“I think I missed it. … Life.”
In Re: Uniting, written and directed by Laura Adkin, a group of best friends come together twenty-five years after college. Their lives have taken them in a variety of directions. They are at a point where they are beginning to questions the choices they have made. It is also a time when mortality is becoming a reality. Perhaps you would call this a midlife crisis, but it can also be seen as a discovery about self and wisdom.
The group is descending onto the Bower Island (located near Vancouver, BC) home of Michael (Jesse L. Martin) and Rachel (Michelle Harrison). Carrie (Bronwen Smith) is a wife and mother whose life and marriage has fallen into an invariable routine. She says, “I have been for my entire adult life, Mom.” Collin (Roger Cross) is a pro football player who became a broadcaster and is about to be named the host of a morning TV show. Danny (David James Lewis) is Collin’s executive assistant. He is also a man/child who has a different woman every night. He keeps the party supplied with weed. Natalie (Carmen Moore) arrives a bit late because she’s an esteemed neurosurgeon who had a big surgery. (The patient died, by the way, which gives the group its first chance to talk about death. There will be more.)
They have been together occasionally through the years, but the six of them haven’t all been together for eight years. The first night is an alcohol and cannabis fueled time of reminiscing and reconnecting. Groups of twos or three shift as we learn bits of their histories together.
The next morning, people are recovering from the night before, but soon various problems begin to crop up, exposing secrets, and the big reveal (not much of a surprise) that mortality is more real than the group has considered. The reactions to all these issues make the friends consider their own lives in new ways.
It would be easy (and not incorrect) to call this a Gen X version of such films as John Sayles’s The Return of the Secaucus 7, and Lawernce Kasden’s The Big Chill and Grand Canyon. The press notes for the film say it is a “nostalgic homage” to such films. However, there is also a sense in which this is not tied to a particular generation. The discovery that lives are not what anyone really planned on, the discovery of who we are and who we thought others are, and the discovery of the reality of death, are common to people moving into middle age.
For me, the patron biblical writer about middle age is “Qoheleth”, the author of Ecclesiastes. Each of these characters has experienced a bit of Qoheleth’s searching for meaning and fulfillment. They, like Qoheleth, are discovering that even achieving our dreams may not be enough. Qoheleth’s final conclusion is that life is never what we expect. Then he encourages us to live the life we have. Those in Re: Uniting may find wisdom is that teaching.
Re: Uniting is in select theaters.
Photos courtesy of Gravitas Ventures.
