A film review by Craig J. Koban November 3, 2022

RAYMOND & RAY ½ 

2022, R, 106 mins

Ewan McGregor as Raymond  /  Ethan Hawke as Ray  /  Sophie Okonedo as Kiera  /  Maribel Verdú as Lucia  /  Todd Louiso as Canfield  /  Tom Bower as Harris

The new Apple Original Film RAYMOND & RAY has a premise that's about as odd as its title.  

This Rodrigo Garcia comedy-drama deals with two half brothers - named, yup, Raymond and Ray - that have to attend the funeral of their long estranged and abusive father, a man who apparently took devilish relish in tormenting his sons while alive (he gave them both the same name as an early insulting kick to the old baby makers) and now - via some bizarre will requirements - has found a manner of pushing their already sensitive buttons from the grave.  

Garcia has always been a filmmaker with a deep and penetrating focus on the stress inducing frailties of his characters, and RAYMOND & RAY is certainly no different in the way it navigates a minefield of raw emotions that are raging through these two fiftysomething men as they desperately try to process decades of hurt feelings about a dead man that was one mean SOB while alive.  That, and the film certainly has one of the strangest extended funeral scenes that I've ever seen.  Weirdness aside, I greatly admired the tricky seesaw act that Rodrigo engages in when it comes to absurd laughs and gut wrenching pathos here. 

And this film is exquisitely well cast when it comes to the brothers in question, with Ewan McGregor and Ethan Hunt (both in their fifties in real life and both showing their age while paradoxically coming off as youthful).  McGregor plays Raymond Harris, who as the film is opening has rushed to his half-brother Ray's (Hawke) secluded cabin home in the woods, and their initial meeting is tense, to say the least.  Firstly, the siblings have not spoken to each for quite some time (many years, in fact) and secondly Raymond has to break the news that their aforementioned a-hole of a father has passed away.  It seems like their dad was battling illness for years, and part of his final deathbed request was to have both Rays attend his funeral to pay their last respects.  Raymond seems deeply guilt riddled into going, whereas the more hot-heated and grudge holding Ray doesn't want to have anything to do with who he considered to be a toxic man when he was alive. It's clear that both men have been done horrible and unspeakable harm by this man (some of which is not initially revealed), which more or less affected them into their adult lives.  Raymond has been married and divorced more than once and was recently caught drunk driving (which is one of the many reasons why he needs his brother to come to the funeral for transportation purposes), whereas Ray was a former drug addict and once promising musician, but now is clean and working odd labor jobs.  Begrudgingly, Ray decides to help Raymond and they head out to the funeral the next morning. 

Unfortunately for the pair, upon arrival in Richmond, Virginia they're dealt with one stressful blow after another of increasing severity.  Firstly, the outwardly kindly funeral home director (Todd Louiso) needs final payment to prepare the father for burial.  Short on money, both brothers find a way to pay up, but then are shocked with their father's choice of a coffin that amounts to nothing more than a plain and unpainted cedar box with handles.  They then have a planned meeting with their father's attorney (Oscar Nunez), who gives them the biggest whopper of a shocking surprise from the man's last will and testament: It seems that the crazy old codger wants both of his sons to not only attend the funeral, but to also - not making this up - fully dig his grave and lower his casket into it.  Predictably, the Rays are deeply offended by request, seeing that this is yet another manner that their papa is royally screwing with their heads.  Adding to the eccentric demands is the father wanting to be buried naked and face down (this guy, man!).  Raymond and Ray - after much squabbling - finally decide to acquiesce, and during their time in Richmond they come in contact with a motley crew of colorful personalities that were close to their dad, like his tough talking/take-no-crap nurse Kiera (a terrific Sophie Okenedo) that Ray finds kinship with.  Then, more problematically, there's Lucia (Maribel Verdu), who reveals that she was the dad's ex-lover and - gasp! - they produced a young child in Simon (Maxim Swinton), who's not only a new half brother to Raymond and Ray, but is easily young enough to be one of their kids.  And believe me when I say this,  but the funeral gets even more peculiar from here.   

One of the maddeningly funny aspects of RAYMOND & RAY is in how all of these people that the brothers come in contact with in prepping and executing their father's funeral seem to have nothing but kind things to say about the deceased man, which seems to frustrate these guys to no end.  I mean, do they even know what kind of man he was to these boys?  There have been innumerable films in the past featuring characters having to process dicey feelings about a loved one's passing, but RAYMOND & RAY takes a decidedly more outside of the box and bizarre approach to these themes.  How does one, after all, tend to every need and request of a dead man that - from the brothers' perspectives - (a) never seemed to love them at all and (b) caused them unpardonable mental and physical pain during their upbringings?  For all intents and purposes, this man was a cancer on Raymond and Ray's lives, so the notion of them having to endure the indignity of digging this loser's grave while listening to so many others preach about what a swell guy he was nearly breaks them.  Garcia is shrewd enough to not dig too deep into the secrets of this highly dysfunctional family too early, which allows for our buy-in to the story and seeing it through from one preposterous (and sometimes deeply hurtful) revelation after another.  And both Rays were indeed wounded severely by their day: Ray's love of music was stymied by his old man, whereas Raymond suffer an almost unspeakable humiliation at his dad's hands that - once dished out - makes one wonder how he could ever forgive this cretin...even in death. 

McGregor and Hawke are dynamically paired together here and essentially have to do all of the heavy emotional lifting in the film.  McGregor will probably always - for better or worse - be associated playing a particular Jedi from the galaxy far, far away, but I find myself being drawn to his more down to earth roles that have him playing ordinary, but screwed up schlubs.  He plays the more cleaner cut and civil minded of the two brothers and frequently - and sometimes hysterically - has to be the voice of reason in this madcap and freakish social horror show that is this funeral.  He's the more outwardly put-together of the siblings, but his ties with his dad is easily the darker of the two.  Ray, on the other hand, hates his dad for how he never gave him any nurturing encouragement for his music.  Complicating all of this is that Raymond and Ray also barely know one another well into adult life.  They really couldn't be anymore different, with one being a failure in multiple marriages and the other being an ex-heroin addict that's had a very difficult road through recovery.  But they share one thing in common: Their dad is dead and is royally effing with them after death, which causes them to form a unique new bond as a united defensive mechanism.  They cling to one another - oftentimes tenuously - only because they need to make it through this hellish funeral without going crazy in the process.  Both McGregor and Hawke are superb at evoking two men that are unfamiliar with each other, but that - through shared past trauma - have to become close to see their dad off one last time.  It's frequently said that comedy comes from a place of familiar pain, and most of the macabre laughs in RAYMOND & RAY comes at the pathetic expense of these men and their incredulous reactions to everything that's being asked of them.

The fact that this film scores both huge laughs in unexpected places and makes us genuinely feel for the psychological burden of these lost souls is to its credit.  RAYMOND & RAY is deceptively compassionate and darkly hysterical as a character piece, not to mention that it sifts into the inherent madness of its premise with a depth and sensitivity.