If there are two elements missing from contemporary mainstream cinema, they are nuance and ambiguity. To find these, we must turn to the independent filmmakers, modern society's faith healers who change our relationships to our own lives not with God but with a deep restorative connection to everyday experience. Todd Louiso (most well-known as Dick, John Cusack's nerd-cum-hipster record store employee in High Fidelity) safely joins these ranks with his directorial debut, Love Liza.
The film traces the nihilistic sojourn of Wilson Joel (played by Philip Seymour Hoffman), a socially awkward computer programmer whose wife, Liza, has recently committed suicide. Louiso spares the audience an emotionally manipulative funeral scene, opting instead to begin the film with Wilson's complex, unspoken reaction to Liza's death.
The trend in many films depicting personal devastation is to reinvent the psychological reality, to fashion characters and environments that stop for crisis in order to ponder its gravity. The world has never run that way, and, as complicated human beings, neither have we. Louiso follows Wilson through all his attempts to re-adjust himself into his new life: returning to a lifeless job, socializing with a well-meaning, mousy co-worker, reshaping his tense relationship with his mother-in-law (Kathy Bates). The narrative really hinges, however, on Wilson's discovery of his wife's suicide note, one that he cannot bear to open for fear of what it might say.
In order to escape the implications of Liza's note, Wilson allows the trivial to become paramount. He becomes obsessed with the subculture of radio-control plane enthusiasts as a result of a lie he tells to cover up his bizarre addiction to huffing gasoline. Much like Jack Nicholson's character in About Schmidt (though somehow more gritty and grotesque), Wilson hazily wanders out of his job and life, trying to outrun his own fears. He discovers, in the end, that there was nothing but loss to be afraid of.
The film leaves many questions unanswered (we learn nothing about Wilson's relationship with his wife), and Gordy Hoffman (Philip's brother) deserves serious credit for not answering them in his script. There are minor instances of unrealistic dialogue, such as an unconvincingly tactless teenage girl remarking to Wilson, "It's cool that you miss her so much," but Hoffman's script mainly reflects many of the unanswered questions we face in life. Do we ever know why someone commits suicide? Is there ever a good time to hear what we don't want to know?
All any of us can do when faced with tragedy is to do what Wilson does in the film's last shot: put one foot in front of the other.
-Bronwen Dickey
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.