"We are not afraid of telling over and over again how a man comes to fall in love with a woman and be wedded by her, or else be fatally parted from her," George Eliot writes in what many consider the greatest English language novel, Middlemarch. In this chapter, Eliot charts the intellectual awakening of Tertius Lydgate, a young, smart and arrogant doctor who is one of the novel's protagonists. Falling in love with a vocation, Eliot argues, deserves to be treated with the same reverence as falling in love with another person. "In the story of this passion, too, the development varies: sometimes it is a glorious marriage, sometimes frustration and final parting."
The Heirloom, director Ben Petrie's debut feature, captures the intersection of these two warring faculties. It opens with the title card, "This is a true story" — Petrie and his real-life partner, Grace Glowicki, portray worse versions of themselves. Eric (Petrie), the perfectionist filmmaker at the centre of The Heirloom, lives on Eliot's artistic spectrum, though he falls far closer to frustration than glorious marriage. The film takes place during the pandemic, with Eric holed up with his girlfriend, Allie (Glowicki), while he fine-tunes his latest script.
In a move to somewhat appease Allie, they adopt a rescue dog named Millie from the Dominican Republic, whose wellbeing becomes a point of contention for the couple. After struggling to make the necessary edits to achieve satisfaction — we see Petrie print out the script over and over, adding italics and removing underlines — Eric abandons his project to instead tell the story of Millie's adoption, with Eric and Allie playing themselves. The film is at once a love story and an artist's journey; here, romance and art compete fiercely for Eric's attention.
Petrie manages to render the agony of creation and collaboration. With only he and Glowicki (and of course, Millie) on screen, Petrie's microscope is sharp and incisive; no film has made me want to make a movie more and less at the same time. Being in love doesn't seem any easier, either. Sparring like gladiators as they argue and negotiate, Petrie and Glowicki's heightened depictions of their own selves will make audiences squirm. It requires immense humility to be able to bare your psyche to the audience in such a way that is both absurd and realistic. We are told that this is a true story, after all.
At times, it's as though Petrie is holding back; I wanted him to unleash his freak! Like Eric, there's a darkness that simmered under the surface of the film, and I spent much of the film waiting for something truly horrendous to happen that never comes. It is the specific, the crude and the authentic that leave a mark on the audience. For all its canine fecal matter, the film could afford to be grosser, less tethered to reality. It's possible to tell a true story even if how the story's told veers away from the details and closer to the essence of what happened.
What resonates the most are the moments where we see Eric suffer, whether alone in his office battling his script or in conversation with Allie. An ominous voiceover calls out to Eric throughout the film, reading out his intrusive thoughts, reminding Eric constantly that he is bad, bad, bad. He isn't really all that bad, though — just struggling to stay afloat like many of us were during the pandemic. Again, I'm reminded of Eliot: glorious marriage, final parting. The voice serves as both a detractor and motivator. Though it prevents him from finishing his script, with all the italicizing and underlining, in disobeying this voice, he's able to create. The voice shows us how easy it would be for Eric to give all this up and stop filmmaking altogether.
This is the truth all artists must face: no one is forcing you to do this. The world will continue to spin as it once did even if the movie doesn't get made, the book isn't written or the album isn't recorded, but artists may not be able to bear the misery of not creating when that voice calls. Facing this reality unsettled me, clearly. The Heirloom isn't a feel-good film, but there's something freeing in being confronted by some of my greatest fears.
If The Heirloom sounds lifeless, that fault is entirely my own. Towing tonal lines between the psychological and the ridiculous, this oscillation engages the audience to account for the minimal plot that drives the film. Glowicki is given ample room to deliver inventive line readings, from Allie trying to calm Millie down in Spanish ("Bueno, girl") to pleading with Eric at the end of the film: "You can make movies, but I don't want to be one."
Petrie gives himself the difficult role of maniacal creator, relinquishing the more fascinating role of muse to Glowicki, but it's the balance between their performances that makes it all work. The promise of what madness Petrie may accomplish with a bigger budget and a larger cast excites me.
A glorious marriage, indeed.