After Avery loses the love of his life there is an unsettling montage that captures perfectly what it feels like standing around helplessly after someone has been loaded in the back of an ambulance, is dying in the hospital, and ultimately as they are being lowered into the ground. That montage provides a key to Anthony Vescio's "Granted."
What do you say when someone dies, especially the love of your life? Are there right words? Is there a right thing to do? "Granted," makes an unusually intense effort to deal with the process of grief spiraling out of control.
"Granted," opens with high energy and sets the stage for how much these characters have to lose. We meet Avery (Brian Bernys), Brandon (Jacob Albarella), and Lee Page (Bryan Patrick Stoyle) at the top of their game as semi-successful band mates about to really hit it big. However, the movie is all about loss so our characters are met with tragedy. The movie pays attention to all of the characters, and how each of them deals with what loss they have in their life: losing a path, a career, a lover, a husband, a patient, and so on down the line. The only character not to lose anything is The Receptionist, played by the wonderfully stoic Brittany Murchie, who supplies the film with its supernatural element, which is equally as subtle as the glimmer of hope it gives our characters.
Norman Cousins once wrote, "Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live." We don't see Izzy die on screen, and I have a feeling it's because we spend the rest of the movie watching what dies inside of Avery.
Everyone who has ever lost anyone (or anything) will recognize that helpless feeling, being affixed to a proverbial set of tracks, unable to turn or make any change from propelling ourselves into whatever pit awaits us at its end. "Granted" knows this feeling, and unabashedly follows those tracks to their bitter end.
