When I was in my early twenties I spent three years in a relationship with a man that I came to regard as monstrous. We happened to be married for six months of that, so when he died suddenly a decade after we had ceased all contact, I was inundated with well-meaning sympathy messages. His death had not inspired any feelings of grief in me, and I resented the expectation that it should. Instead, his demise merely dragged back up all of the resentments I felt towards him, and forced me to finally reckon with them.
I wouldn’t ordinarily start a movie review with a personal anecdote — especially not one this intimate. But when it comes to evaluating Raymond & Ray — the story of two abused brothers reuniting to deal with the burial of their vindictive father — it feels impossible not to mention. A movie about having to put on a polite, respectful face to bury someone you hate is not going to be for everyone. But I related to, and enjoyed, it immensely.
The basis of Raymond & Ray remains more taboo than it should be. The film is in some ways an examination of how our culture automatically expects grief when someone dies, no matter who they were or what they did in life. Death is the point, we are told, when all should be forgiven. (Just ask Jennette McCurdy, whose autobiography, I’m Glad My Mom Died, inspired ripples of shock when it was released two months ago.) The reality, of course, is infinitely more complicated — something Raymond and Ray goes to some pains to explore.
The movie does an excellent job of capturing the complexity of handling the deaths of people who have hurt but indelibly impacted our lives. As the titular characters, Ewan McGregor and Ethan Hawke both beautifully convey just how the betrayal of a loved one can wreak havoc on people in permanent ways. The way that both of them deal with that hurt — McGregor’s Raymond tries to lean into forgiveness, Hawke’s Ray embraces his anger — is appropriately messy but ultimately liberating.
