At first glance "The Mourning After" seems entirely self-explanatory. The onscreen title makes it obvious that this is a piece on the subject of bereavement; that it did the rounds in UK ad breaks and cinema reels during the Christmas and New Year period (initially in 1982-83, although it was rerun elsewhere in the decade) means that we can already connect the dots as to the probable cause of the loss in question. Still, our assumption that we're watching a public information film on the perils of drink driving transpires to be only half-correct. The first drop of discrepancy comes when the text informs us that "Seagram sell more wines and spirits than anyone else in the world", followed by "Naturally, we like you to take a drink". This is immediately tempered by the disclaimer, "But always in moderation. And never when driving", but it is hard not to be thrown by that slight air of incongruity - an ad selling us on the virtues of a product whilst confronting us with a grim reminder of the potential consequences if we are not judicious consumers. It's an oddity, to say the least.
"The Mourning After" is what could be termed a pseudo-PIF. It does the work of a public information film, but it's really a bog standard advert and as such is looking to double as promotion for a brand. There is certainly an element of the (now defunct) Canadian drinks company looking to have their cake and eat it - amid the sombre display, they cannot help but brag about their stature in the world of alcoholic beverages, and to work in the implicit suggestion that Seagram's wines and spirits are very good when partaken under the appropriate circumstances. But in spite of these ostensibly contradictory intentions, "The Mourning After" still packs quite a heavy punch as a drink driving film, no less so than many actual PIFs on the matter. There is something hauntingly lyrical in its approach, which feels markedly different to that of the more infamous "Drinking and Driving Wrecks Lives" PIFs that would begin their run toward the end of the decade. Whereas D&DWL focussed on the voices of those impacted by drive drinking incidents, "Mourning" contains no spoken dialogue, allowing an instrumental piano piece (a track from the KPM library, "Recollections" by Dennis Farnon) to convey the mood, while lingering on a series of static black and white images with deliberately minimal human presence. It is effectively a statement on drink driving delivered via a tone poem. Pun-tastic title aside, there is very little onscreen grieving - an early shot of the bereaved gazing longingly at the unoccupied pillow beside her (with a worn-out tissue at hand) and a subsequent still giving a face to the deceased, via a framed photograph, supply us with enough information to fill in all of the crucial narrative blanks, but what we're shown is largely a series of empty spaces, the remnants of a life vacated and abandoned. Clothes hung within a closet, no longer worn, a vacant spot in a garage that presumably once housed two vehicles, an unfilled chair beside a pair of unfilled slippers. The personality of the deceased is communicated through the array of personal items he leaves behind - we can deduce that he was a keen outdoorsman, as implied by the stack of books on fly fishing and the pair of binoculars glimpsed on the bedroom shelf. Meanwhile, the assortment of artefacts scattered around his photograph (car keys, rings, wristwatch, pocket journal) appear to have been arranged as a monument to the life he led, being the items he kept closest to him at all times, while forebodingly indicating the accidental nature of his death (since these were in likelihood the items found about his person in the aftermath).
Compared to D&DWL, the emphasis is not explicitly on the life attempting to function in the aftermath of the tragedy, although the loneliness of the grieving spouse is omnipresent within the subtext of the images - the two chairs at the breakfast table, only one of which has crockery set before it, and the solitary car in the garage. We are all throughout seeing snapshots of her corrupted world, of the rawness of waking up into a home where her husband should be, but isn't, and yet still feels so tauntingly near through these innumerable tokens of his existence. The colourlessness of the images suggest an emotional austerity, while their stillness suggests inertia. We might be put in mind of the D&DWL film "Jenny", which illustrated how both the comatose Jenny and her quietly devastated mother were prisoners of a mutual entrapment, for "Mourning" conveys a similar sense of two intertwined lives that have been brought to a standstill - the husband whose life has literally been reduced to an assortment of inanimate artefacts and the spouse who has become a part of this deserted landscape, its crushing emptiness now her lived reality. The tragedy only deepens as we venture beyond the house and encounter a pair of wellington boots that presumably belonged to the deceased, and beside them a much smaller pair, the advert's sole indication that there may be a bereaved child in this equation. Given that the smaller boots are also shown unoccupied, there are multiple ways of interpreting this particular image - as a glimpse the spouse's interior world, it could be a symbol for the child they will never have. Alternatively, it could point to a child in the present who can no longer follow in their father's footsteps (both literally and figuratively) now that his role as a mentor and protective figure has been voided. In either case, the invisible child stands for the cancelled future. I note with some curiosity that this is also the still with which the text "Naturally, we like you take a drink" is juxtaposed, perhaps implanting the subliminal message that Seagram can be seen as a nurturing entity to the consumer, offering them pleasurable watering but also protective guidance on where to draw the line.
As we journey deeper into the grounds surrounding the house, we happen across a lawnmower left out upon the grass, possibly indicating some unfinished business on the part of the deceased, although it may have a more disquieting significance still. Our final image is of a tennis court, with leaves scattered across one half, as a ladder seen to the left of the court points to a trimming job that our deceased protagonist was unable to complete before his accident. It is here that the fateful text "And never when driving" appears onscreen. Something that "Mourning" obviously lacks is imagery overtly tying the featured grief to a drink driving accident - in lieu of this, the debris upon the tennis court appears to substitute for the wreckage of the crash, with the unsecured gate in the foreground suggesting an inattentiveness to safety. It is a poignantly understated means of illustrating what went wrong. That only one side of the court should be covered in leaves is yet another emblem of that broken union between the deceased and bereaved, this site of vibrant play now off-limits to them both. There is a solemn irony in the insinuation that the garden, traditionally a place of regrowth and rebirth, should serve as our final symbol of stifling devastation. The deserted lawnmower and scattered leaves are indicators of a battle against a metaphorical wilderness that has already been lost, the disordered garden signifying the dangers that lay outside the safety of home in the allure of those alcoholic beverages (whether Seagram brand or otherwise) and their potential for calamity when combined with driving. At the same time, we sense that this is only the beginning, and that the garden is about to fall into a even deeper state of disrepair. The lawn will get evermore overgrown and the volume of leaves on the tennis court will merely increase, as this erstwhile paradise becomes all the more lost and buried in the passage of time.
"The Mourning After" is an oddity, sure, but a supremely affecting and intriguing one. It was acclaimed at the time of its debut, picking up a British Arrow Award in 1983, and while it since seems to have fallen into obscurity, I reckon it deserves to be remembered and celebrated. As its legacy, Farnon's "Recollections" will forever be a track that tears hard on my heartstrings.
Note: At least two versions of the ad exist, the only difference being Seagram's parting words at the end. In one they wish us a safe Christmas. In the other, a safe New Year. Presumably they were swapped out according to whichever occasion for intoxicated revelry was next on the horizon.
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