Recapping: Jean-Marc Vallee‘s Demolition (Fox Searchlight, 4.8) “is about a youngish, day-dreamy investment banker (Jake Gyllenhaal) succumbing to all kinds of weird, self-absorbed behavior as a way of dealing with his wife’s car-crash death. He doesn’t grieve as much go inward. He ignores his job, grows a stubble beard, becomes enamored of fixing machinery and then tearing things down.
“In so doing he begin to increasingly mystify and then piss off his father-in-law (Chris Cooper). He also slides into a nonsexual but connected relationship with a customer service rep (Naomi Watts) for a vending machine company. She has a somewhat alienated son (Judah Lewis) and a big, suspicious, more-than-a-little-angry live-in boyfriend.
“A lot of stuff gets taken apart and trashed and sledge-hammered in a kind of acted-out, fuck-it-all, let-it-fall-down way, but there’s one demolition scene that really didn’t go down very well with me, and which prompted some in the audience to groan and cry out.
“It happens when Gyllenhaal and Lewis completely wreck everything in his super-expensive home in the New York-area suburbs — furniture, walls, kitchen, music system, 70” flatscreen. “What kind of shit is this?,” I said to the screen. ‘Who wrecks a house like this? If Jake does’t want to live there, sublet it or sell it or whatever. But don’t destroy a perfectly nice house for some petty emotional reason…fuck is wrong with you, man?’