“The Friend,” by David Siegel and Scott McGehee, explores the nature of love and connection among friends, family, and cherished animals — as well as the complex relationships of grief. The film, which is showing at the M.V. Film Center, is adapted from Sigrid Nunez’s National Book awardwinning novel from 2018.
As the film opens, a voiceover asks, “What will happen to the dog?” However, we don’t see a canine for a bit. First, we meet Walter, played with a sly, ironic wit by Bill Murray. At a lively dinner party, Walter, a literary lion, commands respect for his genius and affection from his friends amid a good-natured intellectual repartee about his unlikely rescue of a dog quietly sitting alone atop a hill near the Brooklyn Heights Promenade. The conversation is mainly between Walter and Iris (played with great nuance by Naomi Watts), who turns out to be his best friend. But watch carefully, because there is a split-second when the camera catches Walter’s countenance fall when no one is looking. In the next scene, he is dead by suicide.
Following a grieving Iris, we learn of Walter’s three wives and a notable number of student affairs during his teaching years. And although Walter and she had a one-night fling, the two became the best of friends. In fact, knowing that Iris was blocked with her latest literary effort, Walter asked her to work with his adult daughter on a book of his prolific correspondence.
Iris soon discovers that Walter wanted something else from her, something much larger. Enter Apollo, a genuinely enormous black-and-white, aging Great Dane. His expressive countenance, with the saddest eyes and sagging jowls, signals unbearable anguish at having lost Walter. Iris, a cat person, desperately doesn’t want to take Apollo on, and besides, she lives in a tiny rent-controlled Manhattan apartment, and management strictly forbids dogs. Iris is reluctantly coerced into taking Apollo, whom she is determined to rehome.
Apollo upends Iris’ solitary life. His sprawling presence and grief are so immense that there is no room for her on the bed to which he dejectedly retreats. Iris, a beleaguered professor and writer, suddenly finds herself needing to take Apollo with her everywhere, or rush home from work to ensure he hasn’t destroyed her apartment. Appropriately, the only thing that soothes the soul of the “savage” beast is being read to. Navigating busy New York City streets with the equivalent of a small pony leads to some very humorous moments. The threat of eviction adds urgency to her dilemma, which becomes more complicated as the friendship between the two hurting souls evolves. With the real danger of losing the apartment, Iris’s friends, along with the super, push her to give up Apollo. Even as she tries to find someone else to care for him, Iris begins to form a bond with him, unsurprisingly, because we as the viewers have fallen for the dog from the start.
Even though Apollo, brilliantly portrayed by Bing, is immediately endearing, “The Friend” is not a simple buddy movie. Siegel and McGehee probe deeply into the complex nature of grief on loved ones who are left after someone takes their life, and what it means to truly care for another.
“The Friend” plays at the M.V. Film Center. For tickets and information, visit mvfilmsociety.com.
