☆☆☆☆½
Two months ago, Driveways would have seemed like a sweet and touching film, a movie so tender and gentle that if you aren't also very quiet might surprise you by flying away. Yet, here it is now, in the middle of May 2020, and it seems almost profound – a portrait of the way we lived then, back when the great Brian Dennehy was alive in a world untouched by sadness and trouble.
Driveways is a beautiful film under any circumstances, but even more because Dennehy is gone now, and because it wants to show us how hard it is to connect with people, and how that can be both rewarding and painful. No one is a threat in Driveways, no one is to be feared, and life is to be celebrated, even its pains and heartaches, its incalculable losses and unending regrets.
Directed by Andrew Ahn from a screenplay by Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen, Driveways is easy to mistake for a film in which not much happens; watching it is like driving by the nondescript little house on the nondescript little street where most of it takes place – you'd never know at first glance how much love and loss and joy and pain are contained within it.
Hong Chau plays Kathy, whose sister April has died and left behind a mess, physically and emotionally. It falls to Kathy to clean up April's house, and April was a tortured, hoarding soul. Kathy brings her son Cody (Lucas Jaye) with her, and it isn't long before the boy has met the next-door neighbor, a Vietnam veteran named Del (Dennehy). They befriend each other. And that is the movie.
Driveways has little straightforward plot, but is suffused with love for its characters and their humanity. It is about the way we suffer through our losses, our tiny ones and our biggest ones, and still get by – fine the way we are, maybe, but better with each other. It is graceful, emotionally resonant and in its own very quiet way, if it strikes you in just the right mood and at the right moment, staggeringly great.
Viewed May 9, 2020 – Virtual Cinema
Driveways is a beautiful film under any circumstances, but even more because Dennehy is gone now, and because it wants to show us how hard it is to connect with people, and how that can be both rewarding and painful. No one is a threat in Driveways, no one is to be feared, and life is to be celebrated, even its pains and heartaches, its incalculable losses and unending regrets.
Directed by Andrew Ahn from a screenplay by Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen, Driveways is easy to mistake for a film in which not much happens; watching it is like driving by the nondescript little house on the nondescript little street where most of it takes place – you'd never know at first glance how much love and loss and joy and pain are contained within it.
Hong Chau plays Kathy, whose sister April has died and left behind a mess, physically and emotionally. It falls to Kathy to clean up April's house, and April was a tortured, hoarding soul. Kathy brings her son Cody (Lucas Jaye) with her, and it isn't long before the boy has met the next-door neighbor, a Vietnam veteran named Del (Dennehy). They befriend each other. And that is the movie.
Driveways has little straightforward plot, but is suffused with love for its characters and their humanity. It is about the way we suffer through our losses, our tiny ones and our biggest ones, and still get by – fine the way we are, maybe, but better with each other. It is graceful, emotionally resonant and in its own very quiet way, if it strikes you in just the right mood and at the right moment, staggeringly great.
NOTE:
This is one of a series of new-release films that cannot be seen in theaters due to ongoing closures. Through "virtual cinema," it can be rented and watched at home, with a portion of each "virtual ticket" going directly to the cinema you choose. https://drivewaysfilm.vhx.tv
Viewed May 9, 2020 – Virtual Cinema
It falls to Kathy to clean up April's house, and April was a tortured, hoarding soul.
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