Weekly News- Demolition

Demolition is a romance drama film directed by Jean-Marc Vallee staring Jake Gyllenhaal. The film is about successful banker who's wife dies in a car crash. He finds help within a customer service rep and her son and starts to re-discover him self through the demolition of his past life. The films construct the themes of death, love and life. 

The protagonist Davis, tries to combat the loss of his wife by deconstructing anything he feels is faulty. It starts from his fridge to a cappuccino machine, a light fixture and eventually his entire house. The reason to why he does this is because he is told by his wife's farther that a heart, in times of sadness, must be pulled apart and put back together again. Davis takes this in to consideration but in a literal sense. Anything he finds faulty or flawed he deconstructs down to its very fundamental pieces. Yet he never puts anything he deconstructs back together after. In my opinion this is a metaphor that the director is trying to construct and convey to the audience. Davis needs to build a new life thus to do that he needs to deconstruct his old life. He does this through dissembling machines and other items that had a personal relation to him and his wife. But unlike the advice he receives from his father in-law he does not put them together again. This is a metaphor for how Davis is struggling to move on from his wife's death. He can't quite put the things back together because he is struggling to miss his wife. Davis is still in shock from the accident. 

This is where Davis comes across the customer service rep. Karen is the person who helps him find sadness in order to overcome his wife's death. She helps him find sadness through reading his letters and listening and talking to him. Karen's son, Chris, enables Davis escapism. Davis finds it gratifying to listen to someone else's problems and not his own. For example when when Chris is drumming and Davis is dancing around. It is evident that Davis is having the most amount of fun in ages. Davis also finds it amusing to destroy, such as the building sight he visits to demolish. Davis even offers the builder ,in charge of the demolition, $200 to help him destroy the building. 

Towards the end you find out that Davis's wife was pregnant with another man's baby. Again this does not send Davis in to distress or sadness. Davis eventually discovers how to overcome his wife's death and the death of an unborn child but only after he witness the love from Karen to Chris when Chris nearly dies from a sex offender. This deep emotional love from Karen is what makes Davis realise how important life is.