Journey Home: Finding The Roads To Recovery From Trauma

The night before their wedding anniversary, Hannah wakes to find her husband awake and restless. She does not say anything. This practice of being a silent spectator has continued for months. He is a war veteran, and Hannah does her best to make things easy for him, even if she does not always know how to help. Christopher Houlston’s Journey Home watches their marriage deal with the threat of disintegration, set crucially on the day of their anniversary.

Running to 19 minutes, the film is primed to leave an impression, given the subjects it focuses on: PTSD, grief, and marriage. The soldier (Mike Bodie), returned months earlier, struggles to be present while memories of war haunt him daily. Their marriage bears the brunt of it, evident in the tense silences which both he and Hannah (Jennifer Martin) do their best to ease.

It is significant that he is not named in the film, referred to in the credits as The Soldier. The soldier seems to exist only in relation to his wife and his friend. In contrast, his wife has a name, and so is the only other character in the story. Charlie (Alex Good), his best friend and best man, whom he had to watch die exactly a year prior to the events of the film. Crippled by his trauma and grief but unwilling to talk about it, he appears from the outside to be merely distant and emotionally detached. The dichotomy plays out in the opening scene itself: Hannah sees only her husband who lies about having slept well, while the audience sees him wake himself out of a nightmare.

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The film flits in and out of the past, entwining it with the present into an inextricable knot. The way it is shot gives the house a palpable sense of space. It is a large house, with larger grounds, and all of which is vulnerable to Charlie’s presence. Charlie is made both a horrific ghost and a signifier of affection and warmth. Bodie’s breakdowns now take on further emotional pull due to the attention that the film pays to developing this omnipresent but incorporeal presence.

It does not attempt to fix the soldier; it cannot, especially not within the space of a day. Instead, the story focuses on the marriage that is undeniably at stake. The choice the soldier faces is to either reveal just how hurt he is, or to preserve his fortification but lose yet another loved one.

Watch Journey Home Short Film