'Driveways'

At least for me, times like the one we are collectively stumbling and limping through right now cry out for small films — intimate stories that don’t necessarily thrill, but do make you feel a little more like a part of humanity.

Here is just such a film in Driveways. It is short and simple and poignant. It does not moralize or dramatize. It is about a handful of strangers who form an unlikely, brief, powerful bond. They find each other when they need each other. It is a dose of something I think we could all use right now, stolen away in our houses watching horrors unfold on our screens or out in the street witnessing them in person.

Driveways stars Hong Chau as a single mother, Kathy, who sweeps in to an exurban town to clean out her sister’s house after her untimely demise. She brings her pre-pubescent son Cody with her, played by Lucas Jaye, not knowing that when she arrives she will find a cleanout job well beyond what she was anticipating because of her late sister’s hoarding.

This premise opens the door for a third character, aging Korean War veteran Del, played by Brian Dennehy in his final role. While Kathy powers her way through an unfathomable amount of junk, Cody — tired of his tablet and a couple of goober agemates — strikes up an unlikely friendship with Del. Their main bond seems to be a kind of shared alienation from others. Cody’s mom is distracted. Del has recently lost his wife, and his friends at the neighborhood VFW, including Jerry Adler, whose character is showing early signs of dementia, seem incapable of helping him cope.

The odd couple are brought together purely by proximity. Del lives next door to the house Kathy and Cody are cleaning out. He is sitting on his porch when he first strikes up a conversation with Cody, who is standing in the adjacent driveway.

Everything about this film is quiet and subtle and bittersweet. There is strain and angst for Kathy — clearly struggling to keep it all together as she raises her son by herself. And there is a solemn grief in Del. These exquisite, delicate ties form, not just between Cody and Del, but also between Kathy and Del. His proximity to her sister is able to offer her some connection to her deceased sister. The two sisters were not exactly estranged, but nor were they close, and the heretofore unknown living conditions of Kathy’s sister add to her strain.

Director Andrew Ahn’s light touch should be celebrated. The very broad strokes of this film conjure up a lesser but much more well known film — Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino, also about a Korean war vet who has lost his wife and finds himself forming a relationship with a young boy of Asian descent. That film fixates on its grumpy, aging protagonist. It lectures and moralizes. It is melodramatic. It does not find the humanity and the connection in its characters that Driveways does.

Look, times are tough for just about everyone. We all cope how we can. Depending on the night, I might crave some Marvel-style escapism or I might want to soak in the strife of the moment and learn with something like I Am Not Your Negro. But a lot of nights what I am really looking for is something like Driveways - a film that whispers and doesn’t shout, a film that puts it characters on a long slow continuum rather than a steep arc. A friend on Twitter suggested this was the film I might need right now, and that friend was absolutely right. (Thanks, Chris.)