"Demolition" aims to find individual worth beneath the rubble

As the song goes: "Honesty is such a lonely word". Thus, do we associate Jake Gyllenhaal's loneliness with his honesty in "Demolition" (2016, USA), the new film by Jean-Marc Vallée ("Dallas Buyers Club", "Wild")? Or was it his loneliness that brought about his honesty? This is really a quirky association, if we come to think about it. Well, seems natural for us to do so, especially if we place such concept in the context of Bryan Sipe's quirk-filled screenplay. 

We know that the film is headed towards that direction during an early scene at the hospital in which Davis Mitchell (Gyllenhaal), after learning of his wife's death in a car accident (from which he miraculously survived, almost unscathed), buys an M&M from the hospital's vending machine, yet the candy just didn't drop off. The investment banker (so we learn) simply won't take the matter lightly, so he decides to write a complaint to the customer service department of the vending machine company. Yet, the complaint letter turns out to be something more: it becomes an honest outpouring of the recent events in Davis' life, prior to the machine malfunction. That particular "honesty" impresses the customer service representative who was able to read Davis' letter, Karen Moreno (Naomi Watts), a single mother who occasionally smokes weed. She believes that Davis' honesty may actually indicate that the man is "lonely". Or does it? 

The film, by all looks and intents, is supposed to be about grief and loneliness, as Davis has to suddenly deal with the death of his wife. But when he offhandedly confesses that he doesn't "love" his wife, we start to wonder if he's really affected at all by the loss. His subsequent behavior and actions seem to prove the matter without a doubt. Without giving too much details about Davis' seemingly "illogical" behavior, let's just say that it borders on the extreme, which may hint at an unstable mind or at a process towards it. 

Or it may only be his way of dealing with grief. In a manner that suggests Michael Haneke's "The Seventh Continent" and anything Antonioni, Davis' "coping" with grief reaches its most extreme when he systematically destroys - or demolishes (as the title indicates) - with the help of Karen's 15-year-old punky son (Judah Lewis), everything that reminds him of his marriage, which is basically his entire middle-class household. (I was actually waiting for a scene in which, just like in the Haneke film, Davis flushes all of his money down the toilet bowl.) It's a segment done with particular vigor and subversiveness. The underlying wisdom here could be that an alienated and washed-down soul like Davis might just find happiness by being honest - brutally honest - about himself and everything. Even if this would entail the destruction of everything that has previously kept him within the boundaries of his comfort zone. Had Vallée and Sipe pushed the envelope further towards the edge, just like Haneke, we could have found Davis committing the penultimate act of destruction - that is, suicide. This would have in turn garbed "Demolition" with a Schopenhauer/Nietzsche/Camus-like brand of existentialism. But we sense from the start that the filmmakers aren't wont to lean towards such a bleak conclusion as every now and then, they lace the proceedings with humor and vibrancy, in contrast with Haneke and Antonioni who can go all-the-way dreary and downtrodden with their treatment of modern-day malaise and ennui. 

Since "Donnie Darko", Gyllenhaal is the kind of actor who has the daringness and panache to allow himself to be pulled towards the center of such extreme gravitational forces. But rather than himself being crushed by or giving in to such forces, he "owns" them and makes them his own life, whether it has the consequence of bringing him more harm than good or the other way around ("Brokeback Mountain", "Enemy", "Nightcrawler"). If Gyllenhaal would totally give himself in to the "dark force", he could be a thespian as lethal as Christian Bale and Joaquin Phoenix. Come to think of it, such is also the nature of the lead characters in Vallée's last two films: Ron Woodroof (as played by Matthew McConaughey) in "Dallas Buyers Club" and Cheryl Strayed (as played by Reese Witherspoon) in "Wild". In order to find their worth as individuals (and these individuals aren't entirely likeable), they walk down the path that's more rough and rocky than straight and smooth. 

A little smile right after the destruction: Jake Gyllenhaal in Jean-Marc Vallée's "Demolition"