"There's always something of a melancholy tinge to Thanksgiving, an unspoken, primal awareness not only that this is one final bacchanal before the privations of winter set in, but that gratitude can't really exist without the experience of grief. The things and the people we feel most thankful for are too often the ones that are no longer with us. Perhaps that helps explain why several new films this Thanksgiving season center on loss and how to move on from it."
"The catch: no takebacks, because whatever deity makes the rules isn't, like, that omnipotent, so if you want to share immortality with someone still living, you need to hang around in limbo until they die. The good news (?): Larry's widow Joan (Betty Buckley, then Elizabeth Olsen) succumbs to her cancer before long, and the long-married couple are overjoyed to be reunited."
Thanksgiving often combines gratitude with a tinge of melancholy because thankfulness frequently follows loss. New films released during the season emphasize mourning and the challenge of moving forward. Hamnet portrays William Shakespeare's grief over his young son's death. Eternity presents a lighter, Hollywood-style view of mortality featuring an afterlife that mirrors earthly life with bureaucracy and limits on divine power. In Eternity, an elderly man dies, awakens younger in a purgatorial transfer station, and is told he can choose a bespoke paradise but cannot reverse that choice. Reunions are complicated by past relationships and waiting spouses.
Read at Oregon ArtsWatch * Arts & Culture News
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