Waves (2019)
SHOULD I SEE IT?
YES
A sobering, jaw-dropping essay on teenage life that seems exaggerated and outlandish, until you realize everything writer/director Trey Edward Shults is putting before you reflects a culture teenagers are largely swimming in nowadays.
The performances are all fantastic and Shults has a powerful way of keeping everyone’s emotions right in the palm of his hand.
Attempts to tackle many issues present with today’s youth, not the least of which is toxic masculinity. That the film evolves into something more akin to two movies-in-one, adds unexpected layers to the messages being presented and explored.
NO
As it deals with a fair amount of extremes in both behavior and emotions, Waves might be dismissed as overwrought and melodramatic by those resistant to its twists and turns.
Some have taken issue with the film’s subject matter, dubbing it as another example of an uptick in “Black Misery” cinema.
No getting around it: This is heavy stuff. Be ready.
OUR REVIEW
The third feature length film from writer/director Trey Edward Shults, Waves, is almost proudly and defiantly messy and hard to categorize. Not quite a “teenage drama,” though it squarely deals with teenage life. Not quite a “domestic drama,” though it locks its eyes on a family in crisis. Waves is its own unique entity - opening with what we think is the main focus of our film: The increasingly complicated life unfolding before high school senior Tyler (Kelvin Harrison, Jr.).
A star on the high school wrestling team, he is on the cusp of landing collegiate scholarships, while also navigating the burdensome college application process. He has a girlfriend, Alexis (Alexa Demie), and for about the last two years, they have been inseparable. Tyler lives a carefree, relatively happy life when with her and/or his friends, and is kind to his stepmother Catharine (Renée Elise Goldsberry). His father, on the other hand, a tenacious and intense bulldog of a man, Ronald (Sterling K. Brown) is kept at arms-length. Unless they are working out and training for hours on end in a makeshift home gym.
His sister, Emily (Taylor Russell), is starting to come out of her shell more, as she moves through her junior of high school. We will revisit Emily in a moment, but soon enough the first set of Waves will begin to crash down on Tyler, in a series of escalating and problematic events.
Spoilers cheapen a world we hope is dystopia, but feels frighteningly authentic and real. At times, the techniques used by Shults with lighting, cinematography, and deploying a powerful score by Oscar winners Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (The Social Network) keep us off-kilter. In other moments, we hang on every interaction and exchange and can relate to what’s happening on any number of levels.
A staggering dichotomy exists between Tyler’s home life and personal life. When his wrestling dreams are put at risk, and things get complicated with Alexis, everything begins to unravel and fast.
To counterbalance a life he can seemingly no longer control, Tyler begins acting erratically - discordant from the young man we have spent time getting to know. What fuels this behavior? Is he a product of his environment? Are other outside sources playing a role? Is everything happening as we believe them to be?
Shults ratchets up intensity, scene by scene. The closest comparison I can make in watching the stunning first half of Waves is like watching a car crash happen in front of you in slow motion, but somehow feeling like it occurred in real time.
Shults shifts his film from what feels like something of a denouement and sets his camera upon Emily. She will soon cross paths with Luke (Lucas Hedges), a gentle, kind, if not somewhat awkward and nervous teammate of Tyler’s on the wrestling team.
This shift of pace is jarring, but the reset is important in how the film’s narrative structure can depict another teenager’s experience so vividly.
Waves is a rather bold, audacious experience. We see two siblings who could not be more different, ultimately seeking the same things in life. Love, acceptance, the security of knowing that through everything they face and experience, they are going to be okay. Vulnerability is not to be hidden, but strength is found by having the courage to stand up for your convictions.
These thoughts and emotions are handled by one of the finest ensemble casts of the year.
Brown, an Emmy winner for his work on television’s “This Is Us,” is the personification of edgy and unpredictable, balancing conflicting emotions, a “Tiger-Dad” style of parenting, and a shocking immaturity in realizing how anything he says or does could be perceived as anything other than acting from a place of love.
Harrison restrains himself just enough as Tyler to lull us in and then send us on a frightening ride through his emotional temperament. Hedges is wonderful, showing that being tough and responsible, loving and caring, need not come at the cost of anyone’s happiness. His chemistry with Russell generates some of the finest moments in the film.
The breakout performance here is that of Taylor Russell. As Shults takes the baton from Tyler to Emily, Russell is riveting and begins owning her reaction to everything occurring in and around her life. She comes of age in a way that gives us hope that perhaps there is a way out for kids faced with so much flying past them and at them.
In many, many ways, Waves is a film I will be thinking about and reflecting on for a long time to come.
However…in its totality…
Waves is almost too much of a film. At 136 minutes, the melodramatic flourishes which emerge start to feel punishing and monotonous. Shults’ struggles seem to emanate from his wanting to say everything about these characters. And so…we have a fair number of subplots dart in and out, some of which meander and lack the emotional, direct punch he hits so effectively with Tyler and Emily’s personal stories.
By the end, a little less of these Waves would truly make this one of 2019’s finest films. If Shults can simply find a way to hold just a little more to the vest, and not give everything to his audience, he has the potential to grow into one of our finest directors for a long time to come.
CAST & CREW
Starring: Kelvin Harrison, Jr. Sterling K. Brown, Taylor Russell, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Alexa Demie, Lucas Hedges, Clifton Collins, Jr., Neal Huff, Harmony Korine, Bill Wise.
Director: Trey Edward Shults
Written by: Trey Edward Shults
Release Date: November 15, 2019
A24