“Peel back a layer and no one’s who they seem to be,” Michael Shannon says in the trailer for “State Like Sleep.” That’s what protagonist Katherine (Katherine Waterston, “Fantastic Beasts” franchise) seems to be figuring out. It’s been a year since her actor husband’s (Michiel Huisman, “The Haunting of Hill House”) apparent suicide and the questions about his death and life just keep piling up.
On the top of the list is what Stefan was doing the night of his death. Katherine tracks down the club he attended that night and meets Edward (Shannon) and Emile (Luke Evans, “Professor Marston and the Wonder Women”). While Edward suggests that it’s impossible to know why anyone does anything, Emile has more of a straightforward explanation for Stefan’s demise. “He died of a broken heart,” he says.
Or did he? While Katherine is obviously grieving her husband, the spot reveals she, too, could have a part in the mystery. The police are having a hard time definitively ruling the death a suicide because she tampered with evidence. Plus, Katherine and Stefan’s marriage was becoming more and more volatile before he died — they were even in the process of separating.
“State Like Sleep” premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival earlier this year. Writer-director Meredith Danluck told us the film was inspired by a personal experience. “Years ago, someone very close to me took their own life and I held myself responsible in many ways,” she said. “The feelings of complicity and guilt were overwhelming — and completely illogical. Looking outside myself for answers and explanations meant I could create a story about what happened, one that excluded me. I needed to tell myself a story to make sense of what had happened, which is what Katherine does in ‘State Like Sleep.’” She continued, “The film explores this impulse we have to reorder the narrative of what we’ve experienced when the experience is inexplicable. The most inexplicable mystery in life is death so I appropriated the mystery genre to serve the deeper narrative of grief.”
“State Like Sleep” will be available on Digital and VOD January 1. It hits theaters January 4.
