The film version of The Friend, Sigrid Nunez’s cerebral, plot-light novel, is longer than it needs to be, but you have to love a movie that quotes Samuel Beckett in its first 10 minutes and then follows up with a sea of similar literary gems, referenced in voice-over by Iris (Naomi Watts), a New York City writer and teacher. She lives a life of letters, quiet and rather solitary, but now, unexpectedly, there is the addition in her life of a most excellent dog.
That would be Apollo, a Great Dane that belonged to Iris’s mentor and decades-long close friend, Walter (Bill Murray), a renowned novelist who has just taken his own life. Walter loved to tell the story of finding Apollo abandoned in the park, sitting patiently and resplendently against the horizon, as if waiting just for him. Walter’s wife (Noma Dumezweni) guilt-trips Iris into taking Apollo off her hands, if only to find him a permanent home. It was Walter’s wish, she declares, and Iris relents, despite having always been a cat person, and despite living in a building with a serious “No pets” rule.
Upon arrival, Apollo immediately takes possession of the bed, forcing Iris, who’s clearly had no experience in being pack leader, to sleep on the floor. In the night, the dog climbs down off the bed, sniffing at and hovering over Iris’s face, as if taking the measure of her true intentions toward him. He’s enormous, and Iris is frozen in surprise but not really scared. Apollo is a charmer but he’s also deeply depressed, a diagnosis Iris doesn’t quite realize can be applied to her, too.
In a wrenching, exquisitely played moment for Watts, a world-weary Iris weeps against the long-bodied dog.
For their seventh feature, co-screenwriters/directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel (Bee Season, The Deep End) have done a fine (even Herculean) job of building on the small nuggets of incident to be found within Nunez’s short novel, which emphasizes language over action. Initially, the filmmakers spend perhaps more time than needed on Iris’s university writing class, but her conversations with the many women in Walter’s life, including his first wife, played superbly by Carla Gugino, are surprising and complex. Iris herself slept with Walter once, when she was his student; we also come to understand that he was known for getting sexually involved with his students. Bringing out the mixed emotions and memories that Walter evokes in all of these women is artfully done, even if the constant talk slows the movie’s forward motion.
New Yorkers in particular are likely to relish Iris’s walk-and-talk conversations through Manhattan and the montages of her pulling Apollo along on walks. At one point, as Iris tries to take the giant dog into her publisher’s office building, cinematographer Giles Nuttgens catches their reflection in the front entrance glass, a sight that marks them as central to the hub-and-bub of the day. The Friend is a film about grief, but it’s also a celebration of the city.
As Iris begins wondering if there is a way for Apollo to stay with her for good, the two begin making small accommodations toward one another. Iris discovers that being read to makes the dog happiest, a callback, no doubt, to his life with Walter. She begins, finally, to pet and nuzzle Apollo, and later, in a wrenching, exquisitely played moment for Watts, a world-weary Iris weeps against the long-bodied dog. She’s crying for herself, and for him, too, and for all that has been lost.
All along, Iris has been talking to Walter in voice-over, posing questions to him about his suicide. At the suggestion of a psychiatrist (played by Spotlight director Tom McCarthy), Iris begins writing again, and in a long, strange, daring sequence, conjures a fictional visit to Walter, who is deceased and “living” in the apartment in which he took his life. He is regretful and she is angry. Cornered, and out of witty retorts, Walter sits and stares straight into Iris’s fury, a moment that is startlingly raw and a triumph for Murray, who has never been finer.
The Friend will never play on a double bill with Marley & Me, another story of grief and a great dog, but one that wears its heart on its sleeve. Not so The Friend, which is determinedly unsentimental, right up to its gentle but tough-minded finale. Apollo, played by a magnificent harlequin Dane named Bing, doesn’t do cute. He has a patented look of disdain he’d no doubt flash at the very suggestion, and besides, this gentle giant learned long ago that humans have a way of breaking your heart. The wise dog holds it close. ❖
Chuck Wilson is a Los Angeles–based writer who has written for the L.A. Weekly for over 25 years and has been a longtime contributor to the Village Voice.