An Honest Study of Love and Loss

Cathex

This film was heart wrenching but beautiful.

It's a look at the story of how a couple cope with the loss of their son, and the pernicious effects of grief over time. The title itself, Meadowland, seems to be the mental land where the suffering protagonists go to escape, the dream land that exists to maintain the last shreds of hope in the face of overwhelming pain.

It makes an excellent job of conveying the gradual deterioration of the ability to cope with not knowing, not being able to say goodbye and the juxtaposition of the need for closure with the incredible fear of accepting the inevitable.

It's brilliantly acted and well scripted. The pace is slow but filled with mounting intensity. The film holds its breath, never spilling into melodrama, but holding in an enormous sense of tension and conflict, thus creating a direct line of empathy for the situation of the main characters.

But it's not all doom and gloom, well it is all doom and gloom, but it examines that darkness at the place from which it emanates; love.

Poetic and sincere.

score 8/10

Cathex 28 October 2015

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3344733/