Grief inspires (or compels) people to do all kinds of weird stuff including, but not limited to, beginning a home renovation in the wee hours of the night, writing letters to corporations, and dancing in traffic. At least, those were the actions that Jake Gyllenhaal’s widower character took in the first trailer for Jean-Marc Vallée’s Demolition. The latest trailer for the film, which also stars Naomi Watts and Chris Cooper, provides more of the background for Davis’ not-quite breakdown, including his marriage to a woman he admits he never really got around to knowing.
We learned in the first look at Demolition that Davis (Gyllenhaal) is a well-to-do banker who loses his wife in a car accident. He feels guilty about not displaying much sadness, not even in front of his father-in-law (Cooper), so he goes to see a doctor about the “numbness” in a scene that would be right at home in Garden State. The only people who are privy to Davis’ true feelings are Karen (Watts), an employee at the vending machine company that Davis writes to after his wife dies, and her son, whom Davis enlists in helping tear down his old life, which is of course represented by his designer home (bankers). Still, most of the catharsis looks like it happens in the car while Davis is singing along to Heart’s “Crazy On You.”
Demolition will get a limited theatrical release on April 6.