The Friend, a 2024 drama film directed by Scott McGehee and David Siegel tells the story of Naomi Watts as a Canadian born New York City professor and writer, Iris – seen to be having a strong bond with the character Walter played by Bill Murray who is a famous writer of ghost stories. The life of Walter consists in numerous relations and marriages but one of the most important is the relation between Walter and his Great Dane named Apollo aged only 5 years.
The movie starts with a quite normal New York city dinner party, which includes many of Walter’s marriages and mistresses, and Iris. But the latter suddenly changes and turns to the period of Walter’s rather surprising and cheerful suicide which leaves his circle of friends, including Iris and Apollo, in despair. This is actually Walter’s current wife Barbara played by Noma Dumezweni who forces Iris to take in Apollo, although Iris is just a cat lover and resides in a building where pet is prohibited.
Iris who has to take caretakership of Apollo following the suicide incident thereby raising issues of loss, grief and the aftermath of suicide. The story shows change in the relationship between Iris and Apollo – the approach of the main character to the grief after losing a close person is presented in a very believable manner.
Is “The Friend” Based on a True Story?
Naomi Watts‘ movie The Friend isn’t based on a true story, but it’s inspired by real experiences. Actually the film has been adapted from the 2018 book of the same name written by Sigrid Nunez herself, which has drawn heavily from her own life and what she has witnessed. It touches upon such subjects as friendship, loss, and the bond one feels with their pets, which directly relate to Nunez’s thoughts and reflections on suicide and losing someone close. While the story and characters are fictional, they are influenced by real emotions and situations.
Nunez was still encouraged to write the novel through her friends who were heavily touched issues to do with the suicides. Also, while working on the book, Nunez lost a friend to suicide, thus another level of emotions is traced from the author. The novel is half-fiction and it is half the narrator’s biography; thus, they can consider the main idea for a long time.
Directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel have crafted The Friend with a deep respect for the source material and its emotional weight. They have talked about their process of translating Nunez’s novel into the motion picture, when interviewed, stressing the fact that their main desire was to portray human elaboration and the feelings, which come together with mourning.
The filmmakers that worked on The Friend are very versatile and the movie is a perfect example of their work. On this planet, they had only one idea – to make the picture that would reveal people’s intimacy and friendship, the relations between people being friends, and the tragedy of a loved one’s death.
While interviewing for the film, McGehee and Siegel mentioned their appreciation for Nunez’s novel and the attempts to transfer the most important aspects of the feeling expressed in the book to the movie. They have also commended Naomi Watts for her acting skills especially on how she depicted Iris as one of the key strengths of the film.
The Friend is a remarkable, beautiful, and poignant reckoning of sorrow, companionship, and the relationships between people and creatures we love. Though it is not an account of real life incidents entirely, but it is based very strongly on factual incidences and feelings. And with the way it was adapted from Sigrid Nunez and the direction of Scott McGehee and David Siegel, The Friend is a powerful and moving movie.