The Friend

Greetings from Lithuania.

"Our Friend" (2019) is a sweet, sincere, heartbreaking and heartwarming movie. Its based on a true story, but to be honest, there are tons of stories like these were cancer is involved - its not what makes this movie good. What makes it good is solid directing, good writing, and terrific acting from all three main characters. Casey Affleck and Jason Segel were very good in this movie, but its Dakota Johnson's career performance so far - she was amazing in a hard to watch performance because of the subject matter,

Overall, "Our Friend" is not about the cancer but rather about love, family, friendship and caring about each other. Good movie.

I read several of the reviews here before watching the film myself. The one criticism I found was the time jumping back and forth and how it was hard to follow. I didn't find it hard to follow at all, and I appreciated the time jumping. In my opinion it serves a purpose to give the audience a breath of fresh air from the heavy, depressing moments. Imagine if all of the incredibly sad scenes we're compiled together in the last 45 minutes to an hour as opposed to broken up by the more light hearted moments intermittently throughout. This movie is fantastic and I wouldn't change one detail about it. One of the best I've seen in a while. It is incredibly sad though. Warning to anybody who has ever dealt with cancer. It's rough.

Family friend Dane (Jason Segel) moves into the home of the Teague family to support dad Matthew (Casey Affleck) when mom Nicole (Dakota Johnson) is diagnosed with terminal cancer. This based-on-a-true-story account is heartfelt, sincere and well-acted, even if director Gabriela Cowperthwaite chooses a somewhat annoying narrative technique of several weakly defined timelines, arguably in an attempt to infuse a sense of peaks and valleys into a rather straightforward story. Perhaps she should have trusted the story itself and gone for a more linear approach, or at least fewer timelines. At any rate, the platonic love triangle has a fine balance between mystique and graciousness. There's an openness in the material which is attractive, and which works as a counterweight to the inevitable finiteness of Nicole's downward spiral. Thematically and emotionally, the film reaches its zenith in a segment towards the end when the wonderful Cherry Jones comes in to resuscitate Dane and Matthew - and help them lay Nicole to rest. Our Friend makes an impression, perhaps even a lasting one.

Everything filmmaking should be. The characters were natural, honest, engaging, the story had meaning and depth, the delivery was honest and believable, and the story was one worth telling about the human condition. The topic was heavy, but, it was told in such a way that it didn't over sell or over dramatise the events and it was engaging and entertaining throughout.

Films of this quality are sadly few and far between. An exceptional effort by all the cast and crew. The 5 central characters especially.

Reading the reviews a lot of people complain about how the time line jumps. I'm not sure the story could be told in a linear manner and not be even more confusing and less engaging. Not all events in our lives are exactly memorable until we look back at the decisions that led up to them. I realize this isn't traditional story telling but I know I don't always looks at the events in my life chronologically. This is the story of how 3 separate lives are intertwined, twisting and turning back on one another. If the movie was edited to present the same scenes in the order they happened I think it would be predictable and very sad.