NEW YORK - In "Grace is Gone," John Cusack plays a young father struggling to tell his daughters their mother has been killed in Iraq. He says he wanted to get inside one family's grief and the Iraq war's personal toll.
"I just wanted to do something that just told the human side of it and would allow people of any ideological perspective to kind of come together and find common ground," Cusack told ABC's "This Week" in an interview that aired Sunday.
In the Weinstein Co. drama, Cusack's character delays telling his two daughters about their mother's death, instead taking them on a road trip while the former military man sorts out his complicated feelings about the war.
"I wanted to explore the reality of grief and loss, so that the war didn't become another abstraction that's on the television, and the pundits of both sides of left versus right, you know, they attack each other and use it as a political football," Cusack said. "I really felt very strongly that I wanted to tell a story about one of those coffins coming home and tell a story for those families."
"Grace is Gone" opened Friday in limited release.
