Starring: Kate Winslet, Josh Brolin, Gatling Griffith, Toby Maguire, Clark Gregg, Maike Munro, James van den Beek, J.K.Simmons, Brooke Smith, Brighid Fleming.
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Runtime: 111 mins. Reviewed in Feb 2014
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Labor Day is a quietly moving drama. Some audiences may find it very slow moving, but the film is finely detailed, giving the audience time to appreciate, be moved, contemplate what is happening and to contemplate the characters and their feelings and interactions.
In a sense, the plot is fairly familiar and, perhaps, predictable. It has been seen in dramas like The Desperate Hours when a family is held hostage in the home by escaped criminals. But, Labor Day is not like this. There is little or no overt violence in the film, except, most unexpectedly, when the mother of a boy with muscular dystrophy is annoyed at the end of a busy day caring for her father and slaps him across the face – more unexpected because of the lack of violence throughout the film.
We are introduced to Adele, a middle-aged woman suffering from depression and a general fear of going out of the house or making contact outside. The introduction is made in the voice-over by her son Henry, at the time of the film’s action he is 12 or 13, but the voice-over voice is that of his adult self, played by Toby Maguire. He explains that he has to look after his mother, care for her, take responsibility for her, which he does willingly. On a rare visit to a supermarket with his mother, Henry is accosted by a man who is bleeding and asks to be taken to his house. Adele is afraid, especially when it emerges that the stranger is a prison escapee, who had been serving a sentence for murder.
After the initial alarm, the film settles down in a way that we had not anticipated. We begin to wonder whether the escapee, Frank (Josh Brolin in a most sympathetic role), is guilty of the charge. During the film there are quite a number flashbacks to his previous life, his marriage, the birth of his child, the death of his wife. While tying up Adele for appearance’s sake, and intending to leave the next morning, he decides to stay for the Labour Day weekend. And he proves himself an extraordinary father-figure, mending things in the house, coaching Henry at baseball, a kindly and wise man. He is practically a saint-figure, a practical one at that.
This is all reassuring for Adele, who is played excellently by Kate Winslet, an intelligent actress in all her performances. Henry is played by Gatling Griffith, a talented young man who is able to keep his own on screen with both Kate Winslet and Josh Brolin. The weekend is not what they all we were anticipating and it leads to plans for the future. In the meantime, Henry has a Sunday visit with his father, who confesses that had he been a stronger man, he would have been able to stay with Adele in her depression.
Significantly, Adele’s depression has been caused by trauma in giving birth to Henry, several miscarriages, and a very difficult birth experience which will move all audiences, eliciting compassion for women who experience such circumstances.
The screenplay is not as predictable as some audiences might have it, more of reality than we might have expected. Some reviewers have remarked on sentiment and sentimentality – but it always depends how involved you are with the film before you go on the side of appropriate sentiment or decry sentimentality. Many audiences will share the sentiment in this story of three human beings who, by chance, interact with each other and whose lives are changed.
In some reviews, the writers and speakers have noted the previous films by director Jason Reitman, Juno, Up in the Air, and Young Adult, which had strong and wry senses of humour. They seem to blame him for not continuing in this vein but he has moved towards a more humane story and characters.
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