The Neil Young song that explains the message of ‘Good Grief’
Before the dance version graced the airwaves, Neil Young‘s ‘Only Love Can Break Your Heart’ emanated from a place of sincerity and heartbreak. Serving as a poignant homage to the challenges of love and relationships, the song’s lyrics carry a critical tone about loss and heartbreak. This atmosphere also pervades Dan Levy’s emotionally overwhelming film Good Grief.
While most recognise Levy as David Rose from the CBC sitcom Schitt’s Creek, the star behind the character recently made his directorial debut with Netflix’s Good Grief. Diverting from his usual endearing and lighthearted aura on screen, Good Grief seeks to explore a subject dear to Levy’s heart. “A lot of people think I’m a comic,” Levy told Netflix before the film’s release. “I’ve always been a slightly more emo person than people realise.”
Set against the backdrop of glamorous and emotionally complex Paris, Levy’s Marc is forced to navigate the various phases of grief after his wealthy husband tragically dies in a car accident outside their home. A year after his death, however, Marc finally brings himself to open a Christmas card he received from Oliver before he was killed, facing an unexpected sense of betrayal when the card mentions that Oliver is interested in exploring an affair with someone else.
Along with Levy, the film boasts a respectable bill with Ruth Negga portraying the captivating Sophie and Hamish Patel playing Marc’s loyal friend Thomas. The two accompany Marc on a vacation to Paris, unaware that he is actually intrigued by his late husband’s perceived double life.
Later in the movie, all three characters sit around a table with Oliver’s side piece, Luca, the Berlin-based young boy who appears at the apartment unexpectedly. After Sophie gets real with Marc and Thomas for the first time, she wanders over to the record player and lowers the needle on a copy of Young’s ‘Only Love Can Break Your Heart’.
Usually, a music cue like this may seem obvious, which it is, but decoding the song’s backstory unveils more about the plot of Good Grief than you might think. After much speculation about the song’s meaning, Young once conceded that Graham Nash and Joni Mitchell inspired it. The track emerged during a period when each member of the group grappled with significant interpersonal issues, including the tragic death of David Crosby’s girlfriend, Christine Hinton, in a car accident.
The adverse effects of hedonism also took a toll on the group, eroding the rock at the centre of their unity. Replace the names and this could be the exact storyline explored in Levy’s tragic tale. Marc not only grapples with the heartbreaking loss of his beloved Oliver, but he and the group also confront a myriad of conflicts, challenges, and setbacks concerning pleasure and its pursuit.
“To the fucking pain,” Sophie toasts, set to Young’s poignant lyrics: “I have a friend I’ve never seen / He hides his head inside a dream / Someone should call him and see / If he can come out / Try to lose the down that he’s found.” Like the song, the film chronicles Marc’s post-event life as he confronts grief in its diverse manifestations. He frequently finds himself navigating between sadness and anger, a phenomenon he recognises as an evasion of grief yet an indispensable element of the challenging emotional mixture.
As a result of these parallels, ‘Only Love Can Break Your Heart’ perfectly complements the film’s explorations of emotional complexity, not just with Marc but with the accompanying characters. The song was crafted during a period of intense relationship turmoil, mirroring the overarching theme of tumultuous dynamics depicted in Good Grief. Both pairs, Nash and Mitchell and Marc and Oliver, attained a specific status in their rise and weathered various downfalls, sharing a sombre reflection on profound loss.
