A Long Way Down is a quirky film. Although it's based on a novel by beloved author Nick Hornby (High Fidelity, About a Boy), the premise that the four main characters come together because they're all planning to commit suicide from the same roof on the same New Year's Eve is a pretty cutesy contrivance on the surface. You'd think that, absent the filmmakers imparting some Harold and Maude-style black-comedy wackiness (which director Pascal Chaumeil doesn't really do), the story would end up dealing with the subject of mental illness too blithely for this to work. And indeed, the first 30 minutes contain some trite moments that make you wince in anticipation of the overly simple Hollywood plot devices that must surely be in store.
But by the time you get to the second act, A Long Way Down ends up thoroughly defying all of the negative expectations that it lays down for itself. It becomes so heartfelt and real in its ultimate depiction of the hard-to-explain human condition that it makes you wonder if the clichés from the first reel were put there on purpose to juxtapose with the sobering content still to come.
The first member of the foursome we get to meet is Martin (Pierce Brosnan), a former morning-talk-show host who was disgraced by a scandal that left him briefly in jail. We are then introduced to Maureen (Toni Collette), an unassuming woman with a very polite demeanor; Jess (Imogen Poots), an eyeliner-streaked waif with an aggressive streak; and J.J. (Aaron Paul), an American guy in London with a cool leather jacket and a pizza-delivery satchel. The group's awkward meeting on the roof stifles their plans to jump, but Martin's notoriety means that all of their names are soon in the papers; in their ensuing attempts to ride out the storm of controversy, they become a sort of surrogate family to one another.
We come to know the various backgrounds of the four characters, and ultimately, their connections to each other seem to offer them a frame of reference for their lives that people without a similar sense of pain could never grasp. Seeing themselves through the eyes of someone else who "gets it" is healing in and of itself. And while each of them does get the chance to explore out loud what their reasons were for climbing up onto the roof that night, that doesn't mean those motivations are truly simple or even explicable. Far from it: Their reasons are heartbreakingly realistic in how illogical, uncomfortable, and often ephemeral they are. As one of them says while thinking back on that night, "It was more of a feeling."