In this engrossing drama, writer and director Dan Harris (screenwriter for X2: X-Men United) presents an incisive portrait of a hurting family — one in which surface calm conceals a lack of real communication, self-esteem, and mutual understanding. It has been said that family life is like an iceberg. Most of us are only aware of one-tenth of it, what we see and hear. However, just as a sailor's fate depends on knowing what's under the water, so a family's fate depends on understanding the feelings, hostilities, and hopes that lie beneath its everyday activities and rituals. This film offers us plenty to think and talk about in this regard.
The center of the Travis family is the oldest son, Matt (Kip Pardue), an Olympics bound swimming champion. But he hates swimming with a passion and can't deal with all the attention his talent brings him. When he commits suicide, the whole family descends into a maelstrom of self-destructiveness. The one most affected is 18-year-old Tim (Emile Hirsch) whose skills as a pianist and musician have long been overshadowed by his brother's athletic prowess. His father, Ben (Jeff Daniels), who is wrestling with feelings of guilt for having pushed Matt too hard, has never been close to his other son and has nothing but scorn for him. He secretly takes a leave of absence from work and plunges into depression, medicating himself with pills.
Sandy (Sigourney Weaver), the mother in the family, feels close to Tim since she sees him as a misfit like herself. She starts relying on marijuana to help her make it through the day and has a run-in with the law when she is caught trying to purchase some. Penny Travis (Michelle Williams) is away at college and escapes her family's inability to handle their grief.
Director Harris accurately shows the weird fascination Tim's peers have with the details of his brother's death. Feeling totally isolated, he turns to sexual comfort with his girlfriend Steph (Suzanne Santo) but is unable to follow through on his desires. His pill-popping neighbor and best friend Kyle (Ryan Donowho) only makes him feel worse. Tim's precarious hold on sanity is not helped by a brief encounter with a girl from his class just before she commits suicide.
There are no heroes in this drama set in suburbia. The rampant drug use and the youthful view of suicide as an option to escape from the world of woe are quite scary. A dark secret that Sandy has kept from Tim turns out to be the catalyst that offers the Travis family a new lease on life. The fierceness of the film's finale reveals the truth of a statement by novelist James Baldwin: "Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle; love is a war, love is growing up." Imaginary Heroes lingers in the mind as a hard-hitting portrait of the sharp edges of grief and the need for families to nurture openness and love in the midst of tragedies that test their mettle.
