Grace is Gone
What if we found out a loved one died in battle? What if it tore us up? Worse yet, what if we can’t bring ourselves to tell the ones around us?
These are the questions at the center of “Grace is Gone,” a quiet and emotional film by writer-director James C. Strouse about a man who cannot find a way to answer those questions for himself. John Cusack stars as Stanley Phillips, a regular father of two and husband whose wife Grace is serving in Iraq. He attends a support group for military spouses (mostly female) but finds it hard to share his feelings with them. One day, he gets the news- his wife is killed in battle. He cannot bear the burden of such news, and cannot find a way to tell their daughters Heidi (Shelan O’Keefe, who projects intelligence and wisdom beyong her years) and Dawn (Gracie Bednarczyk, who is precocious without being annoying). Overcome with grief, he abandons everything- his work, the girls’ schooling- and takes them on a road trip to Enchanted Gardens, a theme park in Florida. Along the way, they stop at his liberal-minded brother’s house, and Stanley calls their answering machine, leaving messages to hear his wife’s voice and asking for guidance in this moment of need.
There’s nothing complicated in Strouse’s film- nothing to gum up the works except the feelings of being beaten down by life (even the musical score- by Clint Eastwood, likely as a personal favor to past collaborator Cusack- is sparse and uncomplicated). Stanley’s brother John (Alessandro Nivola) brings some common sense to his brother’s deaf ears, but throughout is the suspense of when the other shoe will drop, and how the girls will find out the truth. But before we condemn Stanley for his decision, we must be able to say that we wouldn’t be as conflicted as he is given the circumstances- true, this is an extreme way of handling it, but it could never be easy to tell our children they’ll never see their mother again. We just do the best we can under the circumstances- also working against Stanley is a feeling that maybe he should have been over there instead of his wife, having been booted from the military because of his sight.
Although mostly known for his work in comedies as varied as “Say Anything,” “High Fidelity,” and “Being John Malkovich,” Cusack- who previously showed some formidable dramatic chops in Eastwood’s “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” and the horror film “1408”- delivers one of his best performances here. He shows us acutely the pain Stanley feels in his loss, the unease he feels in not being able to tell his daughters the truth, and the ways in which we try to put on a happy face for those around us when our thoughts are to the contrary. There’s not a moment when we cannot identify with Stanley- something that I don’t think a bigger star could have pulled off as convincingly. Cusack has always seemed like an everyman star- a quality that serves him (and his film) extremely well here, and has you rooting for him to find the strength to do what he needs to do. When he does, you cry, but you also know why it took him so long to do so. And you can’t help but empathize.
