the theory of relativity

plus two movies to watch if you really need a good cry

Last weekend my eldest son and I stayed up late and watched two new movies back to back — All Quiet On Western Front and The Swimmers (both now streaming on Netflix). The former, a First World War epic, is a prolonged meditation on the senseless inanity of trench warfare — the 20th Century’s first rendering of a man-made hell on earth. The latter film is equally harrowing but in a more hopeful way. It follows the true story of two Syrian refugee sisters who make the perilous crossing from Turkey to Lesbos, heroically saving the other passengers on their boat by swimming most of the distance themselves before distinguishing themselves as athletes in their final destination, Berlin. What both of these films share is that they are beautifully wrought, emotionally raw and unapologetically dark — two distinct and unflinching takes on what happens when the human psyche and spirit is confronted with unfathomable suffering and loss.

My son is suffering at the moment in a way that is subtle and painful to watch. After the initial upheaval and chaos of the moves, the sudden, largely unexplained, absence of his father, my loquacious, quick-witted elder boy began to withdraw. The burbling brook of his curiosity slowed to a trickle, then pooled into brooding preteen silence. His hyper-animated, mercurial, emotive character was flattened out to a surface more smooth and opaque. For the first time in his life I understand my eldest is thinking far more than he says, and while I get that this is just a normal part of adolescence, it still pains me not to know what is going on behind his eyes — those grassy green irises faded to yellowish hazel murk. On the rare occasion he allows me to steal a sidelong glimpse directly into them I’m reminded of those thick weighted curtains they have in old West End theatres, the kind they draw across the stage to hide the goings on behind.

At this point you might well be wondering why I would choose to watch two incredibly depressing war movies with this boy on a miserable mid-January night. I have no plausible excuse for myself except that he was adamant and I was exhausted. My eldest is drawn to missiles and gunfire the way his six-year-old brother is to fart jokes. I wavered, weakly suggested a comedy, then figured, at least a history lesson is better Fortnite. We popped some popcorn and snuggled under a duvet, then for nearly five hours we sobbed.

When I tucked him in that night he up looked at me and smiled. It was his first real grin in weeks. My heart galloped.

“We had a good cry, didn’t we?” he said.

“Yes we did.”

“I feel better.”

“So do I.”

There are times in life when things are so confusing and difficult, that distraction becomes impossible. Comedy falls flat. Romance is deluded. Suspense fails to ramp.

At these moments, empathy through epic catharsis is the only answer, by which I mean big sweeping war stories. What my son and I were doing in watching those films, I now realise, was allowing ourselves to focus on people whose problems were bigger than our own.

If you’ve ever had a Big Problem, you will know they are all-engulfing, ravenous and bestial. Big Problems blot out the sun. But they do have an upside which is the way they instantly throw all other problems into sharp relief, revealing stuff that once would have destroyed your day or week or month as the minor irritants they are. Little problems now slide off my shoulders luxuriantly, almost elegantly, like layers of weightless silk robes. Sometimes, when I am padding around the house in the quiet of the afternoon, I will look down at the floor and see all these Little Problems strewn about my feet in piles and think with a funny kind of affection, One day soon I will pick you up and sort you away. In the mean time, I’m happy to leave them where they are, these parking tickets, tax returns, invoices, applications, unreturned packages, emails and calls. At times I find myself wading through them and the feeling is almost pleasurable. I let them swirl about my feet, caressing the sharp cold bones of my ankles. For once, they don’t bother me. In this, there is hope.