☆☆
Vox Lux has no lack of ideas the way that Donald Trump has no lack of words. There are a lot of them. They are not coherent or productive.
To be clear, any comparisons with certain White House occupants end there, though it's the lack of articulation and the insistence that something important and profound is being said that linger as the common points.
Vox Lux addresses an almost staggering array of ideas, but writer-director Brady Corbet can never settle on any one (or two, or three, or four) it really wants to explore, though let it be said he meanders very stylishly. The movie begins in 1999 with a horrifying incidence of violence in a high school, as a trenchcoated boy shoots up a classroom and puts a bullet into the neck of Celeste Montgomery. She is played as a teenager by Raffey Cassidy, who had a major role in last year's The Killing of a Sacred Deer, and who seems in touch with her dark side.
Celeste is gravely wounded but survives, and writes a sullen and weirdly disconnected song that we are meant to believe -- through the courtesy of leaden narration by Willem Dafoe -- captures the hearts of Americans with its emotional honesty. It's a terrible song, but that is beside the point, because somehow it makes Celeste into a pop star. She also has a lot of survivor's guilt, sibling issues, religious issues and co-dependency issues, but thanks to the leering attention of a manager (Jude Law), she moves out of her dreary home in Staten Island to a dreary Los Angeles, where she's just about to shoot her first music video when, simultaneously, she gets pregnant, hears about the 9/11 terrorist attack and discovers her sister (Stacy Martin) has been sleeping with the manager ... and then the movie shifts gears and fast-forwards 16 years with no explanation.
Vox Lux is separated into sections with on-screen cards that are as pretentious as the scrolling, pointedly serifed opening titles. The sections have names like "Prelude" and "Regenesis," and the first section ("Genesis," naturally) is nowhere near as intriguing as the description makes it sounds. It's morose and plodding, and the actors are posed to look like they're in a very literary student film.
The second half perks up as Natalie Portman takes over for Cassidy, who shifts unexpectedly into the role of Celeste's daughter. And as Portman comes on screen, Celeste changes from a bland and bored quasi-celebrity to a loud, abrasive caricature whose presence would be grating except that she at least makes Vox Lux into something mildly interesting.
The movie picks up as Celeste is getting ready to open an arena-sized tour back in her hometown, and she's doing a day of publicity in a Manhattan hotel. But her mind isn't on the show or the media, it's on a terrorist attack that has just taken place in Eastern Europe, in which gunmen have opened fire on sunbathers at a beach while wearing costumes that replicate the ones Celeste wore in her first music video.
OK, let's pause for a moment: Vox Lux is, variably, about gun violence and terrorism, pop music, celebrity culture, teen sex, wealth, drug abuse (did I mention Celeste is an alcoholic and drug addict?), mothers and daughters, sibling rivalry, and the media. Yet, it's about none of these things. Even as Portman impressively blusters her way through the film's complicated long takes and some impressive monologues, even as she wears outrageous costumes and makeup, and even as she snorts cocaine and stumbles around backstage, Vox Lux ends up being about nothing at all.
It's as vacuous as one of the mindless pop songs it simultaneously worships and satirizes, and its as shallow and repetitive as the EDM-tinged music performed by Celeste -- whose success is given a last-second and totally ridiculous explanation. She's presented as an over-the-top Lady Gaga/Katy Perry-style pop star, but Vox Lux offers no insight into the creative process or into the human being behind the image.
Vox Lux imagines, I think, that it has a lot to say. The trouble is, as we've seen so often in the past couple of years, that is not the same as saying a lot of things. Volume and substance are two entirely different things.
Viewed Dec. 15, 2018 -- AMC Burbank 16
1515
To be clear, any comparisons with certain White House occupants end there, though it's the lack of articulation and the insistence that something important and profound is being said that linger as the common points.
Vox Lux addresses an almost staggering array of ideas, but writer-director Brady Corbet can never settle on any one (or two, or three, or four) it really wants to explore, though let it be said he meanders very stylishly. The movie begins in 1999 with a horrifying incidence of violence in a high school, as a trenchcoated boy shoots up a classroom and puts a bullet into the neck of Celeste Montgomery. She is played as a teenager by Raffey Cassidy, who had a major role in last year's The Killing of a Sacred Deer, and who seems in touch with her dark side.
Celeste is gravely wounded but survives, and writes a sullen and weirdly disconnected song that we are meant to believe -- through the courtesy of leaden narration by Willem Dafoe -- captures the hearts of Americans with its emotional honesty. It's a terrible song, but that is beside the point, because somehow it makes Celeste into a pop star. She also has a lot of survivor's guilt, sibling issues, religious issues and co-dependency issues, but thanks to the leering attention of a manager (Jude Law), she moves out of her dreary home in Staten Island to a dreary Los Angeles, where she's just about to shoot her first music video when, simultaneously, she gets pregnant, hears about the 9/11 terrorist attack and discovers her sister (Stacy Martin) has been sleeping with the manager ... and then the movie shifts gears and fast-forwards 16 years with no explanation.
Vox Lux is separated into sections with on-screen cards that are as pretentious as the scrolling, pointedly serifed opening titles. The sections have names like "Prelude" and "Regenesis," and the first section ("Genesis," naturally) is nowhere near as intriguing as the description makes it sounds. It's morose and plodding, and the actors are posed to look like they're in a very literary student film.
The second half perks up as Natalie Portman takes over for Cassidy, who shifts unexpectedly into the role of Celeste's daughter. And as Portman comes on screen, Celeste changes from a bland and bored quasi-celebrity to a loud, abrasive caricature whose presence would be grating except that she at least makes Vox Lux into something mildly interesting.
The movie picks up as Celeste is getting ready to open an arena-sized tour back in her hometown, and she's doing a day of publicity in a Manhattan hotel. But her mind isn't on the show or the media, it's on a terrorist attack that has just taken place in Eastern Europe, in which gunmen have opened fire on sunbathers at a beach while wearing costumes that replicate the ones Celeste wore in her first music video.
OK, let's pause for a moment: Vox Lux is, variably, about gun violence and terrorism, pop music, celebrity culture, teen sex, wealth, drug abuse (did I mention Celeste is an alcoholic and drug addict?), mothers and daughters, sibling rivalry, and the media. Yet, it's about none of these things. Even as Portman impressively blusters her way through the film's complicated long takes and some impressive monologues, even as she wears outrageous costumes and makeup, and even as she snorts cocaine and stumbles around backstage, Vox Lux ends up being about nothing at all.
It's as vacuous as one of the mindless pop songs it simultaneously worships and satirizes, and its as shallow and repetitive as the EDM-tinged music performed by Celeste -- whose success is given a last-second and totally ridiculous explanation. She's presented as an over-the-top Lady Gaga/Katy Perry-style pop star, but Vox Lux offers no insight into the creative process or into the human being behind the image.
Vox Lux imagines, I think, that it has a lot to say. The trouble is, as we've seen so often in the past couple of years, that is not the same as saying a lot of things. Volume and substance are two entirely different things.
Viewed Dec. 15, 2018 -- AMC Burbank 16
1515
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