The Oscar nominations came out last week and if there was an award for the ‘Best Embrace of Failure’, the sure fire favourite would have to be Sunshine Cleaning. From the makers of ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ (which inspired a post that turned out to be one of my highest hit posts of this blog) comes another winner about losing.
One of the film’s most poignant explorations is the subject which touches the most abject and profound of failures – suicide. On the most superficial level, one could think that suicide is the ultimate embrace of failure, but the film illustrates powerfully how it is not. Suicide is not turning failure to good. It is not ‘embracing’ the failures of one’s life, but trying to avoid them through the ultimate escape. Instead, suicide multiplies the pain and trauma of failure a hundred fold for those who remain. The film’s very first scene starts with this subject and goes on to feature it as the central ‘adversity’ to the film and protagonists.
Like Little Miss Sunshine, the film is a case study in adversity to every character has their own adversities to cope with. Lost wife. Lost mother. Lost love. Lost limb. Lost innocence. Lost way. Lost childhood. Failed job. Failed business. Failed venture. Failed school.
While the heroine Rose could have easily described her lot as, ‘I was desperate and took the crappiest of crap jobs cleaning up the most putrid of messes in the most horrific of circumstances.’ Instead, she sees the brilliant light of her broader impact and importance, “We come into people’s lives when they have experienced something profound and sad and we help them.” The embrace transforms her life, the lives around her and everyone she touches with her important service delivered with her inspirational outlook.
as always, a great blog!
I think the parallel to embracing failure in this film was not centred on the ‘escape by suicide’ (and thus, not facing up to and embracing failure) by people in the film, but Rose’s gradual epiphany of self-worth. Her adversity was her own failure at life. In her efforts to improve her situation by earning more money, she felt that she was taking on one of the worst, lowest tier jobs on earth. She slowly came to see the value in doing this work. She came to realise how her service helped those people in the darkest, emotionally wrenching times of their lives. She came to feel valued and able to contribute to the betterment of the world – simply in showing compassion to those who are suffering and doing a job that they could not. We must remember that sometimes people are not strong enough to see another way of coping. Usually they are suffering in ways others cannot comprehend. They are afraid, tired, sick…there are many reasons why one may choose suicide. It is not for those of us, who have not experienced their depression, to judge. Rather, like Rose, it is for us to assuage the hurt for those who have lost someone they love.