Permanent Record

CW: suicide I don't normally do content warnings at the top, but this is a unique, and rather personal case. As I write this (March of 2025), it's been a little over four years since my family lost a nephew to suicide. It is a moment in our family that will forever cast a shadow. Suicide is like a rock being thrown in a still body of water; the rock disappears, and what's left behind disrupts everything around it. The person who commits suicide no longer feels the pain they had, but it transfers to everybody around them. Forever. I mention this because Permanent Record is all about the effects of suicide, namely on the friends and peer group around a young person, and it confronts the issue head-on. There is no sugar-coating, no glorifying, and no demonizing. Just the cold, harsh reality of not only losing someone, but that someone being gone because they decided to go, and the young people -- people whose ideas of the world and relationships and understanding of mortality are still developing -- left behind to put together the pieces the best they can. Permanent Record is a raw, simple movie. It is not concerned with artistic flourishes, although that's not to say there isn't artistry at work. It's just in service of the subject matter. A prime example is the moment where Chris takes his life; he's standing at the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean. His buddy, David (played by Keanu Reeves), is sneaking up on him to surprise him. David ducks behind one rock, and Chris is still in frame, at the edge, looking out onto the world. The camera follows David, getting tighter on him, taking Chris out of the picture entirely, as David moves to another, closer boulder. When he jumps back up, we then see Chris is no longer there. The scene stays with David as he slowly realizes that, since Chris didn't get by him, there's only one way out of the place, and the horror hits him (although he thinks Chris fell, which is an important story beat). The score doesn't swell to meet the moment. There's no revolving aerial shot to convey a sense of disorientation. There's just David, realizing his best friend is dead, screaming out his friend's name over and over in anguish. No flourish, no bombast, nothing to manipulate the viewer into feeling the impact of the moment, letting the emotion of the scene itself be the driver. This is the story through the whole movie; letting the impact of the events that have transpired do the heavy lifting. For anyone who has ever said Keanu is a movie star and not an actor, I challenge you to watch this and see if you still hold this opinion. Whether it's the scene where Chris dies, or when Davis finds out it was suicide after all (Chris sends some unfinished schoolwork for the play to David with a note that arrives after his death, making it clear it was a choice), to David shutting down emotionally and blaming Chris, and then to the eventual explosion of pain and survivor's guilt. Keanu may look like Ted "Theodore" Logan in Permanent Record, but his acting is the farthest thing from it, and from someone so young and early in their career too, it's impressive. This movie rests on his shoulders, as he acts as the audience's guide through how the death impacts others; the girl who tried to chat up Chris at the party right before he killed himself, the girl who was Chris' booty call, David's girlfriend, and Chris' parents. Keanu's acting shows a maturity and grace well beyond his years at the time. There are two minor flaws I feel I should mention. One is the script, which occasionally lapses into some hacky, tacky lines and bizarre story choices. That moment I referenced earlier where David's emotional walls finally break down and he feels the grief is acted and frames well, but Keanu has to say some lines through his sobbing and they're kinda clunky, and that's a thing that happens in a few places. The scene where the principal has to cancel an in-school memorial for Chris -- a decision he is against, but being ordered to do by the district superintendent -- only functions because the principal never says anything like "my boss is making me do this, I don't want to"; instead, it devolves into a shouting match between him and David so David can lose his temper and get himself suspended. It's a moment that had to happen to bring on David's ultimate emotional reckoning, but it had to get there via such a clumsy, unnecessary path that required human beings to not convey information. This isn't a showstopper by any means, as 95% of the time, Permanent Record works. It's just that when it trips, it falls right on its face. The other flaw is a double-edged sword, and that's the movie's length. At a lean 90ish minutes, Permanent Record wastes no time and has no filler, but its compactness also comes at a cost. Again to reference David's big breakdown scene, it happens after a near-accident in front of Chris' parents house. He falls into Chris' dad's arms, sobbing and yelling, and instead of showing the patience from earlier with Chris' death scene, it cuts hard and harsh mid-sob. It feels like the director or editor was afraid of wallowing in the moment, but that's exactly what needed to happen; Chris' dad should've slowly embraced David and comforted him, maybe slowly sitting down together. Let the audience feel David finally accepting it and having those feelings everyone who is left behind in a suicide feels. I appreciate a movie that wants to keep a tight run time, but the extra ten seconds wouldn't have hurt. Another example is Chris and David's bandmates. Music is an important part of their lives, and it is strongly hinted at that Chris' expectations of himself towards music and his feelings of inadequacy are driving forces in his decision; he's putting together the orchestral music for the school play, accepted to a prestigious art school, and the chief songwriter for the band. But for all the other people the movie focuses on to see how the suicide affects them, the band (outside of David, of course) never gets that moment, and it is a weird omission. Ultimately, though, those minor issues are not so critical that they derail the movie in any way. Maybe it's personal bias that made this resonate with me. My wife and I both admitted that, given the right frame of mind (i.e., probably not ours), Permanent Record might come off a little 80's ABC Afterschool Special-esque, and I wouldn't blame anyone for feeling that. It is certainly not a movie one watches for a relaxing night in. It reminded me a lot of Prozac Nation, in that it tackles mental health directly and unapologetically. Permanent Record has a slightly happier ending than Prozac Nation, as the kids get to have their memorial service after all, but it by no means suggests a happily-ever-after future. The final shot looks out onto the ocean, the same ocean where Chris met his end, suggesting that while the kids may heal and remember Chris for how he lived instead of how he died, how he died will still haunt them, because that's what suicide does to the living. Like Prozan Nation, the ending suggests that you can move forward, but you'll never fully move on. Like the way the waves crash onto the beach and change the way the sand lays and erode rock and driftwood bit by bit, they are forever changed both by having Chris in their lives and how he removed himself from it, in ways one can see and ways one can't. It is how a movie this serious should end, to be true to the topic.