TIFF 15: Demolition (Review)

Demolition, dir. by Jean-Marc Vallée, US 2015 

By Martin I. Petrov 

A normal man’s reaction to his wife’s tragic death would be grief and depression. For Davis Mitchell (Jake Gyllenhaal), is a chance to rediscover his own self in a loud, tragelaughic and destructive emotional torpedo, involving a lot of… deconstruction. 

Davis is a successful investment banker who suddenly loses his wife in a car accident. No matter how hard he tries to adapt to the mourning atmosphere that surrounds him, he finds himself trapped in his own dystopic universe where nothing feels to be in the right place. He never felt emotionally connected to his wife, but rather comfortable with the idea of working for her father, who helped him up the ladder of the unscrupulous corporate business. His monotonous life has made him careless, unimaginative and egocentric. 

His wife’s death, as unfortunate in its core, powers the engine for regaining his self-consciousness through a variety of events that linger between madness and reality. Davis starts communicating with Karen (Naomi Watts), a young single mother who does customer care for a vending machines company, while simultaneously developing an obsession for reconstructing things or simply breaking them into pieces to discover their mechanism. Only that, this is the metaphor Vallée uses so smartly to portray the emotional demolition of his character as he undergoes a severe breakdown, expressed through hilarious and odd episodic events. 

When Davis finally meets Karen, a strong bond brings both confronted with those sides of their life that functioned as temporary solution for their emotional stability; Karen finally finds a way to unchain herself from a relationship with her employer, which she never really invested into; Davis takes for the first time his life in his hands and confronts his father in law, his colleagues, his feelings and his past. 

Gyllenhaal magnificently transforms into a young, career-minded and self-obsessed man whose ability to observe and record whatever goes on around him has been reduced to zero. Awakening now from this deep personal lethargy, his character is almost like going back in time, adopting an infantile behaviour, which seems though to be the only way to reboot his life. 

Karen’s teenage son is Davis’ connection to a recreational, freeing world, where second chances are possible and little things are always the ones that matter most. Vallée’s characters are uniquely isolated from their ordinary lives, empowered and devoted to pursuing the unknown, which essentially is what makes them seem so special, yet approachable. 

Gyllenhaal’s character is an exaggeration of every man’s social awakening in a cruel and hostile world where social interaction is threatened with extinction. The humorous metaphor of the character’s destructive behaviour, symbolising Davis’ emotional demolition, gives a bizarre, insanely original touch and a soul to an utterly dazzling storyline.