Featured
Film Review: A Long Way Down
/ November 21, 2014
Rating: M
Release Date: November, 2014
Featured as part of this years’ British Film Festival, A Long Way Down tells the story of Martin (Pierce Brosnan), Maureen (Toni Collette), JJ (Aaron Paul), and Jess (Imogen Poots), four suicidal individuals who meet on a rooftop one New Years Eve as they’re preparing to end it all. Not the most likely of meeting places, the group strikes up an odd friendship, sharing their struggles and making a pact to follow through together at a later date.
A Long Way Down begins with a bleak premise, and may not be a story you jump at the chance to watch, but its down-to-earth elegance is an uplifting surprise. At their lowest point, Martin, Maureen, JJ, and Jess all confront their anxieties with a raw honesty allowing for conversations often missed by pleasantries, uninvited by strangers; Watching them run through the list of why they were on the roof, and reasons they have to die, their brashness adds comedy to the unusual icebreaker, opening up a new perspective on personal pain the audience may be facing themselves.
A Long Way Down considers what takes us to the edge, and whether or not we can come back from it. It asks relevant questions about finding healing, and shows the power of friendship and care, and honesty, in helping us take a step back. It doesn’t tread lightly over issues of mental health, nor is it ruthlessly invasive or over analytical.
Beginning a powerful discussion the script writer’s give us a couple of particularly profound moments:
Standing atop the roof, looking at the edge, JJ (Aaron Paul) says,
“The pain is not the problem, it’s the hope.”
…More sickening than his grief, is believing there’s an answer dangling ahead that he cannot get to, and that may be false; There’s an absence of assurity and it kills. Yet God tells us He has come that we may have life and have it to the full (John 10:10), and that when we call on Him He will answer, and we will find Him (Jeremiah 29:13). There’s a promise of security, and a promise of true hope. For all. As JJ looks deeper into the real depths of his difficulties he says,
“I’m sick of being afraid all the time and not knowing why, and wanting to change but not knowing how.”
And pause.
In that one sentence the majority of human distress is summed up: We recognize we have need, but we don’t know the remedy. We long for transformation, but we don’t know the trigger. Blindly we roam, anxious, uncertain, sensing we must get somewhere, but lost in the myriad of paths to take.
I suggest our need is for our Maker, and the way to change is in Him. In Love there is no fear, perfect love drives it out (1 John 4:18). God has designed us to know Him, “knitting us together in our mothers womb”, and if we don’t, life simply doesn’t work. He tells us to be transformed by the renewing of our minds, to not conform to the patterns of the world, and to then test and know His perfect will (Romans 12:2). To live fearless and with direction is to know Christ. That’s not to say the Christian life is a perfect one, but it is to say that in those moments when we’re afraid, lost, nearing the edge – that’s when we’re most distant from Him. Turn around and walk back, He’s waiting. As A Long Way Down so beautifully reminds us, the only problem we cannot solve, is the one made by jumping.
A Long Way Down is a hilariously gentle and vibrant depiction of life in all its wanderings, and one worth the meander.
6.5/10
High point: The roof.
Low point: The ground.
Best digested with: Grilled chicken sandwiches and a side of carrot cake (and Tea – you’re at The British Film Festival).
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