Tess, a newly retired widow, is sent a box of letters she had written to her mentor, Michael, over a 20-year span. While she and her partner spend the 2020 summer backpacking in the Montana mountains, she revisits her past relationships—with Michael, Heath, her late husband, and her relationship with spirituality.  

SYNOPSIS:

Dear Michael is a feature-length drama exploring relationships: the relationship between a mentor/mentee, a husband and wife, an older adult partnership, and a spiritual connection. With tonal ties to Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life, Mick Jackson’s Tuesdays with Morrie, and Richard Linklater’s Boyhood and Before Trilogies, this movie is a broad sweep with philosophical underpinnings.

In the summer of 2020, Tess and Heath, both recently widowed and newly retired, set out for a series of backpacking trips in the Montana Wilderness. Not only do they encounter snakes, moose, stream crossings, dangerous mountain passes, and storms, but they also encounter snags in their interpersonal styles.

While sitting on the shoreline of Mystic Lake, Tess receives a call from the wife of a dear friend and mentor, who called to say that Michael had died. Tess is then sent a box of letters she wrote to Michael over twenty years. Through reading these notes, Tess reminisces about her past lives with her late husband Francis, with sunny days and storms.

Tess also thinks about her relationship with Michael. She contemplates the moment when Michael asks Tess to stop writing to him. Tess is devastated by this abrupt end and also by her crumbling marriage. The stormy years begin as the heavy clouds pass over Tess’s charmed life. Tess is confronted with Francis’s mental health struggles, the end of their marriage, a brief reconciliation, and his early death. Tess then visits Michael in the hospital. Due to an advanced form of dementia, Michael does not recognize Tess. Ultimately, Tess reads an unsent note from Michael, which is mixed in with her letters. “Ours is a complex relationship,” Michael wrote.

Ultimately, this is a tale of one woman's review of the major relationships in her life, her relationship with her Catholic roots, and questions about the role of prayer.

The picture ends with Tess's presence on a Zoom Remembrance Day call. Sitting with Heath on a large boulder next to Mystic Lake, Tess talks about the changing landscape through the years. In the end, Tess has a profound gratitude for her life and a deep appreciation for her dear Michael, Francis, and Heath, and contemplates the question, Who should I direct my ultimate gratitude for my life? God? Michael? Francis? Heath? Mother Earth? Myself? Dear Whom? Ultimately, she chooses not to fill in the blank and just to say, “Thank you!”

DEAR MICHAEL