THE PASSAGE SYNOPSIS

Recently out of a relationship and barred from seeing her, Matthew suffers an emotional collapse. Disillusioned and alone, he empties his Chicago apartment and crosses rural Wisconsin by bus toward his older brother Peter’s home near the Western Terminus of the 1,200 mile Ice Age trail—a trek he has no intention on returning from.

On his way, he recalls childhood memories of struggling to cross vast distances of woods in the wake of his athletic and capable older brother, and the return home to parents celebrating his brother’s leadership and courage, while he sat in his shadow.

Peter has all the signs of success Matthew doesn’t, the home, luxury SUV, wife and kids… Matthew borrows from his brother’s array of backpacking gear still bearing tags, while Peter copes with a life of adventure gone unfulfilled, and redirects the pain at Matthew, pressuring him to break his sobriety with him.

In the solitude of the trail, Matthew suffers challenges of exhaustion, water filtration, predators, and the like, standing in no shadows but those his own mind creates. His memories not only continue to surface, but become a literal passageway through which he relives them as an adult. From the trail, he stumbles upon his childhood backyard. His father, younger than himself now, calls out as they return from the adventure he recalled days before. This time, as his parents laud Peter, Matthew stands up for himself, but the past doesn’t change to his liking, and his parents only double-down, exiling him for his disobedience.

As Matthew continues, his past mirrors the present. With no nurturance at home, he sought validation from a girl at school, Kimberly. As he battles with miles of trail, he recalls failed attempts for her affection. As he’s beaten down by dehydration, so too is he by his childhood bully Tyler. When he crosses the passageway, to face off against Tyler as his adult self, he finds himself still unable to fight back. A bloodied past mirrors a bloodied present.

At a resupply, Matthew finds respite from his past in an seemingly idilic town, and makes quick friends with a seemingly idilic woman, Angie. He spends the night with her group of lifetime friends that feels like childhood camaraderie among grown adults; and he relishes in the connection. A one night stand with Angie invigorates hope, to save him from himself, his past, and the trail. He shares with her delusions of moving to her small town. Angie, like all rural women, doesn’t live in fantasy, and doesn’t indulge his.

Matthew spirals out, breaking his sobriety in present, and careening through a traumatized past. He recalls movies as a childhood respite from loneliness, love stories that shaped his naive and idealized present outlook. As he hits bottom, he recalls at just six years old receiving the ridicule of his entire family for crying at the end of Sleepless in Seattle when father reunites with son.

Hungover and hopeless, it’s unclear if Matthew’s even on the trail itself, trudging along as he explores the depths of his past for an escape. He takes the passageway to his high school girlfriend’s home, his first love. He tries with all the effort he has left to right his past wrongs so that they stay together and bring happiness to his present. But his intense adult values are in stark contrast to her teenage ones, and he finds himself in horror: his mid-life open heart facing off with her seventeen year old sexual hormones. When he rejects her disturbing advances unto his adult self, she feels painfully rejected and casts him out. No where else to go, Matthew runs back to his childhood home, hoping to get the nurturance he needs from his mother. He speaks to her honestly, but a young and struggling mother herself, she cannot reciprocate.

With nothing left but his current reality, Matthew climbs a transmission tower crossing through the woods, and jumps off.

Dead or close to it, bloody and broken on the forest floor, Matthew recalls a missing chapter from his childhood adventure with Peter, when his brother was stuck on a dangerous ledge of the Lake Michigan bluffs and frozen in fear. Matthew scaled the wall to reach him, and allowed him to climb down his own back, carrying his brother’s weight, to a safe level below. While Matthew may not look or act like the movie image of a hero, surviving the pain of his past, and the trail in the present, reveals to himself the survivor that’s always been within.

Matthew drags himself, with broken arm and leg, across the forest floor, day and night, covered in sweat, blood and mosquitos, and lays to rest on the shoulder of a country road.

Matthew awakens in a hospital room, where his brother and parents stand by. With splint and bandage, Matthew is at his parent’s house with his brother’s family and they all behave as if they haven’t missed a beat. His father’s dismissive remarks toward him no longer take effect, and he finds contentment in himself, watching the rest of them drown their feelings in booze.

Back in Chicago, Matthew’s ex-girlfriend comes back to him in a fit of worry, unable to reach him for these pasts weeks. She offers her affection, and an open door to her company; but in the end, Matthew chooses himself.