ABSTRACT
With the aid of cinematic and psychoanalytic deconstruction of three movies (Blue, Still Walking, and Ponette), this chapter elucidates the myriad variables associated with grief and its resolution. It addresses the role played by the young age of the bereaved, the sudden nature of death, and survivor’s guilt in complicated mourning. The discourse introduces the novel concept of the “unfathomability factor,” which increases manifold the uncanniness of our encounter with death; this “unfathomability factor” is especially noticeable when one loses an adult offspring or when one loses a parent before the age of 8 or 9 (when cognitive and emotional understanding and acceptance of death becomes possible).
