When I asked what it was about Carr’s novel that inspired him to direct the film, Hicks embarked on an explanation with passion, though there was no easy answer. “It was more than one instance. The discussion of love and its discovery, when Joe (the widowed father played by Owen) grows in his relationship with his children, I felt it. I sat with the book and wept.”
It must be noted that Hicks has a penetrating stare. It is always interesting to me to take note of a director’s eyes; they see so much of the human soul that we cannot, or will not, examine. In an industry that is too often led in blindness, Hicks leads the way in this honest portrayal of one man’s emotional journey following the tragic death of his wife and his reconciliation with the duties and responsibilities of single fatherhood.
The world we live in is rife with tragedy and, if any of you arrived late to the screening yesterday evening due to heavy traffic in Midtown, I hope that you paused to reflect on the innumerable, glowing pinpricks in the distance—the United Nations’ lights were still burning.
Hicks’ talent is well-applied to the current social context, where professional men and women are being tenuously led by the lights of reason, responsibility and (more cynically) respectability, back home. However noble, or ignoble, this executive exodus may be, the roles of “mom” and “dad” are not easily donned, as Owen vividly portrays through his character Joe. His timely departure from the role of “action hero” to the more complex and approachable “family man” is refreshing, and I believed him when he said that he was a “family man through and through;” well, if he was not before, he is now.
It should also be noted that for those of you who were marvelling at Clives’s cufflinks (and there were a few of you) – Everlon Diamond Knot Collection should be acknowledged and although this time I didn’t quite make it to the post intimate dinner party it should also be recognized that Bon Appetit Supper Club were responsible for the wondrous morsels and post fete that followed.
