How do you explain death to a dog? Thinking about grief while watching “The Friend”

Bing and Naomi Watts, as Apollo and Iris, appear in The Friend. Credit: Bleecker Street Media

The trailer for the film ‘The Friend’, which stars Naomi Watts as an English professor and writer who unexpectedly and inconveniently inherits a massive Great Dane, felt irresistible to me. Based on a novel by Sigrid Nunez (see link below) the film was released in theatres in 2025. A review in Rolling Stone heralded it as “the perfect movie for grief-stricken dog lovers”. The Venn diagram overlap of two of my favourite topics – grief and dogs – was too tempting to ignore.

In ‘The Friend’, Walter is dead, and his dog Apollo needs a new home. Walter’s best friend Iris reluctantly agrees to take him in, only until she can surrender him to a rescue whose wait lists are long. Apollo is gentle, quiet, and massive. He refuses to take the elevator, forcing Iris to descend and then climb multiple flights of stairs every time he needs to go outside. He sprawls his enormous body over Iris’s bed, growling when she tries to move him. Iris is displaced to a blowup mattress on her own floor. Neither friendly nor mean, Apollo seems to simply exist. He is ever-present in Iris’s already small living space, making her life more chaotic, and less comfortable. Apollo, like grief, has invaded Iris’s home.  Both have done so without warning or regard for the disruption that they cause.

Walter was no saint. His actions and choices have had consequences for those who survive him. His ex-wife is hurt when she learns, for the first time at Walter’s funeral, that he has an adult daughter. Iris grapples with questions about Walter’s death. These come to a head in one surrealistic scene towards the end of the film, in which Iris and Walter have a conversation after he has died. She demands that he account for the impact his suicide had on those around him. Walter acknowledges her criticism. Disarmed, he responds simply: “In my defense, I was suicidal”. Just like most true stories about relationships, love, and death, this fictional narrative defies simplistic binaries of right and wrong. The characters, and the audience, are denied resolution. We are challenged to feel empathy for Iris and Walter at the same time. She, who lost her best friend and feels abandoned as a result. He, who lost his life to a darkness he could not overcome.

Dogs, meanwhile, do not hold grudges. The weight of Apollo’s longing, conveyed through slow movements and sad expressions, demonstrate the depth to which Walter mattered to, and was loved by, this dog. For all of Walter’s flaws and poor choices, Apollo’s sadness establishes that Walter, like every person, is worthy of being grieved.

The script does not rely on monologues or flashbacks to convince us how much Iris is also grieving for Walter. Instead, we come to know this through the mostly silent relationship that she and Apollo develop, together. The two of them cohabitating, with the presence of Walter’s absence.

Apollo needed to live with Iris, we are told, because this was Walter’s wish. And because Walter’s wife Barbara does not like dogs. These might both be true. But it is also apparent that Barbara, in the immediate days following Walter’s death, could not abide Apollo’s grief. In lamenting Apollo’s pining and inconsolability, Barbara asks, with a resigned expression: “How do you explain death to a dog?”

One night, Iris awakens to Apollo’s cries. She approaches the bed and lies down beside him. This time, he does not growl her away. She hugs him, and they fall asleep together. In this moment, two grieving characters recognize each other’s pain. They do not share a vocabulary to make sense of what they feel. They cannot attempt to comfort one another with words. The lesson here feels important. Grief will not be cured by condolences or sense-making, even when we do share vocabulary. Grief can however be accompanied, through reciprocal holding.

Great Danes do not live long lives, even by dog standards. In the final scene, Iris reflects on the finitude of Apollo’s existence. She remarks: “I want you to live as long as me. Anything less, feels unfair”. This feeling is probably familiar to anyone who loves a dog, and certainly to anyone who has lost one. And yet this simple statement will also resonate with anyone who has felt betrayed by the seemingly unfair nature of life and death. We share our lives with others who inevitably die before we do, up until the moment that our own deaths cause grief for those who remain.

As I sat in this single screen movie theatre, surprisingly crowded for a late weekday afternoon, I felt and heard multiple people react to Iris’s final reflection. The quiet sniffles and subtle gasps that permeated the room reminded me that many people know this feeling. Of loving someone – canine or human – who will not live for as long as we ourselves will live. Perhaps there is solidarity to be found in facing this feeling together by holding on to one another, whenever grief enters any of our individual lives.

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The Friend, directed by Scott McGehee and David Siegel, and produced by Bleecker Street Media, is available to rent or own on demand: https://bleeckerstreetmedia.com/the-friend

Sigrid Nunez’s original novel, on which the film was based, can be found here: https://sigridnunez.com/books/the-friend/