The Grief of Others

The Grief of Others

Patrick Wang / 2015 / 103 minutes / United States

The Ryries have suffered a loss: the death of a baby just fifty-seven hours after his birth. Without words to express their grief, the parents, John and Ricky, try to return to their previous lives. The couple’s children, ten-year-old Biscuit and thirteen-year-old Paul, responding to the unnamed tensions around them, begin to act out in exquisitely idiosyncratic ways. But as the family members scatter into private, isolating grief, an unexpected visitor arrives, and they find themselves growing more alert to the hurt, humor, warmth, and burdens of others—to the grief that is part of every human life but that also carries within it the power to draw us together.


READ ON TRANSMISSIONS

 

→ Patrick Wang’s Single Takes column on Wu Nien-jen’s A Borrowed Life


 

ALSO BY PATRICK WANG

 

A Bread Factory
In the Family

  • Critic's Pick! "An artful portrait of a world that refuses the order we try to impose on it when we close ourselves off to heartache, doubt and pain."

    — Bilge Ebiri, The New York Times
  • "Evokes a family’s fragile inner life in ineffably moving fashion. Shows remarkable, almost subliminal powers of observation."

    — Justin Chang, Variety
  • "At once literary and gently cinematic, The Grief of Others develops a haunting atmosphere that builds to a satisfying conclusion."

    — Eric Kohn, Indiewire
  • "A stirring and formally innovative adaptation…bringing formal vibrancy to weighty material."

    Film Comment
  • "Patrick Wang’s deep-tissue humanism is a treasure worth nurturing in today’s movie community."

    LA Times
  • "Patrick Wang is slowly becoming the most dependably sensitive and inventive independent filmmaker in America."

    Screen Rant
Stills

Where to Watch