Raymond & Ray is such an aggressively strange blend of styles that virtually every living person in it demands to be plucked out of the screen and plonked on a stage somewhere, because that way, there would’ve at least been a chance that it all comes together. But as directed by filmmaker Rodrigo García, this quirky comedy about two half-brothers who bond over a shared hatred for their recently deceased father, is less a movie and more a stage play that someone just happened to film.
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There is nothing inherently cinematic about this movie, which promises the tantalising team-up of Ewan McGregor and Ethan Hawke, only to reduce them to broad caricatures in a story that is riddled with so many cliches that you’d be able to correctly predict the ending before the brothers enter a friendly fistfight for the first time.
McGregor’s Raymond is the straight man, a ‘boring’ foil to Hawke’s more rakish Ray. Both of them have been repressing resentment and anger against their dad for years, without realising that their attempts to distance themselves from his influence has destroyed their lives in unique ways. “We come from chaos,” one of them says bluntly to the other, referring to the years of abuse that they endured at the hands of their father, but also as an explanation for why neither of their lives turned out how they’d imagined.
The film opens with Raymond showing up at Ray’s house to inform him that the architect of their misery has died, and that they must, for reasons best known to themselves, travel 200 miles across the country to attend his funeral. This is also when the movie introduces the first in a series of plot contrivances that become increasingly annoying as things go on. When Ray asks Raymond why he can’t just go alone (considering that Ray has no intention of seeing their father), Raymond tells him that his driving license is suspended. Why can’t your wife drive you, Ray shoots back. Because she left a couple of months ago, duh.
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This is the first scene, mind you, but Raymond & Ray is filled with dozens of moments such as this, which exist purely to ensure that basic logic doesn’t get in the way of the plot’s progression. But as lazy as this is, it would’ve been lazier to have Ray agree to the road trip without the slightest show of protest.
Later, both brothers are conveniently assigned respective love interests, as if focusing on the personal growth of its characters in a moment of crisis such as this wasn’t enough. Or worse, Garcia was afraid that people would ask for their money back (or cancel their free Apple TV+ subscriptions) if they didn’t believe that Raymond & Ray was checking all the boxes, like some kind of packaged food item that needs to meet certain standards.
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There is, however, an interesting premise here. Even in death, Raymond and Ray’s dad never stopped messing with them. Short of pulling the trigger himself — a thought that crosses Ray’s mind once — their father had planned the circumstances of his demise in great detail. From picking a cheap casket to deciding that his headstone will not mention the date of his birth and passing, and mandating that he be buried naked, face-down — their dad had put a suspicious level of thought into this. But more bafflingly, he’d left his sons a task: they have to physically dig his grave, no machinery, no help.
I’m sure this is some sort of metaphor for letting go of the past — engineered, as it were, as a selfish act of redemption — but I wonder if there’s more to it than the most obvious interpretation. García’s own father, by the way, is Gabriel García Marquez. So, make of that what you will.
Much like a Hindi movie, Raymond & Ray is separated into two halves, the second of which is spent almost entirely at the cemetery. It is in these scenes that the film’s unusual tone begins to take shape. There’s a jazz-infused melancholy to the film, which pokes its head out on occasion. But for the most part, Raymond & Ray is about as fun as a funeral itself.
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Raymond & Ray
Director – Rodrigo García
Cast – Ewan McGregor, Ethan Hawke
Rating – 2.5/5
