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It occurred to me while watching "Imaginary Heroes" that any screenwriter attempting to make a drama about family relationships should seriously consider killing off a kid or two in the opening reel as a way of getting his characters to open up and reveal themselves. There must be something to this storyline, for it seems as if every other family drama that comes down the pike uses this device in one form or another ("Paradise" and "Moonlight Mile" are just two of the more recent examples that spring immediately to mind, although one could reach back to a golden oldie like "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" to make the point as well). It's not that the death of a child is an illegitimate subject for serious films to explore. Far from it. It's just that, like any topic, it can be so overused that it becomes just another movie cliché, a convenient bit of narrative shorthand to get the ball rolling and to give the characters something to grapple with for the remainder of the time we get to spend with them.
The latest such work is "Imaginary Heroes," a film that borrows heavily from what is one of the earliest and, perhaps, best known examples of the "family coping with the death of a child" genre, the Academy Award winning "Ordinary People." Like the characters in that earlier film, the Travises seem, on the surface, to be the ideal suburban family, until, one fateful day, their oldest son, Matt, who is the "golden boy" athlete and, thus, the apple of his father's eye, kills himself with no explanation (one minor difference is that the son in "Ordinary People" dies as a result of an accident, not a suicide). It is Matt's younger brother, Tim, who winds up finding the body, and who assumes the role of protagonist in the film. Each of the remaining family members copes with the tragedy in his or her own way. Matt, who has always lived in the shadow of his older brother, becomes more and more estranged from the father who has virtually ignored him all his life and begins to turn to drugs for surcease. Ben, the father, becomes swallowed up in feelings of remorse and guilt, turning away from both his job and his family. His wife, Sandy, is the most complex character in the film, a free-spirited child of the '60's who feels oddly adrift in the role of mother and wife as she endures a basically loveless marriage in sterile suburbia. She spends most of her time after the tragedy trying to reconnect with her pot-smoking past.
As written and directed by Dan Harris, "Imaginary Heroes" emerges as a wildly uneven film. For every scene that feels real and authentic, there is another that comes across as arbitrary and inauthentic. One sometimes has the sense that Harris would like to cram every possible life situation he can think of into his screenplay, an admirable goal, perhaps, but one that makes the film unnecessarily melodramatic in the process. Instead of identifying with the characters and being caught up in their plight, we often find ourselves thinking, "Oh, come nowwhat next?" For teen suicide is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the hot-button topics covered in this film; the screenplay also touches on drug and alcohol abuse, physical abuse, sexual identity conflict, life-threatening illness, even inadvertent gay incest. It is this "everything but the kitchen sink" mentality in the writing that robs the movie of much of the credibility it needs to really make us care.
That is not to say that "Imaginary Heroes" is a bad or unrewarding film. Much of what it has to say about familial relationships and values in the 21st Century is insightful, original, pointed and profound. Prime credit for its success goes to the actors, Emile Hirsch, Sigourney Weaver and Jeff Daniels, who deliver incisive, sensitive performances in their respective roles. It is they who triumph over the narrative excesses to stimulate our brains and touch our hearts. Moreover, Harris, in his direction, achieves an effectively melancholic tone throughout, but one that is frequently augmented by some badly-needed flashes of daring dark comedy.
"Imaginary Heroes" may appear unfocused and derivative at times, but its fine performances and subtle mood shifts make it a film worth watching.


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