Juniper: Learning to Live and Die in Life’s Last Moments
By John Kirk
Rating: B+
Charlotte Rampling’s striking eyes are fascinating. They have always seemed rich and laden with experience and wisdom, even in her early roles.
They give this legendary actress an advantage in the role in Juniper. In this film she plays Ruth, an English grandmother with a crippled leg, a love of gin, and a life of immense journalistic proportions from her time covering the Spanish Civil War and Africa.
Ruth moves to New Zealand to be cared for by her estranged son Robert (Marton Csokas) and grandson Sam (George Ferrier). Robert clearly wants nothing to do with his mother and passes off the responsibility to Sam and nurse Sarah (Edith Poor).
Seventeen-year-old Sam — recently home for holidays from boarding school and on a path of suicidal self-destruction — automatically resents this charge. Still suffering from the loss of his mother, he prefers to play videogames and sneak alcohol on his own time. Being forced to give Sarah a break occasionally is not what he had in mind for his own unintentional vacation.
But when the inevitable contest of wills between the two happen, Sam learns that his grandmother is not just a vindictive, harrowing shrew but someone with knowledge of life he can relate to. And after living in boarding school, that’s something very appealing to him. As a result, the two come to share a bond, one that is experienced in the latter days of Ruth’s life.
Rampling is unsurpassed in this portrayal of a grandmother not only deserving of respect as the familial matriarch but one who demands it by right of her experience. She challenges Sam based on his right to be in the same house and takes her place, even though they have never met, she establishes her dominance immediately. However, this happens in a way that is too quick for my liking.
Ruth has tremendous experience she could share with Sam, something hinted at in the photo albums Sarah shares with Sam. But these scenes are fleeting and would have provided insightful dialogue between the two characters. In any event, Ruth’s life is imprinted upon Sam, and he quickly becomes intrigued by it.
Admittedly, the pace is a bit slow in the first half of the film, but it is justified as during this time Sam not only learns to care for someone else, but Ruth skillfully teaches to care about life worth living.
Bribing his friends — the “drunken louts” as she describes them —with copious amounts of alcohol, Ruth bids them to improve and clear out the gardens, have a massive party and Ruth even gets to accompany them, despite being wheelchair-bound, on outward excursions in the New Zealand countryside.
Seeing her vicariously live life through the younger people around her and instruct Sam’s fellows on skeet-shooting while invoking her wartime experiences are scenes that justify her character in this film and makes you wish she was your own grandmother.
Of course, that’s what writer-director Matthew J. Saville is hoping to communicate with Juniper. As this story is based on his own experiences, with his grandmother staying with him in his youth, the message is poignantly clear. His grandmother taught him the value of a life well-lived in her last days, which is lovingly shared in this film.
She shares with Sam some of her experiences, what her eyes have seen, though not as visualized as the audience might wish. If there was anything lacking in this film is that we really don’t get to know about the details in the wartime photographs that Sam marvels at. Ruth’s attitude deserves some backstory and if we are to take for granted that she has lived a life’s treasure-trove of experiences, then we need to hear some.
This is a story not just about living life but how to face death. In it, Sam learns that the way we face death is determined by the way we have faced life. Ruth lived life on the edge, which means she deserves to face the end on her own terms. She does not want to face death alone, and the bond she eventually develops with Sam ensures that she gets what she wants.
In the end, it’s a story about family coming together in the last moments of a loved one’s life and facing death with not only dignity but with honesty as well. A touching story.
Juniper. Written and directed by Matthew J. Saville. Starring Charlotte Rampling, Marton Csokas, George Ferrier and Edith Poor. Opening February 24 in Toronto (Cineplex Varsity Theatre) and Vancouver (Cineplex Fifth Avenue) with additional markets (Halifax, Ottawa, Victoria, Calgary, Peterborough, Salmon Arm, Vernon, Victoria, Charlottetown, Fredericton, Belleville, and Gravenhurst) to follow.