Grief becomes a horrifying entity in this adaptation of Max Porter’s prize-winning 2015 novella, “Grief is The Thing with Feathers”.
Based on Emily Dickinson’s poem ‘Hope is the Thing With Feathers’, the novella initially comprised four parts. It has been reimagined for the big screen by director Dylan Southern, premiering at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.
The Thing With Feathers features Benedict Cumberbatch as a graphic novelist in London who has suddenly lost his wife and the mother of his 2 young sons (Richard and Henry Boxall). He has to contend with not only his grief in its all-consuming horror, but theirs as well.
This manifests itself as a literal human-sized “grief crow”. Crow spews sarcastic taunts at him, voiced exceptionally well by David Thewlis. Crow provides us with random (ineffective) jumpscares, because after all, grief hits one at unexpected times, and in the movie this is taken quite literally.
Eventually, Crow becomes his tough-love therapist, dancing around with a drunk “sad mad dad”, and towards the end, providing comfort in its feathered embrace.
As far as bringing an extremely abstract novel to life goes, the film tries its best. Inevitably, it comes off as pretentious as it only touches on the stages of grief via metaphor and allegory. It was not the deep dive into the gritty, hard-hitting emotional angst I expected it to be.
The movie is peppered with sequences featuring poetic text embedded onscreen and ink drawings of feathered things. I suspect it is trying to emulate the same dark, chaotic vibe as the graphic novel Cumberbatch’s unnamed character is writing and (I presume) using to process his emotions.
However, I was left wanting.
While we can obviously see that he nor his sons are coping, there is no connection formed between the characters and us as viewers. I fear even Benedict Cumberbatch could not save the movie, and he certainly gave it a fair whack.
In the end, much like the grief it portrays, the film left me relieved it was over.
The Thing With Feathers opens as part of the British Film Festival on 6th November at Luna Palace cinemas.