In this movie, we can see Stanley expressed a few stages of bereavement. First and the most obvious one, is denial. This is also the first stage of loss and grief according to Kubler-Ross, but we can see denial is expressed throughout the movie. Stanley would keep on calling his wife number, just to hear her voice and talks to her as if she is still there. He would apologize for things that he had done before and tells her his difficulties in conveying the message to their girls. Not only so, when he saw two officers standing outside, he knew what had happened to his wife but he denies to accept the truth.That is why he does not let them come into the house at first. When other officer was trying to help him on his wife death arrangement, he refuses to sign anything. These are all examples of denial.
In the movie, bargaining is also seen in the movie when he leaves a voice message on his wife phone telling that he should have been the one who serve the country instead. In the film, depression is also noticeable despite how he acted nothing had happened. Although he did not mourn loudly, when he was left alone, we can see him crawling into a ball and crying himself to sleep. His brother also told him that he looks very upset unlike usual. We can also see that Stanley loses all his desires in doing anything before the girls come home from school. He just sat there in his pajamas thinking by himself. In the end, when he finally brings himself to tell the girls, they all gain an acceptance that the mother will never come back.
To me, one of the reason why he suddenly become so out of usual and spontaneously bring his girls for a road trip to Enchanted Garden is that he knew the life of the girls wouldn't be the same anymore after telling them the news. Therefore, he wanted to prolong their pure happiness and perceptions of having both parents alive. This is because once a person know someone so close to them is gone forever, they would never experience life the same anymore, especially both of them who are just young little girls.
As the movie mainly focused on Stanley, we cannot really see how Heidi and Dawn deals with grief. However, we could see that Heidi is a very responsible 12-year-old. She knows what he duties are and understand how they cannot just do whatever they want as they might skip class and lose jobs. Despite how she wanted to have fun as well, she never stop worrying about her dad losing his jobs and her homework that are supposed to hand-in on the following week. We can see that she also notices changes in her father's attitude and she kept trying to find out more. For instance, she knew her dad was lying about the phone call and she sense something wrong. Yet, she did not confront her dad and secretly check on their house voice message. By then, we could see that Heidi suspected something was wrong in the family. She also knew that it was something bad, hence, she sat outside the hotel for the entire night. Nonetheless, she gives her father his own space and waited for him to tell her instead of confronting him. This probably because that she knew her father needed some time to bring the bad news to them.
Although this movie emphasis on the loss of their mother, we can still identify that Heidi is in the stage of identity vs role confusion, where she explores different things at her age. Despite how her father never allow them to watch the news or documentaries about the war, she still secretly watch it.This shows that she is trying to learn more about the mother's job scope and know their family better. Not only so, Heidi was seen trying to learn how to smoke. This could be one of the main curiosity most adolescence have while growing up.
Personally, I do not enjoy movies like that. I find it too draggy and boring. Yet this is a perfect movie to see how people deal with death of their loved ones differently and also a great case study for grief and loss.
*All pictures does not belong to me
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