The Sky is Everywhere
apple tv+Throughout her career, filmmaker Josephine Decker has constantly toyed with the conventions of narrative and storytelling, resulting in final features that feel unlike anything seen before. Capturing powerful and poignant emotion through an artistic and inspired lens might not be anything new for the cinematic medium, but Decker has crafted a unique humanity to her characters that often highlight an unspoken force in the lived experience of women specifically. In this endeavor, Decker has walked a dangerous tightrope of finding a lens that is too alienating and foreign for her intended audience. While she has ultimately found success in finding this balance, there always runs of the risk of her going a bit too far which ultimately is the case in her Apple TV+ debut, The Sky Is Everywhere.
Ambitious as always, The Sky Is Everywhere sees Decker blend her style of filmmaking with a screenplay from Jandy Nelson to try and bring to life the often hidden emotions of both grief and adolescence. Both of these forces control the life of teenager Lennie (Grace Kaufman) who is just starting to process the emotions she feels in regards to the tragic sudden passing of her sister. Without her main role model and support system, Lennie is left wandering, unsure about her place in the world and the emotions she carries. This is only amplified as Lennie is dealing with a further explosion of new feelings and desires in adolescence and the somewhat complex social dynamics that can form from them. As Lennie tries to find a balance to keep both herself and those around her happy, she begins to self-destruct and desperately is searching for guidance and answers.
On paper, this is an obviously ambitious lens due to the enigmatic root of these emotions and a warring ideal between the film being universal and incredibly specific. Half of Lennie's struggles are something everyone grows up dealing with while the other half of her journey is an incredible niche experience for a teenager to go through. To create a story for mass audiences with this warring sense of relatability is a dangerous game, yet for the most part, Decker holds on strong. Especially when it comes to portraying the inward emotions of Lennie, Decker knows just how to show these indescribable emotions through editing and visual choices that feel just as odd as the emotions they are reflecting. The film doesn't have to say what is on its mind through dialogue or telling the audience, instead, it shows them with empathetic and visceral filmmaking. In this sense, it is hard to think of another working director quite perfect enough to create a film like this than Josephine Decker. This is not to say that the film is perfect.
While the overall voice of the film feels competent in relaying emotion and feeling, the actual messages being shared are far from being that interesting or worthwhile. Due to the more enigmatic nature of the emotions being expressed, it never feels as if the film is able to craft a strong thesis or purpose with the film ultimately falling into the disappointing category of achieving more style than substance. At no point does the film feel as if it is breaking new ground or leaving the audience with much to chew on which in return can cause the film to feel surprisingly hollow and empty. To make up for this, the film does add plot details like a romantic interest which gives the film something tangible to hold onto for a plot, but this feels not only cliched but separate from the ultimate soul the movie is celebrating. This is a line that Decker has walked wonderfully before in projects like Madeline’s Madeline, causing the main culprit for this to be the lack of involvement she had in the screenplay. Being a first-time screenplay from Nelson, it also feels clear that she found herself in over her head trying to tackle so many complex themes and emotions. Sometimes the simpler way is the better way, which is clearly the case with The Sky Is Everywhere. Even as the film reaches its emotional climax, the story feels underwhelming and the bite that the film hopes to have clearly isn't there.
This bite also is lacking due to an often lack of maturity found within the feature. While the film can be ambitious with its scope and touch on incredibly poignant thematics, it also carries the weight of being a drama for the teen audience. Dreamy scenes of wandering through a crush’s room or drama regarding chair order in choir feel like more distractions than anything else. None of the emotions are allowed to carry the full weight they could as it might take away from this side, yet that is also clearly what the film is most interested in. It is a mismanaged conundrum that hurts both sides and creates a film that feels on the edge of having an identity crisis.
While the style and filmmaking ability of Josephine Decker still shines strong within The Sky Is Everywhere, the film is sadly quite underwhelming. With a confusing and bland screenplay mixed with a lack of urgency and direction overall, the film itself feels like a shadow of a really great feature. The outline is present, but the details are simply missing which are needed to execute a film as ambitious and difficult as this.
