On the Fear of Death
Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers but to be fearless in facing them.
Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain but for the heart to conquer it.
Let me not look for allies in life's battlefield but to my own strength.
Let me not crave in anxious fear to be saved but hope for the patience to win my freedom.
Grant me that 1 may not be a coward, feeling your mercy in my success alone; but let me find the grasp of your hand in my failure.
- Rabindranath Tagore, Fruit-Gathering
I’m not usually a HUGE movie fan outside of superhero fair and the occasional drama or action flick, but something about John Wick caught my attention immediately.
Perhaps it was how that first trailer for the initial film looked. Maybe it was my friends hyping it up to me after they saw them. Whatever finally compelled me to watch them, I’m glad it did because these films have become some of my all time favorites.
In preparation for the 4th (and seemingly final) film in the franchise, I decided to watch the previous three films again in order to refresh myself on the story and world, and it was during this rewatch that I came across an interesting thought: John Wick is a study of how grief affects a person.
Despite seeing hundreds of films and taking a few college courses that I hardly paid attention to, I am probably the most film illiterate person that I know. So I know this revelation couldn’t have been an original thought.
I double checked my thoughts on Al Gore’s internet, and lo and behold I was not the only one with Galaxy brain. A few reddit posts and articles later and my eyes were opened to a new way to experience this series. So thanks, Internet. You won’t hear me say that often.
Grief is a natural emotion. It’s something that everyone goes through multiple times in their life with events both big and small. To feel it is normal but how to process it is a different thing entirely.
Emotions themselves are hard to truly quantify, but Grief is rare in that it goes through cycles or “stages” according to the scale created by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross in her 1969 book, On Death and Dying. The stages she developed are as follows:
Denial
Anger
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance
It is in this varied, agonizing, and oftentimes slow process that the John Wick film series firmly nests itself. Widely regarded as an action spectacle that helped bring famed actor Keanu Reeves back to prominence after years away from the spotlight, if you dig just below the surface, beneath all the blood, bullets, and death sits a tragic story of one man’s grief over the life he left behind and how each stage brings him closer and closer to the love on the other side.
Stage 1: Denial
Denial…helps us to survive the loss. In this stage, the world becomes meaningless and overwhelming. Life makes no sense. We are in a state of shock and denial. We go numb.
The first John Wick is very much a lowkey film compared to its sequels. This more quieter and reflective lens is what makes it my favorite out of the franchise. There are lots of shots and scenes of John just sitting in silence, either thinking about what he has to do next, or remembering his wife, Helen (whose death is part of the catalyst for the entire series of films).
This air of denial hangs over the entirety of cast. Whether it be Viggo Tarasov’s (portrayed by Michaels Nyvquist) denial that John will come for him, to his son Iosef’s (played by Alfie Allen) denial that John is really able to live to the stories told about him by various characters introduced throughout the film, some like the delightfully charming Winston (portrayed by Ian McShane) and his concierge Charon (played by the late, great Lance Reddick).
We see John on his war path encountering faces new and old, and yet through all the blood he’s shed he remains stoic (save for an emotional outburst near the beginning of the climax). A machine whose only purpose is disposing of those who interfered with his peace. He’s almost completely numb to the world around him. While this is fun to watch on the surface, there is also a quiet melancholy to it all.
While the memes were hilarious, this vendetta was about more than just a dog. John says as much when he’s captured by Viggo near the end of the film. The puppy symbolized something and while by the end of the film John does get another pup (that lasts through all the films) that doesn’t begin to fill the void reopened in his heart. It’s in this moment when you realize that this blood-stained story can only end one way.
Stage 2: Anger
Anger is a necessary stage of the healing process. Be willing to feel your anger, even though it may seem endless. The more you truly feel it, the more it will begin to dissipate and the more you will heal.
John Wick 2 was much better than I remember it being. I vividly remember the first movie, and due to recency bias parts of the third stood out to me, but two was always my blind spot. My most vivid memories of the film being its ending as well as John and Cassain’s (played by Common) hilarious silencer fight in a crowded train station.
Even moreso than it’s predecssor, John Wick: Chapter 2 wears its theme on it’s sleeve. This is a very angry film. Not angry in the sense that the scriptwriters, director, or those involved hated what they were creating (quite the opposite in fact) but angry in how the events play out and the motivations of the characters.
The film’s main villain Santino D’Antonio (played by Riccardo Scamarcio) is angry that his sister Gianna (Claudia Gerini) was chosen over him as a representative on the enigmatic “High Table”, Gianna is angry at the position she was placed in which leads to her taking her own life, Cassian is angry at John for killing Gianna, and this all circles back to John being angry for Santino for not only betraying him but dragging him back into the life that he fought so desperately to leave.
A friend of mine said that it was a natural escalation of the events of the first film, and that much is true. Just as anger is a natural escalation to denial.
You are not in control. Things are happening so fast that you don’t know if you are able to keep up. That’s, in a sense, how this film feels. Almost a nonstop angry ride from start to finish. The only moment you are given to breathe is in the end, where John’s killing of Santino in the Continental creates a shockwave that is heard throughout this film’s world.
All in the service of anger.
Stage 3: Bargaining
Guilt is often bargaining’s companion. The “if onlys” cause us to find fault in ourselves and what we “think” we could have done differently. We may even bargain with the pain. We will do anything not to feel the pain of this loss. We remain in the past, trying to negotiate our way out of the hurt.
Parabellum is less an escalation of the first two films in terms of stakes and more an expansion of the world which work both for and against it, making it probably the weakest film of the franchise, but that doesn’t make it any less watchable. In fact, it probably has some of the best action sequences in the series (the gunfights in Casablanca and the New York Continental being especially memorable), and just like the previous two films it showcases its own stage of grief quite well.
“John and friends make a bunch of deals” is probably the most apt way to describe the events of this movie. John makes deals both underneath and above the High Table to return to some sort of normalcy after the events of Chapter 2 (one of which brings him to Sofia Al-Azwar who is played by the ever amazing Halle Berry), Winston makes a deal to keep the Continental (resulting in the film’s bombastic gunfight in the hotel’s massive halls), the Bowery King (portrayed by a very gleeful Laurence Fishburne) makes a deal to keep his slice of NY free from destruction at the hands of the High Table, and the mysterious Adjudicator (played by Asia Kate Dillon) makes numerous bargains and deals to secure John’s destruction.
Even with all these deals made, John still manages to lose in the end. Bargaining itself is a delaying tactic. Ruminating on possibilities and trying to run from the reality only dig the whole deeper.
It’s that revelation that leads to the conclusion of the story.
STAGES 4 & 5: DEPRESSION AND ACCEPTANCE
*Spoilers For John Wick Chapter 4*
As of this writing, “John Wick Chapter 4” brings the saga of the one man killing machine to a mostly fitting end. While it is a bit more satisfying on the story end of things than Parabellum, it doesn’t quite reach the highs of Chapter 2 of the first film. The interesting thing about this film however, is that you can separate it into two parts, both fitting the final two stages of grief.
After bargaining, our attention moves squarely into the present. Empty feelings present themselves, and grief enters our lives on a deeper level, deeper than we ever imagined.
In the beginning, we see John at possibly his lowest point in the series. Most of his friends are either dead or betrayed him, the bounty on his head is ever climbing, and he is now been put into the direct crosshairs of the High Table and their newest member, the Marquis Vincent de Gramont (played by Bill Skarsgard). Gramont brings in every resource at his disposal, including John’s old friend Caine (played by the every awesome Donnie Yen) and the final chase for the Boogeyman commences.
Outside of the still stellar fight choreography (the fight inside the Osaka quite possibly being my favorite in the entire series), the mood is very dour with lots of scenes taking place in dark spaces and dreary locales to set the mood. It’s not until John finally faces the Marquis that the film begins to turn.
Acceptance is often confused with the notion of being “all right” or “OK” with what has happened. This is not the case…This stage is about accepting the reality that our loved one is physically gone and recognizing that this new reality is the permanent reality. We will never like this reality or make it OK, but eventually we accept it. We learn to live with it. We can never replace what has been lost, but we can make new connections, new meaningful relationships, new inter-dependencies. Instead of denying our feelings, we listen to our needs; we move, we change, we grow, we evolve…We begin to live again, but we cannot do so until we have given grief its time.
The stairs that stand between John and his final duel with the Marquis in Paris might as well be a symbol of all the trials he’s faced since the first film. Every bullet fired, every cut of a blade, every body that fell, and each step taken further up slowly ebb away at the anger and sorrow John felt since the loss of his wife.
Grief is always rooted in love, or rather the LOSS of love. John was our protagonist, but the most important character was always his wife Helen and what she meant to him. She was his light, and she was snuffed out before he could truly begin to heal. His stubborn drive to keep moving and keep living was simply so he could remember her.
That is shown no more vividly than the end of the film as John’s last words, as he sits on the steps that he fought so hard to climb, were his wife’s name.
A story started by a tragedy, eventually ends in a bittersweet happiness. While most fans might have been sad to see John go, I for one thought this was a near perfect ending to this tale.
“Grief is the price we pay for love.” - Queen Elizabeth II