Meryl Streep
Mary Rose Grapes
Mary Rose is resigned to living out her final years trapped in her memories and has buried resentments toward her husband that date back decades to the death of their son, Dylan. But fate provides her a chance to recapture her youthful dreams of adventure when their house falls into the sea and floats away. She and Harold are launched on a journey of survival, one that ultimately frees her of bitterness as she finally overcomes the tragedy of Dylan’s death and revives her love for Harold.
“We’ve been drifting through life since the day we allowed his death to put an end to our dreams. Since the day we allowed fear and resentment to fill the hole he left in our lives. From that day, we let the light that guided us go out. That night, we lost not only our son, Harold. We lost ourselves.”
Harold Grapes
Harold Grapes, a retired handyman, spends most of his days locked in his basement building miniature ships inside bottles. They serve as melancholic reproductions of the sailboat he was once building in a shipyard so he and Mary Rose and Dylan could sail away to explore the world. But Dylan’s death in a storm at sea destroyed that dream and left Harold living with feelings of guilt and enduring his wife’s resentment. Now, thirty-five years later, Harold finds himself on an adventure at sea that not only forces him to overcome adversity, but also gives him a chance to finally free himself from the burden of guilt and live in peace.
“All those years, I told myself we had taken apart the ship because it was the right thing to do. Because without Dylan, our dream didn’t mean anything. But now I know none of what we told ourselves was true, Rose. We built the house out of fear. Not fear of forgetting him, but fear of moving on with our lives, fear of realizing our dreams. We were afraid of being happy again without him.”
Tom Hanks
