Review: The Closer We Get

10th November 2015

When filmmaker Karen Guthrie’s mother Ann suffers a devastating stroke both Karen and her estranged father Ian return home to care for Ann. It is during this time that Karen documents her parent’s lives, their particular troubles and the long and painful process of healing fractured lives.

Karen’s story is a complicated one. As a family breaks, the fallout is often far reaching and the consequences bleed through the generations. Without giving anything away, a secret gives birth to lies and plants the seed for the tragedy that follows. The honest and heartfelt manner in which the director lenses the lives of her loved ones magnifies both the fleeting, humorous moments with her mother and the protracted, dangerous silences that come from being reticent and non-confrontational with her father.

In many ways The Closer We Get shares similarities with Sarah Polley’s 2012 documentary, Stories We Tell. Both feature a daughter’s journey to the center of a familial rift; although here it is less revelatory and more introspective as Guthrie uses the medium of film to face her own fears.

The Closer We Get is playing in selected cinemas now.

EDIT: on VoD 31st August & DVD 5th September.

The Closer We Get was HOT DOC’s International Documentary winner and has also gone on to win the Women Filmmakers Award from Los Angeles Diversity Film Festival and also Best UK Feature from the Scottish Mental Health Arts & Film Festival.

Directed by Karen Guthrie and Produced by Karen Guthrie and Nina Pope, The Closer We Get is a powerful and exquisitely-shot autobiographical portrait of loyalty, broken dreams and redemption told by its director, reluctantly-dutiful daughter Karen, who takes you under the skin of the household she returns to for this long goodbye.

Karen’s mother Ann suffers a devastating stroke that brings her daughter back home when she least expects it. But Karen isn’t the only one who returns to help care for Ann in the crisis: Her prodigal father, the unfathomable but endearing Ian – separated from Ann for years – also reappears. Armed with her camera, Karen seizes this last chance to confront the family story before it’s too late, to come to terms with the aftermath of the secret her father had tried – and failed – to keep from them all, and to find that Ann’s stroke has in fact thrown them all a life raft.

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