Relationships are often the crux of most films that explore human nature. Who we are, what we do, and who we become are often the consequences of our interactions with others and the trauma as well as lessons we carry from these karmic bonds we create in our lives. Poison for me felt like an epilogue to Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage. The only additional factor is that Poison explores the breakdown of a marriage in the aftermath of the loss of a child. This creates a deeper and far more nuanced exploration of grief, one that isn’t just limited to the couple but also revelatory of the common wound they share and need closure to heal from, together. The entire film compresses time so as to heighten the dramatic narrative and create a vacuum for the characters to live through their past, all in one afternoon. This gives the film an almost play-like theatrical impact where each scene builds up to the next revelation, never allowing the curiosity of the audience to dip in spite of it being a two-character set piece like Linklater’s Before Sunrise.
Spoilers Ahead
How Does The Plot Incorporate The Stages Of Grief?
Poison begins with shots of daybreak; a man is driving on an empty highway, and he fuels his car, which indicates he has a long way to go. This intercuts with a woman who calls into work and says she has a cold, because of which she needs a day off. She leaves on her bike, picks up flowers, and rides to a cemetery in the church compound. Here, she sees the man and is taken aback, shocked and numb, so she turns to leave when he calls out to her, “Edith.”
It was Elisabeth Kubler Ross who made us aware of the five stages of grief. Poison’s screenplay is a visual representation of these non-linear stages and how they ebb and flow when people who have immense suffering and pent-up emotions meet and have to confront their pain with their perpetrator. The act of trying to leave is the first stage of ‘denial.’ Edith doesn’t know how to react or respond to the man she once loved but now hasn’t seen in 10 years. She is unable to confront the reality of becoming familiar strangers with a person she shares an immeasurable history with. Upon meeting each other, he mentions how she hasn’t changed a bit, but her responses remain nonchalant. It is also revealed that they have met because of logistics involving the grave of their son, which needs to be moved. However, the son isn’t mentioned just yet; instead, it’s an unspoken assumption the audience makes because of the lingering pauses and awkwardness in the silences, which makes you fill in the blanks for yourself. Soon, we move to the next phase of grief, which is ‘anger.’ Edith says she’s finding it hard to be normal around him when they haven’t seen each other for years and don’t know how each other has been all this while. She excuses herself to use the washroom in order to keep herself from bursting in frustration, but upon returning, she tells him that, “Things only happen when they don’t matter to you anymore, and when you aren’t dependent on them,” hinting at her own mental state and saying that their separation happened when neither of them cared to make things better.
What does the injured bird symbolize?
The awkward interaction between Edith and Lucas is punctuated by a bird crashing on the door of the waiting room where they are conversing. Edith goes to revive it, and it flies away, while creating a tender moment between them. The bird is a motif that shows how an accident broke down their entire relationship, if only she had held it and caressed it during that difficult time, there was a possibility that they could have made it through. This also ties the film at the end when a flock of birds fly across the sky once they have found closure with one another.
How do Edith and Lucas bridge ten-years of unspoken words?
Like a dream, the film jumps time, sometimes minutes apart while other times just enough for the characters to change topics. Edith soon brings up the last time she saw him, 31st December 2012, at 10 past 7. This becomes an important bookmark that gives the story a three-dimensional perspective. We hear about what happened that evening from him and from her, and by the end we have our own version of the truth from our own understanding of their points of view. You soon start asking yourself the questions the characters are trying to deliberate on, like, “Do you notice how often you do things you don’t actually want to do?” or “Are we compelled to behave out of character because of our circumstances?”
The conversation leans on Edith and her curiosities. She is the driver bargaining with him to find an internal resolution to the demise of their relationship, but his complacent answers, as well as lack of introspection after all these years, leave her more anxious and frustrated. This moves her onto the next phase of grief, ‘Depression.’ In the washroom she confesses that she’s become addicted to sleeping pills and that her doctor says it’s normal for a woman in her circumstance. A piece of dialogue that stayed with me was, “The worst thing about addictions is that they are so easy to develop when you don’t have hope to clutch onto.” She speaks about how she wanted to have a new life after the incident, but in reality she just wants to erase what happened and start afresh with him.
How did Jacob’s death affect Edith and Lucas?
This confession and acknowledgement of each other’s true emotions finally leads them to come face to face and discuss their pain point, ‘Jacob’s death.’ They both speak about how they miss their child, and validating this personal loss that ties them together helps them to slowly understand what each one has been feeling. We think we are in control of our own lives and our own suffering, but in the face of loss, rewards or punishments don’t matter; all that matters is feeling seen and being heard. In the pre-climactic act, they reconvene at the cemetery and are waiting for authorities to arrive, when he decides to call the person, they are waiting to meet but is unable to reach them. This leads to him getting agitated as he comments on the unkempt state of the cemetery grounds, and the thought of his son’s body kept in shambles makes him confront his own emotions about the situation. In trying to cheer him up, Edith teasingly comments on how weak and frail he has gotten and wonders how no one has told him this, to which he blurts out that his wife does… a long pause ensues between them.
Staged like an open confessional, both of them speak about this at the church, sitting on pews placed on either side of the room. Her eyes are fiery and sad as she comes to terms with the betrayal of not knowing about his marriage. He asks her what she sees when she looks at him, to which she retaliates with ‘I see foes, a history, a failed past, a failed story; she can’t see it any other way.’ Sitting in silence, he breaks it with a revelation that he’s writing a book about a couple who first lost their child and then each other. The conversation, which begins with simmering tension, boils over into a showdown. Where each question and judges the other’s suffering almost in a show of one-upmanship.
Bitter with her own life and the death of her son, Edith can’t help but feel cheated by his choices of moving on and marrying a young woman with whom he’s expecting a child. While she still lives in two realities, one is her present solitude and sleeplessness, and the other is the night her son was run over by a truck at 80 km per hour. She says he may be sad, but lucky for him that life goes on. She shames him by saying he can write a book to deal with his loss and speak about his grief from his filtered perspective since it’s in the past for him, but as far as she’s concerned, the grief is one that never ended, for every detail is etched into her memory as she lives through it every conscious moment of her life. She lashes out at him. A picture gets painted of the demise of their marriage and the outcome of their actions or lack thereof. Both have their own grievances with each other and are unable to get closure. He eventually says he wants to leave, but not before he tells her how he still held a memory of their youth when her dimple would quietly appear when she smiled brightly, contrasting the bitter, vindictive negativism that had lined her lips sealed with worry today.
What Does The Ending Mean For Edith and Lucas?
Rain pours down onto their open casket of secrets and revelations as they sit in his car, over a bottle of wine and cheese together, hoping that in the end everything will be alright. In a tender moment of self-recognition, she wonders how people in far worse circumstances are able to find joy in their lives and keep living with a smile. He says he left because staying to celebrate, kiss her, or wish her a happy new year when he wasn’t feeling happy didn’t feel right to him. The film ends with him telling her how singing in a choir has helped him find joy again, and she wonders if maybe it’s time for her to drain the poison she has held onto and turn it into nectar by embracing joy too. In an alternate reality, maybe she would have joined him in this choir, and they could have renewed their relationship and love for each other bonded by the same pain that they are learning to live with. However, I believe that Lucas goes back, marries his girlfriend, has his child, maybe naming the child ‘Jacob’ if he’s a boy, in this way re-starting his life and giving himself a second chance to get things right as a father. On the other hand, I believe Edith starts pursuing hobbies and possibly also joins a group of other parents who have lost their kids so as to help in her healing journey and have a place to share the deepest emotions she is still holding onto.
Poison ends on a bittersweet note of hope and renewal; even if neither of them will ever forget what happened in their past, at least they can try to heal from the bitterness it had filled their relationship and the memory of their lives together with. Poison reminded me of an Indian film called Saaransh, directed by Mahesh Bhatt, which was chosen as India’s official selection for the foreign language category in 1985 and told the story of an old couple whose young son dies during a mugging incident in New York. Although tonally different in the way grief is dealt with, the film chronicles a similar sentiment in an isolated drama of two people who take in a paying guest to give them a purpose in life while they deal with their loss.
In Poison, the paying guest is the memory of Jacob, which remains tangible and a spectator of this relationship biopsy through the point of view of the audience, and that becomes the last stage of grief, the acceptance that they will make it through, after all.
