To The Stars (2019): Written by
Shannon Bradley-Colleary, directed by Martha Stephens. Starring:
Kara Hayward, Liana Liberato, Malin Akerman, Shea Whigham, Jordana
Spiro, Adelaide Clemens, and Tony Hale. Running Time: 109
minutes.
Rating: 2.5/4
It's tempting, on occasion, to give a
pass to narrative flaws in a film that tackles heavy, sensitive, or
even traumatic real-world issues. To say that, well, these things
really do happen, so by presenting them unvarnished, the movie does
the world a service regardless of other factors involved like the
quality of the script, casting, or production choices. I can
certainly understand the appeal of such a perspective, and I myself
do not hold back when I feel a film has an importance that elevates
it above its earthly flaws. However, simply recreating bits and
pieces of real-world cruelty and stringing them together is not
enough to tell a compelling story; if there isn't something there to
glue the disparate parts together, people just aren't going to want
to return to the well.
To The Stars is the fourth
directed film by Martha Stephens, based on an original screenplay by
Shannon Bradley-Colleary. Filmed in crisp black-and-white, it
follows the dreary, torment-filled high school life of Iris
Deerborne. She doesn't fit in with the “cool crowd” at school,
and there's no respite for her at home; her parents don't live
together so much as they co-exist under a mutually agreed cease-fire.
All that starts to change with the arrival of Maggie, a tough,
brash-talking “city girl” who first appears literally out of the
blue to save Iris from a fresh round of bullying from some of the
football boys.
Clearly, there's something different
about Maggie, and she starts to draw Iris out of herself in a way no
one else has before. They skip school, get makeovers, and each in
their own ways start to push back against the rather stifling social
conformity that fills the town around them. Kara Hayward and Liana
Liberato are aggressively compelling in the lead roles, with a
genuine chemistry that elevates all their scenes together. The film
would truly fall apart without them. Hayward in particular seems to
be on a remarkable trajectory; her first role was that of Suzie in
Wes Anderson's masterpiece, Moonrise Kingdom,
a fact that I am ashamed to say I was wholly unaware of until
I checked her filmography. Not only that, I found out that she was
apparently also in Manchester By The Sea, Paterson, and
even Us. Even though those last three were only bit roles,
that is still a uniquely impressive resume for someone still not able
to legally drink; keep a sharp eye out for this one, because she is
going places.
Sadly, while I could spend many a film
enjoying the precocious exploits of Iris and Maggie, the movie around
them isn't quite on the same level. It's not bad, per say, just less
focused; once the film moves away from the regular, everyday trials
of teenage girls and more towards the general bigotry of the town,
the plot turns start to feel more and more contrived, until by the
end the charm that defined the first half has largely dissipated.
The particular form of bigotry this
movie tackles is homophobia; it's eventually revealed that the reason
Maggie and her family suddenly moved out of “the city” to a
backwater town is because of some unspoken (albeit very pointedly
implied) “scandal” that made Maggie's father (a stunningly
compelling Tony Hale) feel forced to uproot the family and resort to
the belt to cure his daughter of her “bad deeds.” His scenes are
few, and maybe it's just because I know him almost exclusively as
Buster, but boy, it is an experience to see him play an Evangelical
hardliner. He even has a line about drinking juice, for Christ's
sake.
Ultimately, though, the particular
beats to how the homophobia plays out and affects the various
characters simply feels less like an organic development of the
story, and more like outside artifice forced in just to create
tension. I found this especially frustrating because, well, high
school sucks regardless of sexual orientation. There was already
plenty of tension inherent in the interactions between the teenage
characters from the start, when latent sexuality was just being
hinted at. There was way more effective drama to be mined here that
goes untapped in favor of far more rote narrative beats. The best
scene in the entire movie is a heartbreaking nighttime conversation
between Maggie and Iris that, sadly, is not built upon afterwards.
I wish I didn't feel as critical of
this film as I do. It's heart is in the right place, and the casting
and cinematography are excellent. The holes are impossible to miss,
but it is worth seeing, if for no other reason than to say you were
on board from the beginning when Kara Hayward wins her third Oscar.
-Noah Franc
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