When Stanley first received the news, he was in great shock. It can be seen that he was in denial of the fact for quite a long time, from the moment when he stopped Dawn and Heidi from eating the food that was given as condolences, to his behavior of calling home, wanting to inform his dead wife everything was alright on the trip. He also deployed the mechanism of reaction formation as his behavior was contrast to the situation he faced at that moment. For example, he told his daughters it was fine to take a break from school. He decided to bring them to their favourite theme park after Dawn's impromptu suggestion and even allowed Heidi and Dawn to get their ear pierced.
If I were to put myself in his shoes, I would not know how to handle the situation too. The death of spouse is heartbreaking, yet I had to stay strong for my children especially when they were so young and I didn't even know how to inform them about it. The hardest part is I will have to manage my emotion and taking care of theirs at the same time. When my grandmother passed away 5 years ago, I remember how my dad was being so calm and strong in front of us about his own mother's death when even my mum could not bear the pain and cried. "This is how life is supposed to be, she has suffered enough and it is good that she is released from the pain now," I remember how my dad said this to me as I felt so sad about her death and went on crying for few consecutive days. I do think that how my parents went through the grief process, deeply affected me, as I learned it through my observation on them. I am glad that they did not just keep everything to themselves but instead shared their thoughts with me, which enabled me to slowly let go of the fact that my grandmother had left us.
This movie revealed the other side of the families who endure the pain and consequences in the battle with Iraq. Throughout the film, audiences are led to pick up the feeling of sympathy and be in the position of Grace's family. The movie subtly uncovered the reality of how the political belief and stand collide with each other, and how it ignites the war, through the father-daughter conversation and the broadcast of television in the movie. During the war, they get to see updates on the news daily and the media was trying to portray and categorize the battle as necessary for the sake of glory of being Americans. We are always proud to see how a villain was defeated by our country heroes. The magnificent explosion in the battle field, soldiers who put their life aside and were fueled up with the courage to fight for the country… Generally, people would expect this kind of story when we were to talk about war. Surprisingly, this movie captures the moment behind the war, the world under the mat we did not expect to see or rather, usually ignored. The impact it brings when the whole family has to endure the pain of losing one or even more family members in a battle, just for the sake of glory, is it worthy? Bear in mind, this movie was only shot and focused on one family, can we imagine how many families are this closely related to war?
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