That Scene: Hereditary and An Authentic Look at Unconventional Loss
That Scene is a periodic short essay focused on a single scene in a horror film. A scene that is not scary and transcends the genre.
Cinematic grief is often far removed from our reality. Occasionally, when captured most effectively, it is in the small moments. For the most part though, it is played for the drama and leans into loss from one perspective only - losing someone you truly care for, be it spouse, partner or family member. Queue the music, tears and Celine Dion vocals.
Our reality can be quite different.
Here, in the real world, our relationships are not always positive with those we are close to. When it comes to family, we are born into a cluster of people, connected by genealogy and nothing more. One hopes that love and strong familial bonds will form, strong enough to sustain the relationship through the ups and downs of life. That the relationship will be joyful, filled with laughter, levity and kindness.
That isn’t always the case.
And what is worse, after years, sometimes a lifetime of forcing smiles and politeness, or even estrangement, when the end finally arrives, there is an expectation of traditional grief. The world is waiting for you to show just how sad you are at the loss. To demonstrate the negative impact on your life now that this person, who might be a complete stranger, or someone you detest, is gone.
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How do you grieve under such circumstances?
Should you fake it? Pretending to experience a traditional form of loss to placate those around you so that they don’t think you are heartless.
It is a performance you put on just for them, one that doesn’t acknowledge the complexity of your feelings. A performance which minimizes your experience and the way you need to grieve. Because we are afraid that if people knew what we were really thinking and feeling, they wouldn’t look at us the same way ever again.
What does grief feel like when you are estranged?
Numb.
In preparation of the countless times you’ll feel the need to explain a difficult situation to your friends and colleagues who send their condolences.
Relief.
Realizing you will no longer tense up when the phone rings, wondering what chaos awaits on the other end.
Gratitude.
Knowing you never again have to sit through another holiday dinner, a painted smile on your face, and a fork piercing the palm of your hand.
Exhaustion.
Feeling the weight of all that you have carried settle on your shoulders, and realizing for the first time, how much it truly pulled you down.
Sadness.
Not for the person who died, but at the realization of how you allowed the tumult of their presence to disrupt your ability to form positive relationships.
Anger.
The reality of you having to experience the rituals of grief, of laying someone to rest, of going through the motions for all the world to see when you’d prefer to be anywhere else.
Confusion.
From the whiplash of how you are supposed to feel versus what you truly feel.
Guilt.
At feeling even the slightest bit of peace, knowing they are gone.
Shame.
For admitting to yourself that you’d anticipated this day, and maybe even hoped it arrived sooner than it did.
Sinful.
What does it mean, for your own humanity, for you to feel any of the above?
It is grief, even if the experience differs from what we believe we should feel. And any life, in moments of grief, is a life examined.
Of questioning what could have been. Wondering ‘what if’? The chasm these questions open is filled, a least briefly, with a tsunami of blame.
All of this complexity is captured to perfection in a short monologue delivered by Toni Collette in 2018’s Hereditary.
Later in the film, she gives an absolute tour de force deserving of an Academy Award nomination. What her character goes through, the absolute loss and realization of how damaging her familial estrangement has been to her own husband and children is one of the single biggest overlooked performances of the last decade.
Today though, we are looking at her character, Annie in an early part of the film.
At this point, we aren’t sure what to make of Annie. Her mother passed away at the start of the movie and she reacted - coldly. She doesn’t seem particularly close to her teenage children, and her husband, played by the wonderful Gabriel Byrne, is equal parts walking on eggshells and exasperated by her presence. At the very least, we could say she is closed off from the world. Fully encompassed by, and focused solely on, her work.
Click to watch That Scene
Then, we witness a brief moment of her opening up, in a group therapy session for people who are grieving the loss of a loved one.
She displays a range of emotions - anger, resentment, guilt - but no tears fall.
We immediately understand this was not a ‘normal’ mother-daughter relationship. In fact, there is nothing typical about any of her family experience and the more she shares, the more we recognize the impact her past has on her current relationships. The near callousness Annie exudes when reciting her family history offers the first glimpse of the sheer toll this burden has taken.
She is a woman expected to feel the loss of a loved one, when she never felt their love in the first place.
A woman, expected to be warm and motherly to her own children, when she doesn’t know how.
And the shame she carries knowing that she isn’t capable of being the person her family needs her to be, that she never was and probably never will be, is on full display in this four minute scene.
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