All we have is now

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's Top 50 Movies of 2020...

#40 : Waves

Formally ambitious drama about an African American high-school sports star whose life goes into meltdown, with a parallel narrative involving his sister. One-time Terrence Malick intern Trey Edward Shults directs.

So we move from a "nicely observed US indie" to a "formally ambitious drama" - and who doesn't love one of them, eh?  Well, often I find that I don't - I've only watched one Terence Malick film (The Thin Red Line) and although it was breath-takingly beautiful, it was also quite astonishingly dull (and nearly 3 hours long).  So I approached this film (which I'd not heard anything about) with a fair degree of caution.

And the first 5 minutes certainly suggest we're going to be in for a very beautiful looking film - although I did have concerns it was going to be very worthy but not particularly interesting.  We get to meet the family and it's made very clear that the dad is going to be hard work.  And the son has it all going for him - physically fit, beautiful girlfriend and gifted at sports and the piano.  So obviously that's not going to last...

...and, oh boy, it doesn't.  Which is kinda expected, but it just drops it out of nowhere - I mean, I guess life is like that but it seems like an odd choice in the context of the film.  However, the choices the film makes afterwards just ramp up the sense of dread in a way that I didn't like - it's almost like a psychological horror film and to be honest this wasn't what I signed up for.  It's well done, but at times not in the slightest bit enjoyable and I had to take a break from the film at several points to recover emotionally!  And yes, I realise that in lots of ways this is a credit to everyone involved - but I'm afraid it was just all a bit of an ordeal for me.  His sister's story is less of a strain, but I'm such a sensitive flower that I spent most of it worrying that something bad was going to happen to her (no spoilers here as to whether it does though!)

A lot of the time this film feels like it wants to be Moonlight and it approaches it in places but, for me, it's not quite there in terms of the quality of the story, acting or dialogue - although I'd say the acting is mostly perfectably serviceable, it's just not up there with Moonlight.  Also, for large periods of the film you just aren't able to empathise with the characters in the same way (or any way, in fact) - yes, things were going badly for the lad, but I didn't really care if he got through it because he was being such a brat for so much of it.  I did stay with the film 'til the end but I very much doubt I would have done so if it wasn't for its presence on this list - I'm also not entirely sure I understood what it was trying to say (but didn't overly care either)

The cinematography is impressive with dizzying camera work - literally so at times with the director being very keen on chasing people or rotating around them.  It's generally well done though and some of the shots are dazzlingly beautiful and there's some very clever use of light, but the overly stylish nature of it does get a little tiresome at times.

And finally, 144 minutes is just too damn long - especially given how some of the scenes are so drawn out, which means that actually remarkably little happens for long periods of time.  And then there are also very short periods of time where an incredible amount happens, which seemed to be an jarring choice to me - I think "uneven" would be the word that I'd apply to the pacing.

I would definitely agree with The Guardian that this is an ambitious film - however, I wouldn't agree with them that it's a good film.  Many aspects are admirable but, for me, the execution often doesn't meet the ambition - I also really didn't enjoy most of the story or the characters which, for me, was a bit of an issue.  It's not that I have to enjoy a film to appreciate it, but there wasn't enough here that I cared about to engage me.  Sorry, formally ambitious dude!

At the time of writing, Waves is available to watch on Sky Movies if you have that, or is available to rent on various other services if you want to spend money on it.  But I wouldn't recommend it personally. 

#41 - Yeah, I liked this one!
#39 - Watching films so you don't have to