Meadowland is a film that encompasses a parent’s
worst nightmare of the kidnapping of a child, depicting the trials and troubles
afterwards during the process of grief. The film opens with the family happy
and together before the kidnapping of the son from a gas station bathroom. The
film then skips a year forward where the audience sees that their son hasn’t
been found and the toll it has taken on the parents.
Olivia Wilde and Luke Wilson are very convincing in their
portrayal of grieving parents with the lives they try to put back together.
They deal with their grief in different ways like most people do. Also added is
a layer of mental illness for the mother, Sarah (Olivia Wilde). Understandably,
she has been unstable since the kidnapping of her son and is medicated to help
her keep balance. As she grows closer to a student at the school where she
teaches, she stops taking her medication and becomes more unstable while using
the motherly instincts that have been dormant to protect the student in his
home life.
Phil (Luke Wilson) shows a better job of keeping himself
together, but he too starts to slowly unravel after going to a grief support
group. He befriends another man whose family was killed by a drunk driver and
tries to get justice for his friend by finding the address of the man and
giving it to him. The film does a good job of showing how people deal with
grief in different ways while still affecting them the same amount.
Along with the actors giving a believable, heart wrenching
performance, the director, Reed Morano, uses the camera to help tell the story.
She knows when to use tight shots to really get the audience in with the character’s
inner thoughts and emotions. She also utilizes hand-held cameras to slowly show
more instability with our protagonists.
Other notable performances include Giovanni Ribisi as Phil’s
screw-up brother who stays on their couch for a time and tries to bond with
Sarah over the kidnapping of his nephew. Also, Elisabeth Moss as a New Jersey
tramp and mother to the student at Sarah’s school that she tries to protect.
Reed Morano bravely takes on the tough subject of grief over
losing a child in her first directorial role. As mothers, both Morano and Wilde
bring the needed perspective. At the same time, stand out performances from
Wilde and Wilson carry the movie and show the depth of all actors in the film.
