Lucy in the Sky
LUCY IN THE SKY © 2019 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation.
Noah Hawley's Lucy In The Sky is a drastically missed opportunity to explore the limitations and politically tactile ignorance and failure on mental health throughout the United States. The subtext on mental fatigue and institutionalised misogyny is undeniably the film’s most substantial aspect, solidified with a strong performance from Academy Award winner Natalie Portman.
The film boils itself over tenfold in an uninteresting and pedantic narrative, completely missing the mark on its message and thus drowning in excessive nature of avant-garde filmmaking rather than the straightforward statement it wants to convey. There is never a conversation on the lack of care or mental stability in the workforce and Hawley's film barely scratches the surface on the far greater questions it could raise. Instead, his feature falls foul to a film that covers such plain and messy ground.
There is so much going on here, both on and under the surface, but Hawley's film soon turns into a tonally obtuse and aesthetically appalling feature within the film’s first act. The first blunt and dense elements are the on-the-nose visual cues and aesthetics that utilise a multitude of aspect ratios to convey Portman's characters mental state. On first glance, it might work but throughout, it becomes jarring and a facade of the original provocation. Ultimately, this takes away the central core of what the technique is trying to communicate only to highlight the visual style itself.
LUCY IN THE SKY © 2019 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation.
This is Hawley and cinematographer Polly Morgan not only stepping over the line of self-indulgence but falling headfirst in a heap of self-congratulatory glory. The film has an adequate colour palette throughout with a steady warmth but its the same decision throughout — even with the contextual mental demise of its central character — implying such an element is accidental and not conscious. There are some intelligent techniques utilised to craft a discombobulated time frame of Portman's character’s life, specifically a traumatising hospital scene, but even then it is executed with a heavy hand of in-your-face implication.
Much of the films core themes are ham-fisted or underwhelming. Isolation, depression, mental fatigue are all elements that surround the film but writer Brian C Brown and Elliott DiGuiseppi dive in without a firm ground, often feeling hollow and lacking impact. The tonal imbalance, for one, is a jarring rollercoaster to witness. In one minute, the film takes you amid a haunting journey before it undercuts such momentum with strange decisions of both humour and romance that is not widely explored. In the same breath, the film struggles with genre. In one flash it wants to be a character study of discipline and psychological torment while the other is a rousing, existential thriller. The two are in combat throughout for dominance and the result is never one clear winner, but nevertheless drowns the film in indecisiveness.
Lucy In The Sky is a film that is solely saved by the talent and performance of Portman. Succeding in a tremendous, emotionally engulfing role with weight, depth and dynamic, organic layers of a multidimensional character. Portman brings a beautiful charisma and authenticism to a character that slowly but surely loses her grip on the reality surrounding her with a profound gravitas. Without Portman's outstanding talent, Noah Hawley's directorial debut befalls a cruel fate of avant-garde absurdity. Lucy In The Sky is a film that tries to echo the existential embodiment of a Terrence Mallick feature and the visual prowess of a Wachowski venture; somewhere, the two films can be melded into a masterpiece but the talent of Hawley is not quite up to scratch for the intentions it tries so hard to convey.
Lucy in the Sky is released December 6th 2019
