Rabbit Hole (M). Director: John Cameron Mithcell. Starring: Nicole Kidman, Aaron Eckhart, Diane Wiest, Sandra Oh, Miles Teller. 91 minutes
Rabbit Hole contains a most apt analogy for grief; in particular, of a parent's grief for a lost child.
It never goes away, explains aging matriarch Nat (Weist). But the weight of it changes. It becomes so that you can crawl out from underneath it, and carry it around like a brick in your pocket. Sometimes, you forget about it, temporarily. Then one day you put your hand in your pocket, and you remember: 'Oh yeah. That.' It's still heavy, but it's bearable. Familiar.
For the most part, Rabbit Hole is a reflective account of the earlier stages of bereavement, when grief is still a monolith. It's likely that such hulking obelisk grief can only be fully appraised by those who have experienced it. But Rabbit Hole does a fine job of exploring through domestic drama the obelisk's chapped and spindle-cracked surface, and of evoking a sense of its imposing weight.
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The film allows the viewer to share intimate space with Becca (Kidman) and her husband Howie (Eckhart) who, less than a year ago, lost their son Danny beneath the wheels of a passing car on their suburban street. The obelisk sits where the boy once did, at the heart of the family and their cavernous home, displacing affection and oppressing the parents.
Becca's and Howie's methods of coping contrast and clash. Becca attempts to chip away at the obelisk by removing reminders of their son from sight — family photos, grubby fingerprints, the family pet — as if obscuring memory can obscure grief. Howie, on the other hand, pores over an old iPhone video, trying to resurrect the boy through memory. These opposing methods cause tension and conflict.
Becca and Howie attend a support group for parents who have lost children. Here they encounter Gaby (Oh) and her husband, eight-year veterans of the group, and are astonished by the reality of the longevity of grief, and of the road to recovery that stretches interminably before them.
During the session, Becca is appalled by the insufficiency of religious platitudes; many viewers will sympathise with this, though less so with her insensitivity to another couple, for whom these platitudes constitute an attempt to understand and to imbue meaning upon tragedy. To Howie's chagrin, Becca decides that the group is not for her.
Her closedness and Howie's openness to