Demolition

Jean-Marc Vallée’s Demolition is one odd movie — and I mean that in the best possible way. Though the title is perfectly apt, and the film contains a certain amount of demolition and deconstruction, it’s also misleading. This is most assuredly not a movie where “stuff blows up neat,” unless the blowing up involves the lives (interior and sometimes exterior) of several of its characters. For some of us, that’s rather more interesting than actual explosions. In any case, this decidedly offbeat dramedy is hardly an action picture. What it is, however, is somewhat difficult to describe, owing to its eclectic mix of displaced anger, pointed satire, melodrama and sometimes underplayed drama. It’s a mix that director Vallée, screenwriter Brian Sipe and a first-rate cast manage to turn into a cohesive whole — despite several changes in tone and a refusal to follow the plot you probably expect.

Demolition fits snuggly with Vallée’s last two films, Dallas Buyers Club (2013) and Wild (2014), in that it deals with characters finding themselves when their lives go wildly wrong. (It would seem to have some connection with his 2005 film, C.R.A.Z.Y.,but I haven’t seen that.) That much is certainly a common thread, but the approach is considerably different. This is about a not-immediately likable investment broker, Davis Mitchell (Jake Gyllenhaal, who I haven’t liked this much in years), whose wife, Julia (Heather Lind), is killed in a car wreck that leaves him without a scratch. Davis is shocked to find that he doesn’t really feel much of anything, and that he hasn’t for 10 years or more. Instead, he fixates on the hospital waiting room vending machine that took his money without actually delivering his bag of peanut M&Ms.

The upshot is that he starts writing to the vending company’s customer service department — long, confessional letters that have little, if any, relevance to the matter at hand but have everything to do with Davis’s state of mind. The letters finally lead to customer service representative Karen Moreno (Naomi Watts) calling him — at 2 a.m. — starting what looks like a rom-com “meet cute” relationship but going in unexpected directions. It’s a premise that could have easily felt like forced quirkiness, but this kind of focused obsession is central to Davis’ character.

It’s part of the reason why, for example, he’s fixated not on the fact that someone is following him but on the fact that they drive a station wagon (“Who drives a station wagon these days?”). It’s also why the governing factor in his life comes from the advice that, to understand a thing, it’s necessary to take it apart and put it back together — the idea that, in demolishing his life, he can put it back together. That there’s more evidence that he can tear things down than put them back together never seems to occur to him (or perhaps the film). On the one hand, he just becomes hooked on the act of destruction, but this also causes a bond between him and Karen’s son Chris (Judah Lewis) — a rock ‘n’ roll-loving kid in early adolescence and just coming to grips with being gay. Once again, Demolition thwarts easy expectations here.

It’s neither possible nor advisable to go into every aspect of the film, which is densely — and beautifully — packed with incident and detail. I will concede up front that Demolition gets perilously close to one of those movies about “upscale white folks’ problems.” Let’s face it, only the very well-heeled could afford Davis’ path to self-understanding. But somehow the film sidesteps this, and I think it’s because it’s about so much more than this one aspect. It’s a bit harder to believe that you can systematically and spectacularly destroy your house — especially in such a tony neighborhood — without drawing the interest of the authorities. (Certainly, it seems unlikely that you’d be allowed to continue to inhabit the parts left standing.) But, let’s be honest, this is a film more interested in exploring — and sometimes taking a poke at — human truths than in worrying over surface realism. Vallée and company are after emotional realism, and that’s much more satisfying. Rated R for language, some sexual references, drug use and disturbing behavior.