Grace is Gone (**½)

Directed by: James C Strouse
Starring: John Cusack, Alessandro Nivola
Seen: March 28th 2008

**½ Out of ****

A slightly chubby and goofy footed John Cusack gives one of the more nuanced and beautiful performances of his life, as he plays Stanley Phillips, a father of two daughters, who he takes on a road trip after receiving the news that his wife has died serving in Iraq.

He does not know how to tell his girls so, very uncharacteristically, he leaves work (managing a home supply store) and takes the girls, Heidi (12) and Dawn (8), to Dawn’s favourite place, a Florida amusement park, while trying to figure out how to tell them about the loss of their mother.

Along the way he stops at his mother’s home, where he finds his unemployed brother John (Nivola), who also tries to console him and give him advice on how to tell the girls. Along with this we find that Heidi is a very smart young girl, and she spends the whole time trying to figure out her father’s odd behaviour, with Dawn blissfully unaware of the tragedy lurking just out of sight.

Cusack gives us a broken man, having just lost his wife, still unhappy with not being able to go to Iraq on a tour of duty (he has bad eyes, which disqualified him from enlisting). He feels like a failure, and Cusack does a brilliant job of making the viewer sympathise with Stanley through his indecision on how to cope with this. You simply can’t help to put yourself in his position. Harvey Weinstein even announced plans to mount an Oscar campaign on behalf of Cusack, but unfortunately this didn’t go far. The film was nominated at the Golden Globes only for its stunningly moving music – interestingly enough composed by Clint Eastwood.

The final five minutes are beautifully realised, and should tear up most viewers’ eyes. This is a gorgeous little film, which creeps into your heart and stays there for quite a while after seeing it, softly coming and going.