Christy (Directed by Brendan Canty)
Here’s a movie that you have seen many times before; a working class drama set in Ireland or England. I went in expecting another fine slice of this storytelling. To be frank, something about me, I want to see every one of these movies when they come out. So I was pleasantly surprised to see that it surpassed my expectations.
Christy (NOT the boxing biopic with Sydney Sweeney), directed by Brendan Canty (NOT the drummer from Fugazi) follows an Irish teenager living in County Cork trying to break out of his station in life, in search of something better. We meet the titular protagonist (played by Danny Power) in medias res, after a bad fight gets him kicked out of his foster home. His half-brother, essentially his only known blood family, has to take him in. The thing is, he is on the cusp of his 18th birthday, which means he will have aged out of the system. He finds himself in an awkward time gap, where a big unexpected change in routine could be very bad for someone like Christy.
Many of the familiar beats are followed. Christy tries to make good and live a straight life that won’t get him in any trouble. He tries to avoid the “wrong type of people.” Yet he walks around like someone who thinks that he’s already lost. His flattened affect and eyes trained to the ground show a guy who has no real hope for the future. With that type of outlook, the negative voices have a much stronger sway.
I love movies about unexpected friendships. Christy is suddenly in the midst of family he doesn’t know very well. Cousins, aunts and uncles, all the people he never got to know since his time in the foster system took him away. Is this another chance to have a childhood, albeit heavily compacted? Or is this just going to be another sad episode? He falls in with a group of young misfits, a bit younger than him in age, who are some type of awkwardly-funny-yet-sincere-rap collective (as with Kneecap, it seems that rap music is seriously big in Ireland right now). But is it enough to keep him away from trouble?
Christy is one of those movies that believes that people are fundamentally good. All they need is to be given a chance, and they can rise to the occasion. I loved it.
It Ends (Directed by Alexander Ullom)
Four friends are in the midst of one of the biggest life transitions there is: graduating from college. One night they head out on a drive. Suddenly they find themselves on a two lane forest road. There are no turns. They arrive at a dead end but there’s no dead end on the map. Did they miss something way back? What the hell is going on, and why can’t they seem to ever get anywhere? Oh, and what kind of crazy stuff is going on in the woods?
It Ends is one of those high-concept/low budget science fiction movies like Coherence or Upstream Color that are so fun to watch. Movies that are about humans and emotions, that use their limitations as strengths. As a sort of Gen Z mashup of a Twilight Zone episode and 28 Days Later, it is smart sci-fi as an allegory for something real and poignant.
The end of college feels kind of like walking off a cliff. I love that It Ends also has a murky beginning. As a viewer, unless I missed something, there wasn’t a big pronouncement about where they were going or how they ended up on this road. Suddenly, it’s just four friends in a car, thrust together by fate at that very moment in time. When does adulthood begin? Life isn’t a movie so it can be hard to know. One day you look back and wonder, where did this all start? How did I get on this road in the first place? And where is this road leading me?
Gone are the traditional markers of school, the structure provided to you in childhood, adolescence and later adolescence. Of course there are markers such as home ownership, marriage, children, your career, but these are markers that are increasingly thought of as impractical or unattainable for young people. This is clearly a movie made by Gen Z for Gen Z. Why is it that it seems like more options are available than ever before, but the scope of reality is so limited?
Their whole world is limited to the inside of this jeep, plus whatever kind of respite they can find in their brief forays into nature. The storytelling economy is used with great care, and the four actors have great hangout chemistry (Phinehas Yoon, Akira Jackson, Noah Toth & Mitchell Cole), with plenty of laughs to be had despite the dire situation. I loved how It Ends seems to land upon one of the harder truths about growing up; there’s no pause button, and there’s no going back. Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.
The Testament Of Ann Lee (Directed by Mona Fastvold)
I thought I might write about the amazing Sentimental Value for my third pick. Yet I had high expectations, and the latest from Joachim Trier matched them. Kind of like going out for a delicious steak dinner, and it tastes as good as you had hoped … but with no surprises. And surprises are often what make first time watches so memorable.
“Musicals” are touch & go for me, so I was curious to see how I would react going into The Testament Of Ann Lee. Ann Lee (played by an always great Amanda Seyfried) was the leader of the shakers, a slightly culty sect of English Quakers who made a name for themselves by appointing a woman (the titular protagonist) as their messiah. Theirs was also a religion based in movement and song, “shaking.” So yes, this is a musical of sorts. During the music and dance sequences, there were many points where I thought I was watching the best movie I had seen in years. Composed by Daniel Blumberg, who won a composing Oscar for last year’s The Brutalist, the melodies have the haunting feelings of old English folk, but powercharged through the excitement of the most blissful church service you’ve ever been to. While the rest of the film can’t quite keep up, the occasional narrative lulls only serve to highlight the ecstacy of the musical sequences.
Fleeing persecution in England and seeking freedom in America, the shakers land in New York in a turbulent time in the country’s history- the 1770s, when it was not yet a country at all. One particular moment towards the end caught my attention, as it is a moment that significantly reflects some of our troubled discourse today, and it re-framed the film in a big way for me. When systems of hierarchy are threatened, those systems will dehumanize and react violently in order to maintain the status quo.
Much like The Brutalist, which was co-written by director Mona Fastvold (along with her partner Brady Corbet, who co-wrote this and directed The Brutalist), this artistic team finds a story in immigrants who come to America to build their creative vision of a better life. They find themselves stopped at many turns by a country that says it wants newcomers, but then outcast by a power structure once they have served their purpose. In both films, dreamers come to contend with the reality that America is not as free as it was sold to be. In this sense, it would make an unexpectedly great double feature with this year’s Sinners.
