Waves (2019): Portrait of a Family in Crisis
Courtesy of A24
By Nick Sansone
This review contains minor spoilers
Watching an unrestrained, unapologetic passion project from a great filmmaker early in their career always gets me excited. There is something beautiful and cathartic about seeing a talented young filmmaker throw everything they have stylistically and emotionally into a film, all while telling a personal story that earns every emotion elicited from the viewer. Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia (1999), Alfonso Cuarón’s Y Tu Mamá También (2001), and Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (1989) are all prime examples of this, and they are all films I can watch whenever I want to renew my faith in cinema.
Enter writer-slash-director Trey Edward Shults and his third feature film Waves (2019). With his first two features, Krisha (2016) and It Comes at Night (2017), Shults had proven himself to be a gifted young filmmaker to watch, as well as a master of depicting different types of damaged families on film. But with Waves, he has undoubtedly created the best and most stunning film of his nascent career, a beautifully unrestrained passion project that manages to be visually and sonically stunning, powerfully acted and directed, profoundly heartbreaking, and yet still somehow hopeful. This is one of the best films of the last several years.
Courtesy of A24
When the film opens, we find ourselves in the presence of a young man named Tyler Williams (Kelvin Harrison, Jr.), who is a senior in high school and a star on his school’s wrestling team. He has solid, loving relationships with his girlfriend, Alexis (Alexa Demie), and his stepmother, Catherine (Renée Elise Goldsberry), but is constantly pushed by his father, Ronald (Sterling K. Brown), to be successful in life and rise above the expectations that come with being a black man in America, which weighs heavily on Tyler. But for the most part, everything seems to be going great for Tyler, until one day when he goes to the doctor after school, and learns that he has a level 5 (out of 5) SLAP tear and runs the risk of permanent damage to his shoulder if he doesn’t stop wrestling and undergo surgery.
Shaken up and in denial about this, Tyler refuses to have surgery, keeps the injury a secret from his parents, and begins popping painkillers to numb the pain. Soon enough, Tyler is thrown hard onto his shoulder during a match, causing irreversible damage and essentially ending his wrestling career. Shortly after, Tyler learns that his girlfriend is pregnant, and the way he reacts to this situation is a textbook example of how you shouldn’t react to it. She decides to keep the baby, then breaks up with him over text, which is the final straw that causes Tyler’s world to come crashing down. Soon enough, a tragedy strikes that changes Tyler and his family forever.
In the midst of all of this is Tyler’s younger sister Emily (Taylor Russell), who essentially becomes the protagonist in this film’s second half, having to deal with the fallout of the tragedy while trying to navigate a budding romance with a fellow student (Lucas Hedges) and forge her own identity as a young woman. While this shift in both protagonist and tone could have been jarring and off-putting in a lesser film, the effect it has here is both devastating and beautiful, and the film really becomes an exploration of the ripple effect that tragedy has beyond the clear victims of it, and the struggle of forging your own identity when you’ve lived in someone else’s shadow for a long time.
Courtesy of A24
Waves deserves its place in the canon of great cinematic passion projects, and watching it reminded me in more ways than one of the first time I watched Magnolia. Both are similarly operatic and emotional and thrillingly unrestrained, utilizing impactful visual flourishes, a killer soundtrack, and heavy emotion that never feels off-key. And while time will ultimately decide whether Waves reaches all-time status as Magnolia has (for me, at least), it is still a remarkable achievement by one of the most exciting young filmmakers working, and one that deserves to be dissected and analyzed for years to come.
Starting with the visual flourishes that open the movie and immediately set the tone for what’s to come, this is easily one of the most visually dynamic and breathtaking films of the last year. For example, the film’s opening scene, which takes place in a car and establishes Tyler’s relationship with his girlfriend, is filmed with a 360-degree spinning camera, which is a stylistic choice that would normally annoy me because of its inherently showy nature. However, in this case it worked tremendously because it helped to capture the joyous, dizzying high that comes with being young and in love that so many movies try and fail to truly illustrate (this stylistic choice is repeated in a parallel scene in the back half of the film, also to great effect).
In addition to the spinning and ever-flowing camera, Shults uses changing aspect ratios and color palettes to powerful effect. This is particularly notable when Tyler’s world comes crashing down on him and the aspect ratio gets smaller and the color palette gets darker. Executed wrongly, these choices could have come off as pretentious, but instead they add to the almost-unbearable sense of dread and allow you to feel as if you’re in the headspace of this character being pushed to an irreversible breaking point.
This film’s soundscape is impeccable, starting with the score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. It’s up there with their Oscar-winning Social Network (2010) score in terms of how it raises the tension while also pushing the medium of film composing forward in exciting and distinctly modern ways. The pulsating nature of their score works brilliantly in concert with the film’s outstanding soundtrack, one of the best of the last decade and one that likely will be looked at years from now as a perfect musical time capsule of the late 2010s. At times the film’s use of music is so perfect that it almost feels like a musical, particularly in one scene when a drug-fueled Tyler is driving on the highway after standing up to his father while Kanye West’s “I Am a God” throbs on the soundtrack. It’s a pitch-perfect needle-drop.
Courtesy of A24
While all of this film’s technical merits and style are certainly worth talking about in terms of the cumulative power that the film has, what really makes this a masterpiece is how it is all grounded in a deeply emotional human story about love and forgiveness and the importance of family. Every choice in Shults’ screenplay is carefully considered and brilliantly executed, down to how the film’s diptych structure and tone can be seen as resembling a wave, in how the film slowly builds up, crashes, and then comes back down to a peaceful calm. And while there are certainly shades of Terrence Malick’s influence in this film (Shults himself said he would program The Tree of Life (2011) as a double feature with this), Shults never lets the lyrical nature of the film detract from the story and characters at its center, and the film is so much better for it.
All of the main characters are wonderfully drawn and three-dimensional and are each allowed some great moments that pack an emotional punch (a scene late in the film with Emily and her father is particularly heartbreaking). And while any sort of miscasting could have easily sunk this movie into grating melodrama, Shults happened to land himself one of most terrific ensemble casts in recent memory to bring these characters to life.
Kelvin Harrison, Jr. (who had an incredible 2019 with this film and Luce (2019) ) has the showiest role as Tyler, and he is outstanding, managing to be simultaneously electric and tragic, oftentimes in the same scene. Sterling K. Brown is equally magnificent, throwing his heart and soul into a role that could have easily been the cliché “hard-ass father” character we’ve seen in so many other family dramas. But the film’s true emotional center is Taylor Russell, who gives a breakthrough performance as Emily, one that is so quiet and natural I sometimes forgot I was even watching a performance. It’s a true masterclass in understated acting, one that made me wish the Academy would have considered her for a Best Supporting Actress nomination, and one that makes me incredibly excited to see what she does next.
I understand that this movie is not for everyone. If you are not a fan of heavy, emotional films that deal with pain and tragedy and suffering, you likely will not enjoy this film. There are parts that are almost guaranteed to make you squirm and tense up and, yes, even cry, but what ultimately makes the experience worth it is the underlying messages about love and forgiveness and the importance of family. Those who are willing to take a chance will discover a deeply moving, remarkable film that struck me as an embodiment of my favorite Roger Ebert quote: “The movies are like a machine that generates empathy.” It is currently available to rent on all streaming services (and on DVD/Blu-ray), and I cannot recommend it highly enough.
Nick Sansone is a writer and aspiring filmmaker from Chicago. A recent summa cum laude graduate of DePaul University’s School of Cinematic Arts, he continues to study film independently and has appeared on different radio programs in the Chicagoland area to discuss contemporary cinema and the Academy Awards. Outside of film, he enjoys going to Bruce Springsteen concerts, attending experimental theatre in Chicago, and spending way too much time on Wikipedia.