TRIGGER WARNING: Although I write at times about grief and sometimes pair my writing with a film or series that surrounds this subject, this series is different from a series like Lost Ollie on Netflix for instance.
I am NOT recommending The Third Day as a series for those who may be treading the rough waters of NEW grief, but rather for those who having grieved a long time find themselves marooned on the distant shores of grief like Sam from this series. This series goes along with those who may not know they are still grieving but feel compelled by the subject as they come to grips with long-term grief and its effect on us. For someone who is grieving a new loss I think this series will be potentially triggering and difficult to watch or absorb at any meaningful metaphorical level
The HBO/Max series, The Third Day is a moody and sometimes unsettling television series that features Jude Law as a grieving father on an odyssey.
Jude Law plays Sam, who we start out seeing from above as if detached from his story and not connected to the unfolding drama of his life. Soon though the camera begins to come in close, and then struggles to find focus as if we have just now attached ourselves to this story and have now chosen to be along for Sam’s ride.
There are two things happening in the opening scene though; Sam is engaged in a heated cell-phone call by something unfolding at home, but it is also the anniversary of his son’s death, and Sam is returning to where his son died.
Sam returns to the woods and the river where his son died and as he approaches, he slips earphones on and turns on the song, The Dog Days Are Over, by Florence and the Machine.
At first we might think the song is somehow connected to Sam’s son, but seeing that Sam is at the beginning of a journey, we might take it as him bracing himself for what is to come, an unfolding inner unconscious decision he is grappling with.
The music starts and feels upbeat but the words imply something else;
SAM’S GRIEF RITUAL
To this song we see Jude Law’s character Sam, sobbing while he holds some clothing close to his face. After a while the music is gone, and it’s just the running river we hear as Sam takes a striped boy’s shirt and washes it down stream.
This is when the underlying theme music of the series The Third Day by Cristobal Tapia DeVeer begins.
This haunting song, One Piece At a Time carries us, like the shirt… into the mythical underworld with Jude Law’s Sam, who is grieving the death of his son.
This song appears to echo what Sam is feeling, and like the camera that drew us into the story visually, this music intertwines us into the emotional story, so that we begin to feel the tones of grief that Sam feels. Add to this the acting by Jude Law which feels compelling and real, and which Jude Law admits was difficult on him.
Each year Sam returns to where his son has died and lets one more piece of clothing go.
Aside from the other themes in this series, this one detail alone is a good ritual.
The ritual we must imagine had a beginning, Sam going to his son’s room and finding one thing he can part with each year.
By letting go of one piece of his son, it’s as if he set down a small piece of his grief, and in doing so it is carried away on the waters – which seem to echo the grief and tears of Sam. We can imagine though hundreds of things in the drawers and closets of Sam’s son. With each one set down, Sam lets go of a small part of his sadness.
Sam a little later in the series admits to a girl named Epona, that he used to be in social care and worked with kids, a fact that seems to have changed after his own son died. This may account for why Sam has created his own ritual, or maybe he is just honoring an intuitive way to honor his son, and to let go a little each year.
Grief rituals that are personal can help us as we struggle with loss. The symbolic act of doing something with intention, like Sam does with the shirt, is an acknowledgement of the loss – and also a letting go.
He does this in a way that honors his son, as if in communication with his son throughout the act.
Sam grieves hard while he is at the river and it’s a step forward, but we also know that something deeper is brewing in Sam and perhaps it’s not a coincidence that he is listening to The Dog Days Are Over.
This is because it is possible that after grieving a long time Sam has decided to not just grieve but also to make a run for it, he doesn’t seem to be aware of this consciously, but he has made some decisions in his life that underscore that Sam may at least be struggling with whether to run or stay in his life.
While we at first assume that Sam is feeling grief for his son, it is possible that Sam is also feeling the lyrics urging him on. Perhaps this part of his ritual is about his need to just get away from it all but I don’t believe this was a part of his previous rituals.
Sam has created a ritual that allows him to slowly grieve his son each year, but this time it is interrupted by the bubbling of children laughter or voices above the creek and he investigates to find a girl Epona (Jessie Ross) who is in the midst of hanging herself with a noose and the help of a young boy who has fastened the rope to a tree.
This is when Sam is called to the hero’s journey, pulled out of his own grief for the moment, into service of another – he races to save Epona.
This act of service seems to embody where Sam is in his life, he is having trouble believing in his life, and yet without hesitation he can be there for another.
THE UNDERWORLD
Sam has been called to his inner world – and in saving Epona he returns her to the small island, which is linked by a winding old roman roadway (the causeway) that is submerged each day by high-tide.
He hesitates before crossing the causeway, but only until he is suspicious that Epona doesn’t want him to come over because she is hiding something. His concern again overrides his personal concern and he crosses the causeway.
Sam is making another decision to cross the water to the unconscious, he crosses the water to the Underworld.
He has arrived at this particular Underworld by this ancient roadway, cut off by the tides that are pulled by the moon, and circumstances continue to isolate him on this island.
The island (which is real) is known as Osea and it is just beginning a festival that has been celebrated there for hundreds of years. It is a mix of pagan and vaguely Catholic rituals together that the Osea people believe in.
OSEA ISLAND:
51.72129° N, 0.77070° E
LOST IN GRIEF
Perhaps Jude Law’s description of The Third Day resonates the best. In an interview with Jimmy Fallon Jude Law says;
I do like that description, that the island is a metaphor for his isolation and his grief that he is trying to return from. The question becomes whether he can escape this island, this Underworld and return to the land of the living.
For Sam there are a multitude of decisions that are well intentioned, and perhaps not so thought out that continue to lead him deeper into his grief. He begins to get lost in the pandemonium of the island, and pandemonium can be an escape from grief too, because we can bury grief in chaos and pandemonium.
This is where those of us that grieve may find ourselves following a significant loss in life, and up against many of the same real or metaphorical challenges that Sam faces in The Third Day.
Do we escape our loss and grief and return to the world enriched by what we bring back from the Underworld. Maybe we get lost like the multitude of lost souls who finding themselves in the Underworld are unable to again cross the river Styx and re-enter the world of the living?
PSYCHE AND THE UNDERWORLD
The Underworld may be known as hell by some people, but if we follow Greek mythology the relationship to the Underworld was different than the Catholic version of hell that would follow. For Psyche who was the bride to Eros (Cupid) she descends into the Underworld and has to face many challenges. This is what Jude Law’s Sam is up against, like Psyche he has descended into the Underworld, his own unconscious pandemonium.
Sam is a stand-in for those of us who are grieving a significant loss in life, and who like Sam may be struggling to let go, or rather move forward. Loss has a way of telling us who we are in life, as much as the other things we identify with.
When we lose someone we may struggle to understand the tapestry that unfolds before us, but loss becomes like the threads intertwined in our life tapestry, it touches everything in some way.
Again, I don’t recommend this series for those who are finding themselves in the new terrain of grief, for that I believe it is too hard a journey. This series is for those of us (like myself) who having found ourselves trapped on our own particular Osea or Underworld, and having lived exiled there for a long time wish to understand this place we find ourselves, and through that grapple with the journey back across the causeway to the world above.
Follow Your Myth 