Waves

2019’s Waves, written and directed by Trey Edward Shults.

Starring Kelvin Harrison Jr, Taylor Russell, Stirling K. Brown, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Lucas Hedges, Alexa Demie, Clifton Collins Jr, Vivi Pineda, Neal Huff, Bill Wise, Harmony Korine, and Krisha Fairchild.

What is it about?

Set in present day Southern Florida, the Williams family, composed of family head, Ronald (Stirling K. Brown), step mother, Catherine (Renée Elise Goldsberry), high school son, Tyler (Kelvin Harrison Jr), and high school daughter, Emily (Taylor Russell) go about their lives. Tyler is an aspiring wrestler, dating Alexis (Alexa Demie), and his stern but loving parents attempt to raise him and his sister right. Things start to change, and tragedy strikes. It is from the ashes of tragedy that the family has to pick up and learn how to function as a unit.

Why is it worth seeing?

Never strictly a director of horror, Trey Edward Shults excels at creating experiences that bristle with anxiety. From his domestic tale of an individual relapsing through a traumatic family Thanksgiving in 2015’s Krisha, or of foreboding trauma packed into a vague apocalypse in 2017’s It Comes At Night, Shults specializes in a special kind of energy that attaches to a mind’s eye like velcro. Waves, his third feature length film, has a fair amount of anxiety to it, but it also brings an extra noun to the proceedings- vitality.

His subjects of attention, a middle class black family in Florida, operate in the centre of the American zeitgeist, with its relentless focus on winning at all costs and internalized (and even externalized) racism. Brown’s father character gives off the impression of a match about to be struck, as the head of a blended family where its difficult to say if his dreams of accomplishing success are overmatched by the very real pressures he faces. No cipher of perfection, he displays a desire to be a provider, a coach and personal trainer, a role model, a support, a disciplinarian, and a good husband. His struggles to keep his family together, after his son (a solid Kelvin Harrison Jr), starts to come undone, are admirably difficult and open ended. The story of the family sorting through the destruction that is caused, especially from the point of view of delightful Taylor Russell’s daughter character, is as raw as it is realistic. While Shults’ script features a story that is (somewhat) familiar, with a unique structure, the most revelatory thing about the movie is its depth of feeling.


No stranger to slow tracking zooms of the camera, Shults’ work here adds an exuberance, its handheld pans deliriously spinning around its tremendous actors, suggesting an almost drunken exuberance to mirror the joys of youthful life. Its occasional 360 degree coverage pairs well with the process of chaotic and unpredictable rhythms of trauma. The camera work, paired with a neon saturated colour palette by cinematographer Drew Daniels, combine to make something uniquely alive and thriving. The same goes for the soundtrack, an eclectic mix of moody and atmospheric cuts that are as diverse as they are authentic to their respective scenes and characters- combined with the usual throbbing score of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.


It’s exciting how a film so invested in living on the screen is also so prone to quiet moments of characters facing one another, their souls pouring out in moments of hatred, fear, worry, comfort, and love. Featuring actors at the top of their games, there’s a lot of ground covered with its flawed characters, from the excitement of teenagers embracing the energy of life, to saying goodbye to hated family members who are dying for good. It’s a lot. It reminded me of 1999’s Magnolia, not in structure, but in that sense of watching a confident film maker just go for it. It’s not the only comparison, as in the process of digging into a viscera of feelings, Waves wears a lot of influences on its sleeve: lighting borrowed from the Safdie brothers’ neon fests, a setting and dramatic sense of nuanced authenticity from Moonlight, abstract colour blots and micro family drama from Tree of Life (Shults worked under Terrence Malick for 3 of his movies so one would guess it comes naturally), and even an interesting dyad of perspectives reminiscent of Sicario.


All the moving parts may not all come together, for example, a character we have spent a great deal of time with is essentially thrown away, leaving us hanging, resulting in a film essentially disregarding a character the way America has done to so many minorities. It’s an effective demonstration of the effects consequences can have communities that suffer horrible crimes, but doesn’t influence the movie’s love for familial enmeshment- and likely weakens it. There is a replacement for that hole left behind (a sublime one), but it feels like both elements could have gone together for a more complete direction towards resolution. That said, does the film ever hum and buzz with life, an alleged coming out party for an auteur who cinephiles will recognize as having been here already.

Rating:

4/5

Trailer: Click Here.

Honeyland

2019’s Honeyland, directed by Tamara Kotevska and Ljubomir Stefanov.

Starring Hatidze Muratova, Nazife Muratova, Hussein Sam, and Ljutvie Sam.

What is it about?

Honeyland is a documentary set in present day Bekirlija, Northern Macedonia. Based around the life of Hatidze Muratova, the camera crew followed her around for 3 years to tell her story. Hatidze lives a humble and isolated life, beekeeping and taking care of her ill mother, and has to contend with a family of neighbours moving in who threaten to imbalance an already precarious eco system.

Why is it worth seeing?

Completely devoid of narration and exposition, directors Tamara Kotevska and Ljubomir Stefanov depict their subject of Hatidze, a human of complete naturalness, oblivious to the Hawthorne Effect. She makes an ideal fit for the setting of her hardscrabble village, nestled in the remote mountains, far from luxuries such as technology, electricity, and plumbing. We learn a great deal about her life, its rhythms and energies, and her contentment. It is just such a treat to spend time with someone who lives a life unimaginably different than yours- and they couldn’t be happier. Climbing mountains to find beehives to migrate back to her camp, caring for her invalid mother, or chatting with city locals to sell them honey, she’s a saint-like, but realistic person, worthy of spending precious time with.


Central protagonist established, Honeyland’s additional charms lie in its depiction of its natural setting, bringing an unusually cinematic quality to the typically static documentary genre. It has a hushed sense of intimacy that romanticizes a way of life that would appear brutal to anyone who considers not clutching a smart phone all day as the equivalent of torture. But Hatidze doesn’t seem to mind- she’s too busy existing without complaint.


Complicating Hatidze’s garden of Eden, is the arrival of a Turkish family, composed of a husband, wife, and 5 children. Migrant farmers, their crops of choice are chaos and disorganization, testing Muratova to the breaking point. Setting up parallels with colonialism, she couldn’t be more helpful in guiding and helping the family to survive- and is rewarded with mistrust and the potential decimation of her livelihood. Greed, short sightedness, callous indifference, all combine into an inability to learn from their mistakes. While the choice to depict the family as showing up during the film is editorialized (the family was actually there when the production began), they make tragically human foils, particularly when some of the children mistrust their parents’ lack of competence and bond to Muratova instead.

People come, people go. Honeyland understands this better than most, while granting the gift of spending time with some of those people in a wonderfully organic setting. Packed in a part of the world that definitely doesn’t see any tourists, it doesn’t explain anything to us- it shows. It’s the bees knees.

Rating:

4.5/5

Trailer: Click Here.

Parasite

2019’s Parasite, directed by Bong Joon-ho.

Starring Song Kang-Ho, Jang Hye-jin, Park So-dam, Choi Woo-shik, Lee Sun Gyun, Cho Yeo-jeong, Jeong Ji-so, Jeong Hyun-joon, Lee Jeong-eun, and Park Myung-hoon.

What is it about?

Set in present day Korea, a nuclear family of grifters eke out an existence in the gig economy. Lead by Kim Ki-taek (Song Kang-Ho), wife Kim Chung-sook (Jang Hye-jin), son Kim Ki-woo (Park So-dam), and daughter Kim Ki-jeong (Choi Woo-shik), they target the Parks, a wealthy family (and housekeeper), to work their next job. Successful completion of their marks, whom are plenty nice in personality and thus easy targets, offers a chance at climbing the ladder of social mobility- but also for surprises. 

Why is it worth seeing?

Being eclectic, in how one chooses to balance tones through genres, can be fraught with peril. Too many directions, and the result can feel like a 52 car pile up on the highway, but too few, and crucial flash bulb memories can be squandered. Director and co-writer Bong Joon-ho, after such nimble works as Memories of Murder, The Host, and Okja, brings all the stops- I haven’t been so entranced by the amount of ground covered in a film since 2016’s masterful The Handmaiden. Galloping over the descriptors needed for a thriller, black comedy, social satire, horror, and drama, it’s a breathlessly smooth ride (full of laughs and gasps). But unlike Park Chan-Wook’s twisted work about a shades of Rashomen inspired same sex romance, the focus here is on family matters. 3 respective families, all dynamic and possessing their own motivations and desires, clamp onto one another throughout. It’s one of the reasons it resounds so strongly.


The script, written by Joon-ho and Han Jin-won, introduces us to the Kim family, a group of have nots, initially shown being comfortable with breathing in street-side toxic fumes to save the money needed to fumigate their sub basement’s stink bug infestation. Through the fumes, we learn that the parents may have once held more promise, maybe even had plans beyond prowling around their home trying to graft onto someone else’s wi-fi. They wish success for their children, themselves no strangers to using their ample street smarts for their survival, and always for more for their now humbled family. Their interior life feels perfectly moulded by the outside’s world preference for outsourcing and downsizing, a gig economy nightmare that creates vast opportunities for exploitation of the rich over the less advantaged. The Park family, perhaps a more traditional definition of a nuclear family (full of promise and continued success), are the haves, employing others to be in service to them, an unusual mixture of comfortable servitude and thankless employment in occasionally awkward settings. But they (usually) aren’t mere bourgeois clowns. Their advantages have enabled them to act in a way that poor people often can’t afford to- to try to be kind to others. This juxtaposition of people fighting to have the rights of human beings is the perfect way to express class warfare, and the symbiotic relationships related to the resulting imbalance.


That warfare is fought in one of the most lovely interiors ever committed to film. Production designer, Lee Ha-jun, with the aid of cinematographer, Hong Kyung-pyo, create one of the more interesting settings in which a home becomes a modern palace of envy, an Architectural Digest overlay of creature comforts, packed full of secrets and lies, of freedom and imprisonment. It may not be a character, but it’s difficult to surmise what doesn’t happen within these walls, full of art work and history and intrigue. With these features in his back pocket, Joon-ho’s tendencies for shooting captivating shots of his actors provides an embarrassment of riches for lovers of the cinematic. The sequence where a family scurries downwards, soaked in both failure and rain, is magnificent, culminating in the shot of the year, a plumber’s ode to despair. But despite the genre hopping, and topics that are heavy, with some truly bizarre left turns and a number of laughs, the result never feels exhausting- instead it’s exhilarating. Filled with great performances, in particular Song Kang-ho, as the scheming but impulsive father of the Kim family, and Lee Jung-eun as the Park family’s complicated housekeeper, it’s the stuff Oscar buzz is made of.

Critically acclaimed and financially overachieving in a mono culture where comic books and sequels reign supreme, Parasite is that rare example of a gifted filmmaker peaking precisely at the time when they’re being recognized for it. It’s deserved, in a practically flawless film kind of way.

Rating:

5/5

Trailer: Click Here.

Heaven Knows What

2014’s Heaven Knows What, directed by the Safdie Brothers.

Starring Arielle Holmes, Caleb Landry Jones, Buddy Duress, Necro, Eleonore Hendricks, Diana Singh, Benjamin Hampton, and Isaac Adams.

What is it about?

Harley (Arielle Holmes) is an addict, living in the streets of New York with her volatile boyfriend, Ilya (Caleb Landry Jones). After a gesture of commitment to him that doubles as a suicide attempt, she ends up in the psychiatric ward. When she is released, she connects with Mike (Buddy Duress) and Diana (Diana Singh), who encourage her love of substances, and Harley continues her journey into what comes next, and reconciles her feelings for Ilya.

Why is it worth seeing?

Notable for the film’s genesis, the Safdie brother directors met Arielle Holmes in New York City, and impressed by her presence and story, encouraged her to write about her life’s experiences. Composed mainly in Apple retail stores, Mad Love in New York City, is Holmes’ memoir about living on the streets of New York, in a toxic relationship with fellow addict Ilya. Her organic and raw story make for an ideal fit for the Safdies, themselves fast approaching the stature of Woody Allen and Noah Baumbach as cinematic statesmen of New York- with the unique Safdies representing the more desperate and far flung corners of the city.


Armed with material that jives with the energetic passion of the stuff addictions are made of, the Safdies focus in- way in, on their actors’ faces, their bodies, their dirty fingernails, the camera at times frantic with motion. There’s even a scene where a pair of characters tumble together, a decent metaphor- the characters mesh into one another, and just can’t untangle as they roll steadily downhill together. The result is an energy that propels through the homegrown material, from the daily scams to a desperate hit with fast friends, and back to scamming again. There’s little glamorization of drug culture, and the grueling world of unpaid debts, broken promises, betrayal, and the sweet temptation of perpetual numbness intrudes throughout.

The plot’s rocky addiction themes, of lives filled with plans that always funnel into a result of scoring, are aided by composer’s Paul Grimstad and Ariel Pink’s score, creating a horrifically un-organic unease. It matches well with some of the ravishingly unnatural lighting by cinematographer Sean Price Williams, depicting a world rich in ecstatic desire that can never be satisfied- that is until the drab reality of daylight intrudes the next day. Holmes herself is a revelation, portraying an appetite that cannot be suppressed until it is annihilated.
Viewers will be impressed by the attention to raw detail, and turned off by those very details- the hallmark of an involving addictions film.

Rating:

4/5

Trailer: Click Here.