My cousin Nate died when we were both in our 20s. We’d grown up together, and after it happened, I had to keep reminding myself that whatever I was feeling was ok, even if it didn’t seem like it. I was sad and angry, but also sometimes I was selfish, or mad at him, or I wanted to make jokes, or I felt guilty, or I didn’t feel anything at all.
Grief doesn’t make sense, because it can’t, and we shouldn’t expect it to. Directors Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson seem to realize this acutely. Their last movie, Ghostlight, was a small, humane story about a man dealing with his son’s suicide and how he finds healing through art. Their new one, Mouse, follows a teenage girl named Minnie who’s ending her junior year of high school when her best friend is killed in a car accident. Her friend was the kind of person everyone liked, the kind who got all the plum roles in the school musicals. Minnie is a lot quieter, the sort who prefers to be behind the camera instead of in front of it. The death brings Minnie and her friend’s mom closer together, but that closeness brings its own problems as we begin to see how grief can push us to question who we’re supposed to be now, for ourselves and for other people. And we see the way we can all judge each other’s grief, as if there were a right or wrong way to do it.
The filmmakers’ style is straightforward, almost workmanlike, but I appreciate the way this lets them keep our attention focused on the story and the people, which is what really matters anyway. And despite the topic, the movie never feels oppressive— there are plenty of times we laugh in our lives, even with sadness around us. O’Sullivan and Thompson understand that people are people, and kindness is an absolute necessity.
Nate died 24 years ago, right after he’d turned 24. Which means from here on out, he’ll have been gone longer than he was here. And I don’t know what to do with that. But it’s not like any of it ever made sense anyway.
Mouse is in theaters.
