A bell peals and the damp flaps of what may be wings sound at the beginning of “The Thing With Feathers,” starring Benedict Cumberbatch as the widower identified as Dad. It is an evocative start to the director Dylan Southern’s adaptation of “Grief Is the Thing With Feathers,” the 2019 novel by Max Porter about Dad, his sons and a haranguing and massive crow.
That early bell tolls for Mum, who has died suddenly, leaving Dad and their young boys (brothers Richard and Henry Boxall) to the confounding space of inexplicable loss. Divided into sections with the rotating headers “Dad,” “Boys” and “Crow,” the film is primarily set in the days, weeks and a handful of months after the mother’s death.
From the start, it’s clear Dad, a graphic novelist on a deadline, has little feel for the routines of the household or parenting. The kitchen is in shambles; the disorder will spread and deepen.
Hunched over his desk, Dad wrestles with the crow on the page but also the one haunting him. Monster and muse, the inky-feathered creature (voiced by David Thewlis and inhabited by Eric Lampaert) taunts and cajoles. “I believe in therapeutic method,” Crow says. “There’s a difference between grief and despair,” a therapist offers.
Films about grief work best if audiences, too, miss the beloved. Movies about despair are trickier. Cumberbatch gives himself fully to the task of abjection, plunging us into the shadows and chaos of Dad’s life. But the movie neglects to make Mum’s presence palpable — and that is a loss.
The Thing With Feathers Rated R for language and some bloody violent content. Running time: 1 hour 38 minutes. In theaters.
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