Starring: Jayne Houdyshell, Richard Jenkins, Amy Schumer, Beanie Feldstein, Steven Yeun, June Squibb
Distributor: Madman Entertainment
Runtime: 107 mins. Reviewed in Oct 2022
Reviewer: Peter W Sheehan
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A family celebrating Thanksgiving in a Manhattan apartment reveal secrets in their lives, and the tension among them escalates.
The film is written and directed by Stephen Karam, who wrote a one-act play of the same name. He has authored his award-winning 2016 Broadway (New York) play for the cinema screen.
The Blake family have come together to celebrate Thanksgiving in a rented, double-storey duplex apartment in Manhattan, New York City. Houdyshell reprises her role as Deidre Blake from the original Broadway production, and Karam led both the original Tony-award winning play and this film adaptation. The film was selected as a Critic’s Pick from The New York Times.
Deidre (Houdyshell) and Erik (Jenkins) Blake are have come to New York City to celebrate the holiday in the shabby Chinatown apartment of youngest daughter, Brigid (Feldstein) and her new partner, Richard (Yeun). The apartment is unfinished and unfurnished, and has pipes that leak. Around the table to celebrate are also Erik’s other daughter, Aimee (Schumer) and Erik’s mother, Momo (Squibb), who is in a wheelchair and has late-stage dementia. Brigid’s older sister, Aimee, has recently broken up with her long-term girlfriend.
With three generations of family at the same table, tensions escalate. Erik disapproves of the apartment which is close to Ground Zero in New York. For him, the events of 9/11 arouse traumatic memories. Brigid is resentful that her parents have not helped her obtain a better life, and she struggles to find employment. Richard is depressed, and Aimee’s career seems to be going nowhere, and she also suffers from a chronic illness, and is anxious about dying.
Around the Thanksgiving table, members of the family talk about their dreams and nightmares, and secrets are shared among them that are personally revealing.
The acting in the film is uniformly excellent. Each character is real, and believable in the tensions, and aspirations that are exposed. Events are influenced by the darkness of nightfall that descends, and the apartment almost assumes the place of another character, as family members react to unexplained sounds among its walls. The film fuses together apartment sounds with what the characters are saying, and the fusion engenders surprise and disappointment in what is being revealed, leaving viewers to differentiate reality from possible fantasy.
The apartment provides a grim façade to the secrets that are revealed around the Thanksgiving table, and family members seem to trigger changes in the architecture that surrounds them – floorboards and walls groan, for instance, as if they disapprove. The film makes excellent use of silhouettes and music, and there are comic moments to the drama that enfolds, which shine a light to the future.
Karam sets the stage for the interactions of his characters meticulously. He focuses on persons who are listening not just talking, and viewers hear what is being said and see reactions. The Blake family is a family in trouble, and the seeds of repressed conflict in unsettled social times flower into trauma which are revealed for us all to see.
This is a family drama where action unfolds in a highly original way. Script and direction quickly gain control, and comedy guides with rays of hope. The film also has a tension-inducing conclusion that lingers in a remarkable way.
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