What does it mean to be hailed as a hero just for surviving? How does it feel to be remembered for the single worst day of your life? What does it cost to put on a brave face when you feel like anything but? And what in the hell does "Boston Strong" even mean, anyway?
Those are the questions at the heart of Stronger, starring Jake Gyllenhaal as Boston Marathon bombing survivor Jeff Bauman. The marketing suggests an uplifting tearjerker, and that's not entirely wrong. You probably will come away with your cheeks wet and your spirits lifted.
What makes Stronger so powerful, though, is that it's not interested in cheap, easy inspiration. Quite the opposite, in fact. Director David Gordon Green and writer John Pollono dig past the cheery slogans and meaningless platitudes to find the human man underneath the heroic image we've constructed of him.
Although Stronger covers the event itself and the immediate aftermath, it's mainly interested in the weeks and months that followed, as Jeff struggles to recover physically, mentally, and emotionally.
To that end, Green even avoids showing us the devastation and destruction for most of the movie. Instead, he keeps the camera trained close on his actors, keeping the focus on his characters and not on the events that have come to define them in the national imagination.
And what we see is not pretty.
The Jeff we meet early in the film is a generally good sport, if a bit of a flake. After the event, he tries his best to take everything in stride. He cracks jokes, cooperates with the authorities, reassures his loved ones that everything's gonna be okay, he's gonna be okay.
But it doesn't take long for the darkness to come creeping in. He's bewildered by the attention he's getting, and desperate to move on. He's filled with anger about what he's lost and guilt about what he hasn't, and all of it manifests in a mean, reckless edge.
Through it all, people – friends, family, and total strangers alike – insist on seeing him as the hero he knows he isn't. "It's so good to see you're healed and you didn't let the terrorists win," a fan chirps after running into him at a bar. "You sure about that?" he sneers back.
Green's empathy doesn't stop with Jeff, either. Tatiana Maslany has a crucial supporting role as Erin, Jeff's ex and the only reason he was at the marathon in the first place. When she and Jeff reconcile after the event, it's clear that the love between them is genuine. However, so is the sense of obligation, and it warps their dynamic in ways that neither is eager to acknowledge.
In another, heart-wrenching scene, Jeff finally meets Carlos (Carlos Sanz), the man who saved his life at the finish line, and learns what that day meant for him. That compassion radiates out and out and out, even extending, eventually, to all of us – the people who made Jeff into the hero we needed him to be, without stopping to wonder what he wanted to be.
It doesn't seem like much of a spoiler to reveal that Stronger ends happily, considering that the real Bauman is out there doing press with Gyllenhaal for the movie. But this is the rare inspirational drama that understands that the difficult journey is what makes the destination worthwhile. That's something worth getting in your feels about.
