THE STORY – A family of six settles into their new home on Vancouver Island as internal dynamics are slowly revealed through the eyes of the youngest child.
THE CAST – Eylul Guven, Amy Zimmer, Iringó Réti, Adam Tompa, Edik Beddoes, Liam Serg & Preston Drabble
THE TEAM – Sophy Romvari (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 90 Minutes
It’s said, borrowing from Harper Lee, that we are free to choose our friends, but we are not given the same grace with regards to family. We are born into social circles outside of our control, related to some that make our lives richer at times, challenging at others. What choices are to be made, then, when the systems of assistance fail a family struggling with the actions of a troubled child, when self-destruction turns to potential violence, sucking the attention away from the rest of the group, a bad apple rotting the rest of the bunch These are some of the issues that lie at the heart of Sophy Romvari’s “Blue Heron,” a complex, challenging film, one that rewards the patient viewer while rarely making a misstep along the way. Superficially feeling like so many films seen before, there’s a spark of originality and keenness of perspective that makes clear that this is the work of a truly unique voice.
A cousin of sorts to her more overtly autobiographical short films such as “Still Processing” – a film about images left over from her dead brothers captured by her father that she unearthed after their passing – this film feels like a dreamlike connection between past and present, crafting something that on the one hand plays like a staged drama, and on the other as near to documentary in its precision. It’s the bipolar nature between its softly focussed, poetic style and the harsh realities of the situation that provides seemingly still moments with a bubbling presence of rage, resentment, and regret underneath.
While her previous short films have achieved significant acclaim, and even have been streamed on Criterion’s service, it’s still worth celebrating how assured this feature debut proves to be. So often the transition from short to longer form brings with it an overly precious attachment to certain elements, or using lingering shots and non-essential asides to pad out to the arbitrary length of what’s considered a “normal” sized film. It sounds like faint praise, but “Blue Heron” lasts for as long as it needs to, taking the time to allow a gentle coaxing out of its narrative, but refusing to wallow for the sake of manipulative melancholy.
The film is broadly structured into two parts, each surrounding individuals that echo but do not fully correspond with Romvari’s own past. Set on the western coast of Canada, this is a land of trees, water, and ferry rides – a bucolic setting far from the native Hungary of the parents. Seen primarily through the eyes of an eight year-old Sasha (portrayed with impressive craft by Eylul Guven), we see the joys and struggles of family life playing out through her perspective. The oldest brother Jeremy (Eddik Bedoes) dons Jeffrey Dahmer-like wire-rimmed glasses and gives off less of a precocious child air and more of that of a future serial killer who’s described by his neighbors as quiet and who kept to himself.
Of course, this is all the baggage the audience brings on the outside, feeling no obligation for patience as we watch him spiral out of control, and feeling nothing but the deepest frustration at his inability to control his outrageous behavior that’s continuously shirked off with a sardonic grin. From the perspective of the sister, this leads to confusion. For the parents, it leads to a sense of helplessness born out of deep love for their son and hope for his wellbeing to improve. For those on the outside, it’s a challenge to even witness these intimate moments of a person falling apart and far easier to cloister him off, ship the problem elsewhere, and make it someone else’s concern. It’s this tension – between the very real human desire to rid oneself of a problem and the familial responsibility to sacrifice in anyway possible for the wellbeing of your children – that makes the film both messy and powerful. When a chronological leap of a few decades takes place, switching out Windows PCs for iPhones and a Macbook Air, there’s time for an adult reflection back on the years marked by memories of childhood, a retroactive interrogation of the past, and wondering what, if anything, could have been done differently.
The older Sasha (Amy Zimmer), now a filmmaker, captures the views of social workers on the case study of her sibling, recording their reactions and seeing what, decades on, may have turned out differently. Their answers are jargon-filled and at times inane (discussing a particular intersectionality, amplified with corresponding crossed-hand gesture, would read in another context as comical), but the result is a similar feeling of helplessness in finding simple answers to this impossible situation, where a son and brother is slipping away and the mechanisms are simply not there to provide obvious answers.
From here the second part also splits further apart, as the modern iPhone placed into a bag to record discussions that take place decades before it was invented. The result is a kind of wish-fulfilling reverie, where the adult self can speak the words one never could as a child. Returning to the family home under the avatar of a social worker to discuss the circumstances of Jeremy’s behavior, the knotted tangles of all these thematic and emotional elements combine into one. It’s this complex structure that easily could have unravelled the film, making it’s peculiarities feel like a cheap ploy to add a sense of experimentation to the almost operatic drama. Yet tonally, Romvari and her collaborators skate the edge beautifully, producing a film that’s challenging but never opaque.
Regarding the time jumps, there’s one moment that musically and thematically seems to evoke, consciously or not, “2001: A Space Odyssey’s” similar struggle with keeping past from present. It’s a segment tied to the background soundtrack of an overheard children’s cartoon, and it’s either a cleverly and subtly introduced homage to a similarly convoluted look at past and present, or the type of errant connection of the addled mind of one who’s seen too many films. One can assume that the “Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles” reference is even more overt, while a watery shot resonant to Paul Thomas Anderson’s “The Master” is likely making a stretch to connect. Either way, what’s terrific is that this isn’t a film reliant upon such exegetical gymnastics to parse. For despite its seemingly scattershot mode of storytelling, there’s a clear, linear structure that gives the film an underlying rhythm as regular as a heartbeat. Best of all, one doesn’t need some decoder ring to make sense of it all.
While there are still a few moments of understandable indulgences where the timeline lingers just a bit longer than required, these are mostly quibbles. At its best, “Blue Heron” soars, creating the world of Sasha’s family in impressively precise ways and allowing the underlying questions to linger without succumbing to simplistic answers or pat moments for cathartic release. It’s a film to be watched and rewatched, an effort to be celebrated, and hopefully the start of a fruitful career for a filmmaker unafraid to shine a light on her complex past, but equally brave enough to make it not all about themselves.
