Starring: Ewan McGregor, Ethan Hawke, Maribel Verdú, Sophie Okonedo, Oscar Nunez
OUR RATING: ★★★☆☆
Story:
Apple TV+ comedy-drama written and directed by Rodrigo Garcia. Raymond & Ray (2022) centers on half brothers Raymond and Ray (Ewan McGregor and Ethan Hawke) who reunite when their estranged father dies and discover that his final wish was for them to dig his grave. Together, they dig deep into their past traumas and uncover the history of the man they both hate. They process who they’ve become as men, both because of their father, and in spite of him.
Our Favorite Quotes:
'Rest in peace. Leave behind fear, hope, anger, spilled milk. Take silence only. Sky, wind. Sunrise after the rain. Forget the rest. Sleep. Rest from yourself.' - Reverend West (Raymond & Ray) Share on X
Best Quotes
Ray: Who’s there?
Raymond: Raymond.
Ray: “Raymond” who?
Raymond: How many Raymonds do you know, Ray?
Raymond: Our father is dead.
Ray: By his own hand?
Raymond: No, not by his own… He was sick, for Christ sake.
Raymond: [referring to their father] His last wish was that his sons attend his funeral. It’s tomorrow, Ray. Outside of Richmond.
Ray: You don’t have to go. He’s dead. He’ll never know.
Raymond: You’re a very tender man. You know that?
Raymond: Why did you say “by his own hand” before? Why would he kill himself?
Ray: I guess I just always thought he would. Such a bitter son of a b**ch. Frustrated. Everything he touched turned to s**t. I just thought he’d put himself to sleep one day. I fantasized about it my whole childhood, him putting a gun in his mouth and blowing off the top of his head.
Raymond: You still working at the plant?
Ray: No. Fired.
Raymond: For what?
Ray: I don’t know. Some altercation.
Raymond: “Altercation”? Fancy. If I asked the other guy, would he use that word?
Ray: It’s difficult for him to speak with no teeth and all.
Raymond: [referring to their father] How did he get himself women like that?
Ray: He could be funny when he wanted to be.
Raymond: Does whipping our a**es with his belt count as funny? Because if it does, he was a hoot.
Raymond: [to Ray] I want to know what it looks like to put him underground, what it feels like. But I’m scared it’s going to kick my a**. Come with me.
Raymond: [referring to his dream] What do you think it means?
Ray: Means it’s going to take a whole lot more than a hole in the ground to get the old man out of your head.
'Forgiveness is good.' - Raymond Share on X
Raymond: It’s hard to imagine him as a little boy. His father was a monster to him. We repeat. We repeat.
Ray: We don’t have to.
Raymond: Yeah, but we do. It’s the law of the land.
Raymond: [referring to women] They just come to you, don’t they?
Ray: Like flies to s**t.
Ray: Dad died alone, I bet. This guy just stepped in to make it all a little less desperate and depressing. And this is what the end looks like when you’ve alienated everyone. And now they’ve called us in to be the shills.
Raymond: [referring to their father] You don’t have any good memories of him?
Ray: I have some. I wish I didn’t.
Raymond: Why?
Raymond: [referring to the wooden casket] Really?
Ray: The cheapest man who ever lived.
Canfield: I believe it wasn’t a matter of cost. I offered him discounts on other caskets, but he insisted. He said it was his favorite thing about being a Jew, the humility of the casket.
'I like my peace and quiet. If that means my life didn't pan out, then it didn't pan out.' - Raymond Share on X
Ray: Our father was not a Jew. He converted for thirty minutes once. And, no, and he was still miserable.
Ray: What’s this s**t about being buried naked? He was always such an exhibitionist.
Raymond: His d**k is still bigger than ours.
Raymond: He’s really gone now. I feel it. I feel good about it. Letting it go. Forgiveness is good.
Mendez: [to Raymond and Ray] Your father was a great conversationalist, a ferocious debater. Not sophisticated necessarily, but tireless. I would pay him just to hear him gripe about the world the way he did.
'What matters is that we all belong to something greater than us. An infinite.' - Reverend West (Raymond & Ray) Share on X
Mendez: And lastly, it was also your father’s wish that you dig his grave.
Raymond: What?
Mendez: That his sons dig his grave on their own, without machinery. Shovels are fine, of course. And then, you are to lower the casket into the ground and cover the grave again.
Ray: What an a**hole.
Raymond: [referring to their photos] Oh, look. The moms. So beautiful. Before he sucked the lifeblood out of them.
Ray: We’re a couple of grown-a** men whose lives didn’t pan out.
Lucia: He looked at that picture of you guys at the lake all the time. I said to him, “Why don’t you call these boys? They can visit you.” He said no. He said, “The boys and the men were not the same thing.”
Raymond: I like things the way I like them. Steady. Maybe that makes me boring, or lazy. It cost me my marriages. I know that. Olive said I was more interested in air conditioning than I was in her. The first time Marsha saw me ironing a perfect shirt, she burst into tears thinking I was gay. I like my peace and quiet. If that means my life didn’t pan out, then it didn’t pan out. I’m okay. I sleep like a baby. We come from chaos.
'Risk makes you feel alive. Sometimes even getting a little sloppy can be good.' - Lucia (Raymond & Ray) Share on X
Raymond: Try not to f*** the funeral home receptionist at our own father’s viewing.
Ray: Okay, I’ll try.
Kiera: Something about your father captured me. A very old soul. Haunted. What was he like as a father?
Ray: The worst.
Ray: You son of a b**ch. You think you can laugh at me from hell, huh? What the f*** do you know about music? It takes you eighty years to discover that it can help you through your pain, huh? You moron. Don’t f*** with me, Harris. You’ll regret it.
Ray: The s**t he got away with. I mean, can you imagine? I mean, his wife and his lover become lifelong friends. It’s like the Battered Wives Club.
'There's many ways to live a life.' - Ray Share on X
Raymond: Your anger, Ray. I couldn’t carry it. It would crush me.
Reverend West: Did I say something funny?
Ray: “Glowing terms. Backbreaking work.” It’s just, where do you get that s**t?
Reverend West: Are my words s**t?
Ray: I mean, do they teach that at divinity school? How to speak like a prophet?
Ray: But what’s he even need a pastor for anyway? The last time I checked, he was Jewish. He was Buddhist before that. Muslim.
Reverend West: Harris was a restless seeker.
Ray: He was circumcised at fifty.
Raymond: That’s enough.
Reverend West: I did not know that. Painful, I’m sure.
'He ate ten thousand meals, and slept ten thousand nights with his dreams and his nightmares. He had a hundred jobs and no money in the end. He wanted to understand the world, life, everything. But, no. Who can?' - Lucia Share on X
Reverend West: Few things matter to a dying man.
Lucia: Hi, guys. This is my son, Simon. Raymond and Ray. Your brothers.
Simon: Nice to meet you.
Raymond: Hello.
Ray: Hi.
'People tell you who they are right away.' - Kiera (Raymond & Ray) Share on X
Reverend West: What matters is that we all belong to something greater than us. An infinite. Your father knew that.
Ray: No. That is a humble thought, and my father didn’t have a humble bone in his body.
Reverend West: Maybe he grew one when he realized the end was near.
Ray: Yeah, maybe it’s easier at the end. That’s when all the bullies s**t their pants.
Lucia: You can have stability with an exciting job. Risk makes you feel alive. Sometimes even getting a little sloppy can be good.
Raymond: Can it?
Lucia: Yeah.
Raymond: The old man was always screwing with us. Gave us the same name. So our moms called us Raymond and Ray to avoid confusion. But he’d just call me Ray, and him Raymond, and wreak havoc. Ray would get rewarded for my stuff, or I’d get punished for his.
Raymond: [referring to Ray] I made him come here with me today. This is like ground zero for everything he hates.
Ray: [referring to Raymond] We’re half brothers. Growing up, we were connected at the hip. Inseparable. And then, we drifted apart through high school. When you’ve been humiliated together, degraded, devalued like we were by Harris, then just being near each other is a reminder.
Ray: [referring to Raymond] Sometimes I wonder if we met today, if we’d even be friends.
Ray: I’m entertaining you with stories of other funerals, you know. Suave.
Kiera: I don’t need to be entertained.
Raymond: [referring to their other brother, Leon and Vincent] Shouldn’t we talk to these guys, get to know them?
Ray: And then what? Birthday parties, Christmas cards? I don’t need any new people.
Raymond: Ah, yeah. You’re plenty busy with all the friends and loved ones that surround you.
Ray: Athena died on me. The rest is by choice.
Ray: Do you have kids?
Kiera: No. No. Never wanted to. Usually, people feel weird meeting a grown-a** woman who doesn’t have or want kids, like she’s some unhappy freak of nature.
Ray: Yeah. There’s many ways to live a life. I read that in a fortune cookie.
Ray: You know, in a way, it makes sense. It’s the way he lived his whole life, faced own like a loser.
Raymond: Don’t talk about him like that.
Ray: He is a loser. And everything he touched turned to s**t.
Reverend West: Say your goodbyes, Ray. You will never regret it.
Reverend West: Rest in peace, Harris. Leave behind fear, hope, anger, spilled milk. Take silence only. Sky, wind. Sunrise after the rain. Forget the rest. Sleep, Harris. Rest from yourself.
Ray: I was a heroin addict for three years. It wasn’t pretty.
Kiera: My brother said that one of the things he needed to do to stay clean was finding new sources of pleasure. Because the drugs, for better or worse, were pleasure.
Ray: Nothing makes me happier than listening to jazz. It’s a drug.
Kiera: Listening more than playing? You sounded pretty good back there.
Ray: For a white boy.
Kiera: You’re not a boy.
Ray: The things he said, they’re like a weight on my chest. You know, it’s like I’d be playing, and in between phrases, I can feel my tank’s not filling up, you know, from the weight. My whole life, just tried not to get crushed. Playing back there at the cemetery, that’s not like a real gig with other musicians. That’s when the fear rears its ugly head.
Kiera: Fear of what?
Ray: Sounding like crap.
Raymond: Did you love him?
Lucia: He was a horny sixty-seven year-old. And I was in a bad marriage and sad. And he gave me attention. And he made me laugh. He was a bad father to you, a good father to Simon. He was a bad lover to your moms. He was a good lover to me. He loved women, but he didn’t understand them. He was a racist who liked everyone. He ate ten thousand meals, and slept ten thousand nights with his dreams and his nightmares. He had a hundred jobs and no money in the end. He wanted to understand the world, life, everything. But, no. Who can? He was a speck of dust.
[she touches his face and they kiss]
Ray: Look, I’m not your pet project, Nurse Kiera.
Kiera: I’m such an idiot. You know what? People tell you who they are right away. My first impression was the right one. You’re a p**ck.
Ray: Well, you’re right about that.
Harris: [as Raymond reads his letter] Raymond, I regret that I caused you so much pain. I was in a lot of pain myself, but I’ve heard that’s no excuse. It was exhausting work being a father, even a bad father. Find a way to forgive me. One more thing. Your brother Ray, is not my son. His mother was already pregnant, but didn’t know it when she and I started up. We went along with it because I loved her, I thought. So, in a way, he’s not even your brother, I suppose. Do with that information what you will. I trust you. Your father, Benjamin Reed Harris III.
Harris: [as Ray reads his letter] Ray, you were a golden boy. I never knew what to do with you. Sincerely, Benjamin Reed Harris III.
Ray: [referring to Lucia] You had sexual intercourse with his woman, bro!
Raymond: Why do you have to point everything out? Why can’t you let silence speak for itself?
Ray: Where would the fun be in that, huh? Now his son could be your son.
Ray: Thank you for making me come to this thing.
Raymond: Is this where we hug? Oh, hug this.
Ray: Hug this!
Ray: [to Raymond] We never really knew him, did we?
Trailer: