March 19, 2005

experience level: intermediate - you've written some short scripts

The Short Film, "Stairway to Heaven"

In post-production as of this writing, "Stairway to Heaven" is an exploration of redemption.  The film's logline reads: "A man, separated from his wife and bound for the afterlife down elevator, goes searching for his love and discovers something of himself along the way."

It is this exploration of the man's arduous journey and his passage through the stages of grief that we examine in this article.  The following discussion depends on familiarity with the 28-page "Stairway to Heaven" script.

read the script (pdf)
read the script (htm)

Defining the Stages of Grief

In her 1969 book, “On Death and Dying,” Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, a Thanatologist, Writer, Researcher, and Activist for the bereaved and dying defined the process of grieving.  In her definition, she identified the five stages of grief:

1. Denial - In the denial stage, you refuse to believe what has happened. You try in your mind to tell yourself that life is as it was before your loss. You may make believe by re-enacting rituals that you used to go through before the loss.  If a trauma is sufficiently severe, you might actually experience physiological shock as your brain acts to protect you from a sudden shift in reality or physical injury.
    

2. Anger - You might blame others for your loss. You can become easily agitated having emotional outbursts. You can even become angry with yourself.
    

3. Bargaining - Bargaining can be with oneself, with another or, if one is religious, with a deity. You may revisit the event in your mind, repeatedly examining how you might have prevented your loss.  Often you will offer something to try to take away the reality of what has happened. You may try to make a deal to have things as they were before the tragic event occurred.
    

4. Depression – This is often the longest and most difficult stage of the five to deal with. There may be feelings of listlessness and tiredness. One may burst helplessly into tears. Feeling like there is no purpose to life any more. Feeling guilty, like everything is your own fault. You may find you feel like you are being punished. Pleasure and joy can be difficult to achieve even from things and activities which you have always gained delight. There can even be thoughts of suicide.
    

5. Acceptance - At some point you accept that life goes on. You may still have thoughts of your loved one, but less intense and less frequent. You can accept your loss. You should now be able to regain your energy and goals for the future.

In essence, the process of grieving is about learning to re-imagine one's life and circumstances.  While Dr. Kübler-Ross’ focus was on coming to terms with death, her five stages of grief have been and may be applied to any situation in which a person has to cope with a change in their reality that requires a shift in imagination.

 That change in reality might be mundane:  A smashed finger:

1. “Ow!  I can’t believe I did that!”

2. “Damn it!”

3. “If I could just watch where I was going, I wouldn’t have stumbled, thrust out my hand, and…”

4. “Now it’s going to be all ugly for the next two weeks.”

5. “Well, okay.  It’s not like I was hit by a car.”

Or much more profound:  Being hit by a car:

1. Physical and emotional shock, disorientation, focusing on “normal” details rather than addressing more immediate issues of survival.

2. “I’m such an idiot!  No wait, YOU’RE an idiot!”

3. “If that driver would just have paid attention, he would have noticed me standing here.”

4. “I’m going to miss dancing with my girl with my leg in a cast.”

5. “Oh well.  It's not like I was killed.”

Unfortunately for the William Porterhouse, the protagonist of "Stairway to Heaven", he is dead -- after having been hit by a train!  William has a bit more to come to terms with, and a long journey of grieving and personal discovery before he is finished.

William Porterhouse's Grieving Process

William Porterhouse’s journey is one of grieving the loss of his life, his authority, his power, his wife, the possibility of a comfortable afterlife, and the realization that he is not the person he imagined himself to be.  He copes with each of these losses as well as the continuous series of setbacks and disappointments he faces in the crucible of the stairwell.  Even the discovery of a locked door results in a mini arc of grief;

1. Denial - He tries the door and instinctively gives it another tug.

2. Bargaining - He refuses to believe the door is locked and tries to wrench it open.

3. Anger - Frustrated by his failure, he lashes out at the door or nearby wall.

4. Depression - He takes a moment to come to terms with his failure to open the door.

5. Acceptance - He resolves to move on and try the next.

We do not necessarily experience the five stages of grief in a single, linear arc.  Very often, we loop around and around, as we re-examine and dissect the tragedy in our minds.  The more profound the trauma, the more loops we experience.  While a real person would be dwelling upon and looping through many layers of the grief process, we don’t have time to tell that complicated a story in twenty-eight pages.  So, William’s journey is simplified into a somewhat linear arc of grief with opportunities for smaller arcs of grief that serve as clear reactions to setbacks.

1. Denial - As we first encounter William in the afterlife elevator lobby, he doesn't even realize he's dead.  Or if he does, he has it severely buried in his psyche.  Yet he is boiling with anger - at being late, at being inconvenienced, at every little setback he has ever encountered during his harried life.  A foreshadowing of his fate, another petitioner being thrown, bodily, into an elevator, leaves William feeling a bit uneasy, but he's still not ready to face the truth.  It isn't until William suffers a blow to the head, after being hurled out of the upward-bound elevator, that he remembers what happened.
    

2. Bargaining - William's first tactic upon realizing his death, is to try and negotiate his way away from the guards.  They're having none of it, but William isn't ready to be consigned to hell quite so fast.  He manages to escape the guards and dash into a nearby stairwell in pursuit of Sarah who is riding on the up-bound elevator.  Perhaps he can catch her on an upper floor.
    

3. Anger - Amongst the insults William suffers in the stairwell, is the attentions of a homeless man.  The bum seems to know an awful lot about William and keeps asking inconvenient questions.  At one point, William, tired of being needled about things he doesn't want to think about, lashes out, if only to shut him up for a moment.  But William can't escape the truth of his wasted life that easily.  He takes out his anger on everything around him, the bum, walls, doors.  Everything is out to stop him from achieving his goals and he is getting truly pissed.
    

4. Depression - Seeing Sarah cry during the Christmas tree trimming - something he never witnessed when he was alive - stuns William into silence.  This is the first time that he becomes a thinking animal.  He begins to admit, for the first time, that he may not have led his life as well as he could have.  But it isn't until the hammer blow of witnessing his death once again, that William truly descends into depression.  This lands William right back in the lap of the homeless man where he begins to truly think about where he went wrong.
    

5. Acceptance - The Judge has granted William one last interview with Sarah.  It is during this goodbye that William finally accepts his fate.  He now understands that he is unworthy of going with Sarah and that he deserves to be consigned to hell.  His final act of acceptance is stepping on the down elevator and pressing the bottom-most button.

Every step of the way, William must fight for what he believes he deservers.  But he is destined for disappointment until he undergoes a shift in imagination.  He has to re-imagine himself as a humbler creature, undeserving of Heaven, before he becomes truly worthy of ascension.  It is only after truly consigning himself to damnation that obstacles disappear and William may step toward a brighter future.

Have fun out there! - Michael Morlan