Dead Awake: Mending Towards Solace

In life, people spend a long time grieving over mistakes and regrets. This film, filled with symbolism and a sympathetic musical score, touches upon such a puzzle and how so many souls wander in search of atonement.

The film, directed by Omar Naim and written by John Harrington, though visually too dark and overly "scary" with shrill sounds at times, presents a grainy view of life and how frightening it can become, illustrating how some people perceive the world around them. They are enslaved to shadow, ambivalent of which path to veer down upon at the innermost crossroads in their lives. Humor is light, but the reward is high once these people realize that there is still something worth living for despite what they have lost in the past. After all, it is "better to be late in this life than to be early in the next." It is about emotional liberation, the kind of freedom that can only be sprung by one's own acceptance of the past. Letting go brings much light.

It is beautifully acted, the dialogue bursting with lines of denial which we would all do well to realize how greatly denial and the absence of our loved ones affects our everyday lives. The film is about order, how life revolves from lightness to blackness and how every woven fabric of reality is interconnected, for once a single soul finds redemption and solace, another becomes burdened with sadness. Nick Stahl is the leading man, smoldering and somber in his own depression, and Brian Lynner (a relatively unknown actor, the definition of a hidden gem) plays the burly undertaker and a surrogate father of sorts to Stahl at the funeral home through which its deathly routine Stahl's character broods along toward the final crescendo of his ultimate tranquility. Amy Smart and Rose McGowan are beauties in the background, with both of their roles factoring greatly into Stahl's unrest.

Lightheartedly, Dead Awake urges us to hope that things can still be enjoyable even after we've lost so much, resonating the wistful dream that we can go back, in a way, and repair what has been severed by our own refusal to accept the most harrowing of pains. It is more sympathetic towards the shortcomings of others, those all around us in life today, than say "Kalamity" did, another film that starred the steely and vehement Nick Stahl, which balances the scale of how we can still fix what has been taken away without causing any more self-damage in the process while not forsaking those that have given us so much love, memory, and sadness. It is a thoughtful picture that obviously deserves our reflection.