Death In Sarah Watt's Look Both Ways

Sarah Watt’s “Look Both Ways” shows us that death is a normal part of our lives, and if we are unable to accept it, then it can hold us back from living our lives to its fullest. Using a variety of filming techniques, Watts effectively displays and accentuates the pain and grief of her characters, especially Nick and Meryl who “have been seeing death everywhere”, in order to demonstrate how fears of death can restrict our ability to live, in terms of anything from relationships and being social, to taking risks and just being happy. Each character has their problems conveyed through different techniques in accordance with their lifestyles and careers. For example, Meryl is a painter and her fears are portrayed using animations, and Nick who
is a photographer has his thoughts presented through photomontages. Other film methods employed such as the careful construction of mise en scene, flash backs, dialogue, camera positioning, music, symbolism, and repeated motifs help to explore the finer details of the various underlying themes in the film, and to convey Watt’s point of view that death is all around us, everyone has to face it at some point in their lives, but the true test is how we manage our emotions and cope with the loss, and whether or not we allow our own lives to progress.

Meryl provides an excellent example of someone who has been traumatised by her experiences with death, preventing her from moving on. Her father’s death left her confused and disorientated, such that her own view of life and death became distorted and fatalistic. Combined with the impact of witnessing a man get run over by a train, her mental health has severely been damaged, made evident by her paintings that signify her thoughts which are manifested by fear and anxiety, backed by morbid animated scenes of her own death played out in countless different scenarios, some that showed fear of unexpected death, some which involved water, which represents her fear of loneliness and shows how she is metaphorically drowning in her own fears. She constantly experiences these bouts of paranoia, “seeing death everywhere”, unable to face the world without being overwhelmed by images of her own death. Once, Meryl decides to paint a picture of a bird, a big contrast to her usual ones involving death. While painting the bird, she spills ink all over it, which metaphorically illustrates her inability to be free due to her overwhelming fixation on death. Only upon her actual acceptance of the fact that “things just happen” and that everything “was meant to be” could she finally begin to find happiness and move on with her life, signified by the final photomontage at the end of the film.

With the unexpected diagnosis of testicular cancer, Nick is left alone in despair with no sign of hope or support from his friends and family. When he first receives news of his cancer, we are shown photo montages of Nick’s past life till present and how he has little control of what has happened to him. We see that Nick fears his medical condition when he has flash backs of his father’s death which was caused by cancer. Once he was notified of his cancer, Nick started seeing death everywhere he goes and has flashbacks of his father’s suffering, along with visions of cancer cells infesting and growing inside him. On his way home from jogging, he passes a little boy in a wheelchair who was also a cancer sufferer looked calm and smiled at him. This shows us that although we have little control over what happens in our lives and that things just occur, like being diagnosed with cancer, we have a choice to either let it kill us miserably or to come to peace with ourselves and make the most of what life we have left. This is particularly evident through Joan, Nick’s mother, who experiences the tragic loss of her husband yet manages to stay optimistic and get on with her life. ‘It doesn’t matter how life ends, it matters how it was.” Nick eventually realises that he cannot fight the cancer, “then there’ll be more I don’t know”, and so in finally letting go of this inhibiting burden, and “facing his own death”, he is able to find happiness again, once again evident from the photomontage at the end of the film, which shows him living his life with Meryl, travelling and having kids.

Julia is more of a secondary character in the film, however her story ties in strongly with the main driving force of the film, the local train accident in which her husband died.
The loss of a loved one is a difficult one indeed, emphasised by the director in the extreme close-up shots of Julia’s face, showing the extent of the grief and devastation she experienced. In this sense, she is not very different to Meryl, but they differ in their individual ways of coping with this grief. The deep-set sorrow felt by Julia and even the train driver is something constantly referred to with film techniques throughout the film to alert readers as to the significance of this as a theme. After the initial shock and trauma of the death of her husband, Julia is approached by the train driver who offers an apology in the form of a card, which for him is a way of overcoming the guilt in his mind and moving on with his life. Julia is also offered a choice here, she could continue to dwell in her despair, or accept that what happened to her husband is unchangeable and that he is gone forever, and begin the journey to regaining her happiness. Julia chose to accept the train driver’s apology and in doing so, she not only freed the train driver of his burden, but also broke the chains of her anguish which were holding her
back.