Grief a cornerstone of drama, from ‘Big Heat’ to ‘Demolition’

Davis Mitchell (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a master of the universe in the making when Jean-Marc Vallée’s “Demolition” opens. He’s a successful investment banker who lives in a gorgeous home with his beautiful wife, Julia (Heather Lind). Davis’ smug self-assurance doesn’t last long as he is thrown for a loop, leaving him with nothing but a world of grief that he can’t express except through absurdly angry letters to a vending machine company and increasingly flamboyant acts of vandalism that give the black comic drama its title.

Grief, and its many manifestations, is a thread that has animated many a movie. Gyllenhaal himself has been here before, playing the fiance of a murdered girl in “Moonlight Mile” (2002), who stays with her parents in an attempt at healing that only complicates all their lives, and a detective in “Prisoners” (2013), whose investigation into the disappearance of two young girls is complicated by a father’s (Hugh Jackman’s) sorrow manifesting itself as raging vigilantism. And although there is nothing wrong with a good wallow in a tearjerker, the films that resonate are the ones like “Demolition” where grief is an animating force that takes a story into intriguing places.

Take a film like “The Big Heat,” Fritz Lang’s 1953 film noir, in which homicide detective Dave Bannion (Glenn Ford) locks horns with gangsters played by Alexander Scourby and Lee Marvin. A more conventional narrative would simply have the honest cop bringing down the mob in the regular course of his duties.

But in this tense adaptation of William P. McGivern’s novel, the cops have no chance in a corrupt city. Bannion pays for his temerity in confronting the status quo when a bomb meant for him kills his wife. He leaves the police department, his grief becoming an all-consuming quest for revenge. (2014’s far more extravagantly violent “John Wick” works in much the same way by taking the opposite approach as Keanu Reeves’ assassin comes out of retirement to hunt for those who murdered his spouse.)

It is mourning that animates one of Marlon Brando’s greatest roles, as Paul in Bernardo Bertolucci’s still stunning 1972 drama “Last Tango in Paris.” The actor’s next part after his career resurgence with “The Godfather” could not be more different from that of Don Corleone. Adrift in the French capital after his wife’s suicide, Paul begins an affair with a woman (Maria Schneider) young enough to be his daughter. He insists on anonymity and his sadness does not translate as tenderness, but rather its opposite in exchanges made all the more startling by his brutishness.

A son’s death leads to the fulfillment of a dream for a father whose response to his child’s passing is curious, to say the least, in Bobcat Goldthwait’s wild black comedy “World’s Greatest Dad” (2009). Teacher and novelist Lance Clayton’s (Robin Williams) reaction to his awkward, obnoxious son’s accidental demise begins from a place of love. He protects his son’s memory by covering up the embarrassing details with a suicide note — a really well-written suicide note followed quickly by a surprisingly perceptive journal that becomes a literary sensation. Failed writer Lance finally finds elusive success.

A couple travels to Venice in the wake of the loss of their young daughter in Nicolas Roeg’s “Don’t Look Now” (1973), which examines mourning through the lens of a supernatural thriller. John’s (Donald Sutherland) work overseeing the restoration of a church has brought them to the Italian city even as he and his wife, Laura (Julie Christie), still reel from their tragedy. Those feelings only deepen after Laura meets two elderly sisters, one a blind psychic who claims to see their little girl. Rational John rejects any such notion, even as he keeps seeing visions of a small figure wearing a red coat much like his child’s in Roeg’s tense, evocative film.

In Louis Garrel, writer-director Christophe Honoré found a muse, directing him in six films since 2004. Their third collaboration, after “Ma Mère mere” and “Dans Paris” (2006), “Love Songs” (2007) puts Garrel through an emotional wringer in a deceptively light musical. Ismaël (Garrel) and Julie’s (Ludivine Sagnier) relationship is in a rough patch, the addition of Alice (Clotilde Hesme) to their bed complicating things further. But the couple has little time to work through their issues before tragedy strikes, and a movie that begins as offbeat rom-com transforms into something else entirely. Sorrow finds an outlet in Alex Beaupain’s songs that also serve to buoy a downbeat tale.

There are endless variations on a theme as characters grapple with loss in film, from teens coping with a friend’s suicide by staging a production of “The Pirates of Penzance” in “Permanent Record” (1988), to a child bringing his dead dog back to life in “Frankenweenie” (2012) to something far more conventional, such as the “Demolition” director’s last film, “Wild,” in which Cheryl Strayed (Reese Witherspoon) hikes the Pacific Crest Trail to mourn her mother’s passing. Death isn’t the end, at least in the movies. It’s the beginning of drama.

“Demolition” opens at Bay Area theaters on Friday, April 8.

To watch a trailer, go to www.foxsearchlight.com/demolition/.