The Friend

The Friend is the newest film from Scott McGehee and David Siegel, based on an experimental, semi-autobiographical novel by Sigrid Nunez. Nunez had written the work in order to reach friends that she felt were in danger of committing suicide, and one of them did kill themselves during the writing process. You can sense a certain lived reality in the source material. That material is both a boon and a bane to the film, just as often serving to keep the film from being truly cinematic, while also allowing it to try unusual things in terms of structure and content.

Courtesy Bleecker Street

Telling a story about a professor, Walter, played by Bill Murray, who ends his own life, and Iris, a former lover and student of his who is now writing a biography of him and has committed her entire life to her career as a writing instructor. Iris is played by Naomi Watts, in a sensitive, funny and confused performance that allows you to see the complicated humanity. Into this equation comes a Great Dane named Apollo, who was abandoned when Walter first found him and cared for him. Now, Walter’s widow has given Iris the dog, but Iris lives in her dead father’s rent controlled, dog-unfriendly apartment.

Walter, you see, kept his lovers as friends, largely, or at least acquaintances, and his widow tells Iris “Apollo just misses Walter so much and Walter knew this would happen, knew I am not a dog person. I have to deal with this in my way. But, that dog knows something is wrong. How do you explain grief to a dog?” And that is the real thesis of the film, what is grief and how do we process it?

The film centers on Iris and Apollo in order to tell a story about coming to grips with the anger and resentment we harbor toward loved ones, and the damage they can do to us. It says that it is acceptable to feel negatively toward friends and family, that as humans we can be hurt and still love, and we can ignore signs of unhealthy expectations. In this sense, it is about coming to terms with toxicity.

Courtesy Bleecker Street

Iris, who is working with Walter’s daughter to dig through his old journals, notes, letters and emails to write the biography, grows fond of Apollo, who comes to represent something for her to care about. They seem to share their grief for Walter, more than most of the humans around them, but also something else. The dog represents a level of empathy that Iris has never known, and moreover, did not realize she desperately needed in her life.  While the story here is fairly simple, the emotions and intellectual complications are less so.

There are moments the film seems to be leaning on cliché, but this is partly due to the fact that what we are seeing is a story about a story. Iris and Walter, and Apollo, are not real characters but based on characters that happened to the person who is writing about them. Is this Nunez? A bit, but even there, it is not so clear. This is a film set in New York City but not the one found in Woody Allen’s works, nor the Safdie brothers. It is something more akin to what Nora Ephron evoked, yet without the cliched romances. Would Ephron ever have created the canine version of Wilson, from Cast Away?

Courtesy Bleecker Street

Indeed, there is a sense that this film is as much about work as grief, namely the hard work it takes to get through it. This is the same for animals as it is for people. This is about loss and love. There is a need to grow. There is a need to confront. There is a need to accept. And the film’s beautiful final moments, set in an idyllic cottage by the sea, provide the most visual splendor in the film. It is also the place where the film’s emotions and dark humor combine to create a nearly perfect ending.

The Friend opens in theaters nationwide on Friday April 4th.