Funeral Day
Jon Weinberg’s “Funeral Day” is a movie that is right up my ally- it’s about someone who, when he is faced with death, seizes on life. But the thing that makes Weinberg’s film so entertaining, and stand out, is that way he and writer Kris Elgstrand decide to go into a different direction with this basic idea. It’s not the main character’s mortality that thrusts him into action, but a friend’s, and where this takes Scott, the main character, is a place of better understanding of what’s really important in life.
Weinberg himself plays Scott, and the film opens with him worried about his health, and especially, a lump he feels on one of his balls. But his friend, Ron (Jed Rees), is here dressed up and ready to go to their friend’s funeral. The friend just died from cancer, and Scott is not wanting to go, using his panic about his own health to justify skipping the funeral and taking control of his life. In the day that follows, however, Scott seems to find his own ideas of taking control upended by reality at every turn.
It’s interesting that this movie came up next in my screening queue at this moment, because I’ve been thinking about the moment I had death staring me in the face, and I realized over time that I had to make wholesale changes to my life. That realization did not happen overnight for me, and I wasn’t as stubborn about my health as Scott is (it was because of how stubborn I wasn’t about my health that I realized I needed to change), but Weinberg and Elgstrand deliver a cinematic representation of that moment that is hilarious to watch unfold, and resonated with me on a personal level because of my own experiences. The thing that made “Funeral Day” so winning for me is how the ways Scott tries to change his life seem to fall flat by his own bad decision making. If Scott were a person I know in real life, I would certainly have more sympathy, but it’s easy to see why Ron says at one point in their early conversation, “I am this close to punching you.” Scott seems to bring that out of people, whether it’s the former girlfriend he tries to blindside with a marriage proposal, his friend’s wife when he lies about being able to use his personal recording studio, even the cocky realtor he meets on the streets, and impulsively submits to a credit check to rent an apartment he can’t afford after quitting his job. For someone who is trying to take hold of life, and live it to the fullest, Scott isn’t really equipped to seeing what that looks like.
The ways people deal with grief are weird, at times, and Scott’s way is understandable, but it also illuminates the way he is selfish in his thinking about life. He didn’t visit his dying friend because he was sure he would pull through. He’s not going to the funeral, not thinking about what that means for the people who do. He doesn’t see the way his proposal doesn’t change how things ended before. And his stubbornness about getting checked out for what could be a tumor, by not wanting to see a doctor, leads his day towards some unusual pathways and experiences. In a way, “Funeral Day” feels like an indictment on movies where the main character makes rash choices that seem spontaneous and uplifting, but are not grounded in the real world. Weinberg’s film isn’t always grounded in reality, either, but it lands some real emotional truths that are worth taking into consideration as we make choices in our lives.
