. But more intriguingly, is beneath that desperate search, is the fear he had hidden. From himself.
It seems that focus is not always good, if it is magnified on the wrong object.
There were sequences in the movie that would make you question if what you believe previously still remain true given the evidence that was handed down to you now, and then a second after that, you’re gonna believe otherwise. But then there was this consideration that your point of view is unreliable, an alcoholic. But the story was well made in a way that the storyteller pulled you to root for Ray because one, he lost his family before (exhibit A, showing his previous wife losing them on car crash together with her unborn child), two the hospital that they were in kept insisting on the blood types of the patients (although this is understandable if there really is a dire need for a blood donor for a patient, which just further emphasizes the fabricated reality Ray was in), and they seem to be looking for a specific one, three small details were kept intact and consistent throughout the film like the “LL” lower level indicator on the Elevator, the dog that appeared in front of her daughter, the car being kept whole even the the hospital claimed that his car crashed, and four DOCTOR THERMAN WAS SKETCHY AF from the beginning of his dialogue. Yeeesh, evil doctors and their creepy one punch liners..
“That’s the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.” – Charles Bukowski
Alcoholism
Tell me, when was the last time you drank not because of peer pressure, but because you wanted to.. bury something? A problem maybe, pain, circumstances that you can’t seem to control but keeps happening to you over and over again until the only power you have and want to have is the bond and feeling attached with being numb and emotionless. That is alcohol. And that is Ray, at first (as you’ll see in the upcoming sequences) A normal human being dealing with normal problems, his downward marriage, and his recovery in alcoholism.
So as they took a pit stop to buy some coffee and batteries for his wife and daughter (respectively), a daunting feeling overcame him to mix some of that sweet sweet alcohol to his coffee. His friend, but also a traitor; because sometimes alcohol does not only bury things but also dugs deep into our heavily constructed barriers and gates. And maybe for Ray, it got way too deep that it buried the wrong cause.
Trauma and Hope
Hope is good as long as it does not run away from things. But rather improve on the things they intend to run from.
As Ray got deeper and deeper with his search with the help of the two policemen and a couple of confused doctors, a psychiatrist shed some solid ass light to the dark tunnel Raw was navigating through. An answer that was supposedly should’ve answered all of our questions.
What’s tough about this was that after the psychiatrist said that “The mind can sometimes create an alternate reality — a false reality — to shield itself from trauma,” the story fed you another plucked out narrative. The dog was real and he wasn’t imagining it, he did threw the stone on the dog. But Ray, was more than penetrated and offended of the accusation that he killed his own wife and daughter than the substance of what was the shrink was actually saying. What happened afterwards was the most excruciating ending I have watched for a while. You really empathized with the character, feel dumb for being sorry for him, and also angry for him being stupid. Until you realize that these things happens subtly in your own life, just not to this extreme.
If the brain registers an overwhelming trauma, then it can essentially block that memory in a process called dissociation — or detachment from reality. “The brain will attempt to protect itself,” – Darlene McLaughlin
What’s really scary about this story is that it could potentially happen to all of us. Because, after all, we’re all people. Feeling the same kind of emotions as the protagonist does. Fear, loss, pain, all of those things. What Ray gone through is not an overstatement of what a natural person could’ve also done in this temporary surface we call world. This reminded me of the film Joker in a way that the film resonates with you one way or another. If Joker wanted a platform for confidence as a coping mechanism for him to get through his suffering. Ray just wanted to run away from the pain.
This film does not give hope neither will give you a satisfaction. But rather would peer through the reality of mental health and the true capacity of the human mind, and how far it could bend until it’ll break. It ‘ll give you a satisfaction not because it’s good but rather it’s raw and closer to the truth. And nowadays, we’d rather feed ourselves with false sh*t rather than facing reality, and for that I’ll give this a solid 10/10.
P.S. I don’t really trust critics anymore. They’re unreliable af. I just think they rated this film so low and this story deserves more appreciation. And here’s an uno reverse card for making us feel bamboozled.
FILM LENSES 