Grace Is Gone (2007)

Directed by: James C. Strouse | 85 minutes | drama | Actors: John Cusack, Shélan O’Keefe, Gracie Bednarczyk, Doug Dearth, Doug James, Allessandro Nivola, Zachary Gray, Penny Slusher, Dana Lynne Gilhooley, Katie Honaker

They rarely make the news, the men, women and children of deployed soldiers who receive the message that their loved one is never coming home. When the reverberation of the gun salute has disappeared and the flag on the coffin is folded into a handy package, a distraught family is left behind, sometimes lonely in its grief. Debut director James C. Strouse wanted to give these laggards a face with ‘Grace Is Gone’.

The story is close to Strouse’s heart and he tells it unadorned. There are no images of Grace going down in battle and no flashbacks of the Phillips family in happier times. Grace is gone, dead, not appearing in this movie. The characters are also sober. An excellent John Cusack portrays Stanley as a man who is not easily embraced. His drooping shoulders and drooping corners of his mouth suggest that he had lost his zest for life before the terrible message reached him. Strouse says little about Grace and Stanley’s marriage, but you can assume that they had passed the phase where the sparks flew. That doesn’t matter, the blow is no less.

Stanley’s grief is palpable, but it doesn’t express itself in screaming or tumbling waterlanders. He hardly reacts at first. He sits in his chair and stares apathetically. Lies on the floor, but the tears don’t come. When his daughters come home, Stanley keeps up appearances. He wants to give them a few more beautiful moments before he smashes the ground from under their feet. That is not a conscious decision, but the emergency leap of a man who cannot handle the situation. Heidi and Dawn realize something is wrong, but Stan doesn’t give a damn. Then it turns out that beautiful moments cannot be forced. The children are constantly at each other’s hair and the visit to the amusement park ends in an anti-climax. When Stanley finally tells his daughters the news, there is a moment of silence. Literally, because the dialogue sinks into the music.

‘Grace Is Gone’ is an honest film. In his quest for authenticity, Strouse has shown courage and omitted elements that could have made the story easier to digest. The film is not an easy indictment of the war in Iraq. The main characters are not cuddly and do not react as the film logic dictates. Stanley, Heidi and Dawn Phillips are not a model family closing ranks after a photogenic tragedy, but three individuals painfully searching for each other. For an hour and a half you are stuck with two whining children and a father who would like to shake you up every now and then. Such company is just as annoying in a movie theater as it is in real life and that’s why you could also call ‘Grace Is Gone’ boring. But boring or not, you’ll appreciate this brave drama movie more the longer you think about it. It must, so to speak, sink in for a while, and that is perhaps appropriate given the theme.