Posted: 10/19/2004

Eulogy

(2004)

by Anna Keizer

When a loved one dies, the response is usually immediate and direct. We cry, we scream, we wish in vain for one last chance to say goodbye. Here’s a question, though. What if the person who dies isn’t loved or missed at all? What then? How do you grieve? In its own way, Eulogy attempts to answer those very questions.

The patriarch of the Collins family, Edmund, is dead. We’re told neither how nor why, but regardless, now his four adult children must journey home to their widowed mother and make preparations for the funeral. The thing is, each of them seems more preoccupied with other matters. Alice is bitter that their father would “choose” to die just weeks before his birthday celebration. Danny’s in the middle of jump-starting an acting career that peaked when he was eight. Skip’s wife has left him with twin boys, each of whom are exploring their burgeoning sexual thoughts. Lucy’s planning a wedding to her girlfriend, Judy. Then there’s Grandma Charlotte who’s now on suicide watch after two failed attempts in two days.

Amongst all this craziness there is one voice of reason—Danny’s daughter, Katie (Zooey Deschanel). Called upon by her grandmother to deliver the eulogy, Katie seems to be the only one trying to deal with mourning her grandfather. Yet she’s not so overcome by grief that she can’t still schedule a few make-out sessions with her neighbor, Ryan.

Some might say that mourning just affects people in different ways. I agree. I would venture here, though, that not one of these characters, not even Katie, is in such a state at all. Perhaps that was the point that writer/director Clancy was trying to make. Maybe it’s supposed to be a social commentary on how families today are so fractured and individuals so alienated from one another that they don’t even know how to feel when someone dies. However, with screen time devoted to scenes like Lucy and Alice rolling around the floor in a cat fight while Skip and his boys look on with a little too much interest, I begin to question those motives.

That’s not to say that there aren’t moments of inspired comedy. Skip’s twin in particular are a guaranteed laugh anytime they’re on screen. In general, though, I found myself wondering why is this movie centered around a funeral? What’s the point here? If Clancy simply wanted to show a wacky American family, it could have been done just as easily with a family reunion as the premise. Comedy or not, you raise the stakes when a death is involved. There had better be some sort of catharsis, either for the characters or the audiencethemselves. After all, that’s what dealing with death is all about- enduring a painful situation that you hopefully come out of learning a little something more about yourself. Unfortunately, with Eulogy we simply remain in the dark as if we were in the coffin ourselves.

Anna Keizer is a writer of films living in The O.C. The real one, not the TV series.

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