Demolition

I like unconventional things. Demolition is one of them. To start off with, the ending shot, while brief, hit me so bad I teared up, which is a hard achievement for me. While the shot wasn't important to the film, it speaks to the core message: Jake Gyllenhaal's character healing his inner child. I'm glad the relationship between him and his deceased wife wasn't the core of the film. I'm glad his new found relationship wasn't erotic or sexual. I'm glad with the usage of the teenager as a parallel to the healing they are both working on. All these things, if handled in a conventional way, would have been a terribly boring story of grief and death. In the end, it represented the numbness many of us feel but are afraid to show, the inner child we all have that is hiding away, the grayness of people and relationships that aren't movie-like. I would say for this movie to work for someone, they'd have to be in a unique point in their life or mind, where a certain emotional openness is there. Or else it would be just a boring and directionless movie. Who knows, years later if I watched this back, it would seem that way to me. But for now, it definitely struck me in places I didn't know I had.