A practically note perfect film about a family coming to terms with the death of the family's wife and mother, a death which is all the more difficult for the husband, George Clooney, to deal with, because all was not right between him and his wife, and in fact, as he discovers, worse than he realised.
The film conveys very well the sense that when someone dies, there isn't an ending or a closure, in a literary or cinematic sense, but rather an abrupt curtailment of every ongoing thread of their lives, and those involved in those threads have to find a way to live without them.
I also love that the characterisation is very human. The dying woman's father initially seems to be an asshole, and you know what, he *remains* an asshole. But he's an asshole whose daughter is dead and whose wife has dementia, so you just have to give him some space and realise that assholes are humans who grieve like the rest of us. And likewise, the older daughter's friend initially seems like a thoughtless idiot - and he *is* a thoughtless idiot. But the way he is properly *there* for the family in their darkest hour shows that there's worse things in the world to be than a thoughtless idiot. And these are just two examples among many. George Clooney's received absolutely deserved plaudits for his performance, but to single him out for praise almost seems to do injustice to the wall-to-wall quality on display here.
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