THE five stages of grief are often viewed as more of a jumping-off point for an exploration into your own feelings.
Never quite as black and white (or coloured, as this review will explore) as they seem to be, people are more likely to take alternate paths or experience them in a different order.
However, the idea does make for some fascinating cinema.
Meanwhile On Earth (MOE) by French director Jérémy Clapin uses the five stages of grief as a jumping-off point for a fascinating story about the depths one would go to get their loved one back, separating each part with the colours most commonly associated with them (blue for depression, red for anger, green for bargaining etc), bathing the screen in glowing light and adding a creative flair for an otherwise tired concept.
The film follows Elsa, who is completely adrift. Her older brother Franck, an astronaut, has disappeared, and she’s letting life pass her by while she can’t bring herself to accept her brother is gone.
But all that changes one day when she finds a beautifully iridescent seed that enables her to communicate with aliens. The aliens are holding her brother in a trance state and will continue to do so unless she offers up five bodies to serve as hosts for them.
It’s a watered-down trolley problem. Should Elsa let five people be taken over as hosts for the aliens to save her brother or should she let her brother die? It’s a tricky ethical quandary – and one with a very obvious solution. Elsa is drowning in her grief, completely unable to face reality, so naturally she chooses to sacrifice the others. After all, as she says to her younger brother, they don’t feel anything.
Taking a completely different approach to grief is Went Up The Hill (WUTH) from New Zealand-Australian director Samuel Van Grinsven. As much a character study as Meanwhile On Earth, the film instead centres on Jack, his dead mother’s widow Jill and their struggles to let go of Elizabeth.
Instead of aliens, Van Grinsven uses ghosts to depict grief, with Elizabeth possessing both of them in turn so the other has the opportunity to seek closure. The interactions eventually become malevolent when we learn the truth about Elizabeth and her relationship with her estranged son and dutiful wife, and Jack and Jill both struggle to let her go – both physically and metaphorically.
Unlike in the ethical quandary poised by MOE, WUTH’s possession is, plain and simple, wrong. Elizabeth tries to kill Jack by pushing his head underwater – akin to how she abused him as a child – and sleeps with Jill as Jack without his consent. Instead of being distant from the possessed, we’re faced with them outright, as though the film is the other side of the coin to MOE’s.
Further, it hides the bigger question – was the alien lying to Elsa when she said those possessed couldn’t feel it?
While Elizabeth possesses each person in turn, Elsa is given the chance to talk to her brother through the aliens. There, they discuss fond memories, the idea that Elsa should have gone to art school, and all is displayed in a beautiful black and white animated style akin to Clapin’s earlier films.
Unlike Elizabeth, however, we learn little of Franck outside of his connection to Elsa, as the characters steadily begin to meld together. Elsa is nothing without her brother, but all he talks about is his relation to her. Is she truly communicating with Franck or is she imagining fond memories with him?
Instead of the bright colours of MOE, WUTH utilises a limited colour palette, with the surrounding area of stunning sweeping shots of the moors and mountains of New Zealand shown only in autumn and winter, with a layer of white covering the otherwise washed out but beautiful scenery.
While MOE’s bright colours perfectly illustrate the jump from denial to anger to bargaining etc, WUTH more hits you with grief as a whole – everything feels numb and what was beautiful seems vast and terrifying.
Like in MOE, the grief in WUTH becomes destructive, with Elizabeth trying to kill Jill or permanently inhabit Jack so the couple can be together. The use of the score is particularly poignant, with the harsh violins – pertinent in both films – and the soft tuneful moaning both building the tension and painting a picture of uncertainty until eventually the two are given a choice – let go of Elizabeth or succumb to their grief.
Like Elsa’s literal path through the woods to find the place to sacrifice the hosts, her mother tells her that there’s a metaphorical path towards accepting her grief. “Not everyone finds their path. Not everyone needs to find one. We can live without it. We can be happy. But we have to choose to be,” she says. Elsa has chosen to wallow in her grief and try and return to a life when Franck was alive. But that cannot be.
In the same way, Jill discusses with Elizabeth what the core of the film is. “You said I was holding onto you. What if I let you go?” she asks. “I am gone.” She replies. Because the characters are holding on tightly to the woman who existed beyond her abuse.
Jill, who has seen Elizabeth at her best and worst tells Jack, who is only there to get closure on why she abused him and how, “There is love in her too. That’s who I was trying to save. That’s who we’re holding on to.”
Jack’s aunt Helen also reiterates the good in Elizabeth, saying: “I’m here for the sister I want to remember.”
It’s idealistic, to cling to goodness in a person when they’re dead. After all, the idea of not speaking ill of the dead is discussed at length by laypeople and moral philosophers. And it’s certainly touched upon in MOE.
Eventually, the characters admit that they have to let go. Elsa because she’s gone too far and reached the final stage, acceptance, after getting to know a potential victim. Jack and Jill because Elizabeth will kill them if they don’t let go.
As someone who prefers characters with autonomy and a difficult ending over a simpler one, I find Elsa’s finding of inner peace and finally reaching acceptance to be the stronger conclusion. She makes a choice to move on, to follow the path her mother set out instead of the literal one the aliens were pushing her onto.
Meanwhile Jack and Jill are forced to move on as a matter of life or death, and for a story with impressively realistic characters for a supernatural plot, the ending and the characters stumble away into the dark, the ending an abrupt one.
The films are not perfect. WUTH drags a little in places and both films unfortunately include scenes of sexual assault – and only one of them ends with a chainsaw to the leg of the assaulter.
But both films also hit the mark in different ways on being tragic explorations of grief with very unique subject matters that – paired with colourful, sweeping shots and a frenetic violin score – create visual and auditory feasts for the senses.
Went Up The Hill plays at Glasgow Film Theatre today as part of Glasgow Film Festival
