'All My Puny Sorrows' Review: Alison Pill Excels in this Sad and Sweet Canadian Drama [TIFF 2021]
Gabon and PIll
A character driven Canadian consideration of melancholia and the legacies we leave our loved ones.
Canadian films, whether aware of it or not, often convey this sense of existential confusion. As if through our filmmaking, our global identity (or lack thereof), screams out the question “why are we here”? Michael McGowan’s ‘All My Puny Sorrows’ drifts in and out of trying to find meaning in life like any given week of a Canadian winter. It can be a light, gentle sprinkle of slowly falling flakes, or hit you like a sideways blizzard. Anyone who has experienced depression or mental illness knows that it can present itself very much in that fashion, and McGowan deserves heaps of praise as high as the mountain plots leave at the end of the court for presenting depression is such a realistic and difficult manner.
Based on the international best-selling novel by Miriam Toews, All My Puny Sorrows is the story of Elf (Sarah Gabon) a famous pianist, and her sister, Yoli (Alison Pill), a writer. One day, but perhaps not-so-suddenly, Elf attempts suicide, and the film follows the two sisters trying to reconcile Elf’s state of mind, their father’s suicide decades ago, the family legacy, and their bond.
It was not that long ago that ‘Silver Linings Playbook’ received heaps of accolades as well, but that film, especially compared to All My Puny Sorrows glamourized mental health issues. If only everyone who suffered life-altering trauma could be as quirky as Jennifer Lawrence; where even her anger seems cute, or if all people with debilitating anger issues could look like Bradley Cooper, and let’s just hold out hope that these two ‘crazy’ kids end up together realizing since they’re both ‘broken’, perhaps they can fix one another. It was a sham. It was Hollywood.
Winningham and Pill
All My Puny Sorrows’ Canadian flavour (flavour with a ‘u’, as it was intended) is undeniable. We have what seems like months without sunshine sometimes, long winters, even longer hockey seasons, especially if you’re a Maple Leafs fan. We know that depression is gritty, dirty, and it can sneak up on you. Through all the ebbs and flows, ups and downs of this film, one of its greatest strengths is everything seems absolutely authentic, and as a result of that authenticity, the emotional impact of the story and what the characters do is astonishing. Pill especially, who is renown for her genre-related characters in Scott Pilgrim vs The World, American Horror Story or Picard is absolutely at her best. She not only carries the film, but the depths in which she has to reach to convey a myriad of emotions seems like it was a very difficult and personal experience. Yoli has so much to deal with in this film; seemingly all the different facets of depression from silent suffering to rage-filled outburst, and Pill is impeccable and truly shows her range.
What is also enticing about Sorrows, is it is solely a female perspective, with the men in the film being merely a voice on the phone, a one-night-stand or a distant memory. It does show the affect men have had on Yoli and Elf’s mental health, with a very subtle and haunting backstory introduced about their father (Donal Logue) committing suicide when the sisters were teenagers. While the novel was originally written by Toews, for McGowan to adapt and direct this gynocentric story could have been quite a gamble, but the writer/director has always done well to seemingly create an understated understanding between he and his actors. He is also no stranger to existential crises, as his ‘One Week’, also deals with a main character dealing with death and what to do with his life in the meantime.
While One Week was predominantly a one-man-show, Sorrows has an authentic family dynamic created through the crucial sorority with Pill and Gabon, their mother, Lottie (Mare Winningham) and Yoli’s angsty teenaged daughter, Nora (Amybeth NcNulty). All four of the women in this family play an important part in conveying the thread of mental illness that can linger in a family. One of the biggest strengths of the film is that it conveys the depression that almost everyone in the family suffers from not as this ‘lightning strike’ of a major traumatizing event, but simply just a part of their life. Even despite Logue’s backstory constantly being in the back of their minds, you get the sense that depression is simply the oxygen this family breaths in. It has become a recent and overly-simplistic trope to show mental illness as a softball to the head, rather than a general state of being, and the script and film should be applauded for its conveyance of mental illness in such a realistic manner.
If a story about one suicidal sister, and another dealing with divorce, a tough relationship with her daughter and her own depression does not sound like the perfect date night, there may be some surprises within this film that audiences would not expect. It is equal parts sad and sweet. There is a gentle a pleasant surrealism to the third act of the film, that was unexpected and again, refreshing. It once again showed what could easily be a traumatic event with grace and subtlety. It is also a celebration of art and the artists’ mind. Another aspect that is so refreshing was not looking at the artist as a ‘tortured soul’ that no one could possibly understand (in their mind) but that many artistic people do go through these extreme highs and lows, and many of them understand it. There is a standout line where Yoli tells her sister that if we were to “get rid of shame and you can kiss Art goodbye”. This again, seemed very personal not only to the actors, but McGowan as well, as everyone involved seemed to truly appreciate this.
The appeal of All My Puny Sorrows comes not necessarily from the heavy subject matter, but the novel and stimulating manner in which it presents the story. The realism of the performances, the family bond, and how these characters actually deal with what is thrown at them is utterly unexpected. The film is packed with stellar performances, lead by Pill, and captained by a director who always seems to get ‘stellar’ out of his actors. The relatability of this family is what makes All My Puny Sorrows one of the strongest, smaller scaled Canadian productions to come along.