The Pole Dance of Grief in Away We Go

A few weeks back, Meghan and Emily posted about the poignant, brief pregnancy loss scene in Pixar’s Up. It was a doubly powerful rendering of miscarriage and grief, because it happened silently, in the midst of a gregarious, dreamy children’s movie. I am wondering what you all thought of the miscarriage scene in Away We Go, Sam Mendes’ new film about pregnant slackers seeking a home.

As Dana’s already pointed out, it’s not a perfect movie. Too many cartoon characters bouncing around cartoonishly (although Allison Janey, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Josh Hamilton are such brilliantly wrought caricatures, it hardly matters). But as soon as we meet Melanie Lynskey, playing hip Montreal supermom, Munch Garnett, we know something different is coming.

Munch can’t conceive, and has thus adopted a Victorian houseful of impossibly tidy, polite children with perfect pitch. But the instant she finds herself in a room with the explosively pregnant Verona (played by Maya Rudolph), it’s clear Munch is being devoured by something. And later that evening, after a good amount of wine, Munch takes to the stage at an open mic night to perform the saddest, least sexy pole dance ever witnessed, all jerking head and hollow eyes. Her husband, Tom, played by Chris Messina, explains that Munch has just suffered her fifth miscarriage. He can’t take his eyes off her as he describes the blasted hope of yet another pregnancy lost. I found the scene completely devastating, in part because it’s narrated by the grieving husband, and in part because it captured something of the way miscarriage yanks away your sense of yourself as a mom, the kind with the stretchy leggings, and forces you to become some other kind of woman, overnight. The precocious little adopted girl who opens the door to Rudolph and John Krasinski earlier that same evening, telegraphs all this when she explains that her mom is still upstairs, changing into a short skirt.

And something about Tom’s confession leads Krasinski and Rudolph to change their minds about moving to Montreal. Tom and Munch aren't the perfect family anymore.

Courtney at Feministing says she “absolutely detested” the pole dance scene, and I can see why it offends. But it affected me the same way the miscarriage scene in Up affected me; I couldn’t breathe. I wonder if that’s because we still talk about pregnancy loss so rarely and so poorly, or because it conveyed almost too much about sex, hope, love, loss, grief, longing, and the silence and shame that come with it.

Still of Maya Rudolph and John Krasinski in Away We Go © 2009 Focus Features.

Tags: miscarriage; Away We Go

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Dahlia Lithwick Slate contributor, mom, wife, currently drinking coffee

Comments

Thanks for bringing this up

By: kiniha | Mon, 07/13/2009 - 09:10

Just a quick comment--I'm so glad you've mentioned this scene. It was a great scene as we finally realized why Munch had been acting so withdrawn and slightly sulky. I'm happy that miscarriage is finally being portrayed in the mainstream media, and as something that grieves both men and women.

Also, I too found the portrayal of the Montreal family as a bit too perfect, but I thought that by having only the two children singing with 'The Sound of Music' and the third staring fixedly at the television and awaking only for pizza, that maybe the director/writers were trying to show that the family included children in various stages, from perhaps overly eager-to-please to the more withdrawn.

Husbands Talking about miscarriage

By: Dahlia Lithwick | Wed, 07/01/2009 - 08:57

EH -- That was my reaction exactly! It's so rare to hear of a father's experience of miscarriage; I can't think of another movie in which we hear such a poignant telling of a father's loss. I suspect that my husband experienced our miscarriages as my losses for the most part. This scene reminded me that they don't just happen to moms . . . .

The Pole Dance of Grief

By: EH | Tue, 06/30/2009 - 21:08

What struck me as so extraordinary about that scene was not so much how unusual it was to show Munch's grief but how unusual it was to show the grief and helplessness her husband felt. Miscarriage is being talked about among women slightly more than it was twenty years ago when I had mine. Men talking about miscarriage is still rare.

grief

By: Rooj | Mon, 06/29/2009 - 13:52

I liked the scene overall, but i do think it was a bit too hamfisted in a way. To be more precise it was the set up to the scene. It made the house full of (adopted! diverse! sweet! of all ages!) children seem like a desperate way of trying to cope with the struggle of not being able to conceive biological progeny. The Montreal couple became just as cartoonish as the other couples, just not despicable. And i don't think the main characters didn't choose Montreal because the couple wasn't perfect, but rather they thought it would be too cruel to live near them and raise their child, as if Munch and husband would be too fragile to bear witness to something they were denied.

sad and sweet

By: alisaharris | Mon, 06/29/2009 - 13:17

I loved that scene -- one of my favorites in a movie I stubbornly love more than the critics say I should. The music - Velvet Underground's "Oh! Sweet Nuthin'" - struck the perfect sad, sweet note. In fact, every time I listen to that song now, I think of that scene and get all choked up.

I remember being devastated by my own mother's miscarriage. Grief over a miscarriage seems somehow misplaced, since it's grief for a being who was almost never really there, but it's somehow undeniable that the being was there and the grief is there, too. I thought that scene portrayed it beautifully.