Film title: Welcome to the Rileys
Director: Jake Scott
Screenplay: Ken Hixon
Starring: Kristen Stewart, James Gandolfini, Melissa Leo, Tiffany Coty
Distributor: Samuel Goldwyn Films (USA); High Fliers Films (UK)
Cinema Release Date: 29 October 2010 (USA); 18 November 2011 (UK)
Certificate: R (USA); 15 (UK) Contains strong language and sex references
Director: Jake Scott
Screenplay: Ken Hixon
Starring: Kristen Stewart, James Gandolfini, Melissa Leo, Tiffany Coty
Distributor: Samuel Goldwyn Films (USA); High Fliers Films (UK)
Cinema Release Date: 29 October 2010 (USA); 18 November 2011 (UK)
Certificate: R (USA); 15 (UK) Contains strong language and sex references
‘You can't see anything properly while your eyes are blurred with tears.’
C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
On the surface Doug Riley (James Gandolfini) seems to be doing OK. He has the wife, the house and the Cadillac, and is still liked by everyone. But the veneer hides a lonely man, floundering in the agony of his daughter’s death. Doug has mastered the part he must play to keep the veneer intact though – the genial work buddy, the concerned husband – and is managing to fool everyone, including, to a large extent, himself.
He is shaken out of his sham existence when he finds his name on a tombstone on the plot adjoining his daughter’s grave – his wife’s approach to planning for the future. ‘I’m not dead yet’, he protests angrily, his first expression of real emotion cracking the long-held veneer. Both Doug and his wife of thirty years, Lois (Melissa Leo), are unable to communicate anything beyond the mundane since the tragic accident that took their daughter’s life. Both just exist instead of engaging with life. Whereas Doug goes through the motions, pretending all is well, Lois has withdrawn from the world, rarely leaving the house even to retrieve the mail from the end of the driveway.
The next day, Doug leaves for New Orleans on a business trip. While there, he ends up in a strip club and meets a young prostitute, Mallory (Kristen Stewart), who reminds him of his daughter. At first he has to fend off her sexual advances, but once she gets the fact that he isn’t interested in soliciting her services, they develop a camaraderie. Doug is drawn to Mallory and her vulnerable position as an underage stripper; her likeness to his daughter stirs him from his apathy and he decides to help. He calls his wife and tells her that he isn’t coming home – he doesn’t quite know what he is doing, but ‘I’m not dead yet’ is all the explanation he can offer her. He then moves in with Mallory, intending to help her turn her life round.
Doug believes that his roles as a father and a husband define who he is. His sense of purpose and his source of happiness are both linked to his identity of being a provider for his family. But his daughter’s death and his wife’s withdrawal shatter his sense of identity, and the experience of finding his own tombstone hits him with the reality of his apparently meaningless life. Desperate to make sense of his existence, Doug attempts to become the father figure in Mallory’s life. He needs to feel needed; it’s vital to his very identity. And he turns to Mallory to satisfy that need.
His ‘truth’ is that his identity is bound up in his role as a provider. And when the basis for this ‘truth’ (namely his wife and daughter) is taken away, he feels lost and set adrift. He has invested so much in his relationships with his family that he has raised them to the position of idols in his life. Nothing in this world can bear the weight of being the centre of our identity, or the sole source of our happiness. So where does that leave us? And what about Doug and Lois? Should they live the rest of their lives under the weight of this unbearable sorrow? Or can the loss of their daughter bring them to the realisation that they will never be fulfilled by the things of this world?
C.S. Lewis observed that God, who has made us, knows what we are and also knows that our happiness can only lie in him:
Yet we will not seek it in Him as long as he leaves us any other resort where it can even plausibly be looked for. While what we call ‘our own life’ remains agreeable we will not surrender it to Him. What then can God do in our interests but make 'our own life' less agreeable to us, and take away the plausible source of false happiness?[1]
This quote might make God seem like an insensitive tyrant and a ruthless, worship-hungry entity. But he isn’t. The Bible says that God is love itself. And out of his love for us, he keeps bringing us back to him – the unchangeable and true source of happiness. He isn’t a ruthless brute; he understands the pain of losing a child only too well: his own son was murdered. He empathises with the loss couples like the Rileys face, but he knows that nothing in this world will last forever, and when we set our hearts on any thing here we set ourselves up for disappointment. He also knows that if our hearts, our identity, our focus in life were set on the one, true, unchangeable God, we’d have a peace that would go beyond our circumstances, in the knowledge that he loves us regardless. Teary eyed, the world may seem blurry, but if we let it, our grief can help us focus on what is of the utmost importance in this life – knowing and loving God.
[2] C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
