VOX LUX – Review

Review by Stephen Tronicek

Brady Corbet’s Vox Lux feels like something of an artistic confession. The film, primarily about the relation of a mentally unhealthy person (in this case an artist) to a culture that perpetuates that illness, illustrates a deep emotional understanding of its material. Celeste (Raffey Cassidy and Natalie Portman) is a young woman who is shot in a school shooting by one of her classmates (Logan Riley Bruner). Instead of this being constructively dealt with, this event soon makes a celebrity out of her, launching a career that we, in the second half of the movie, will see a day in the life of.

That’s a lot to cover in the 110 minutes, but Corbet is up to it. After starring in films directed by Michael Haneke (Funny Games) and Sean Durkin (Martha Marcy May Marlene) Corbet exploded onto the screen with a fascinating and scary piece of work, The Childhood of a Leader, a period piece dealing with similar issues of societal traumas and improper care. If anything, that film is a brutally efficient parable, one that tackles its epic themes with a startling confidence. In order to pull such a work off, one must have to be willing to exhaust every tool in one’s filmmaking arsenal and Childhood did that with ease.

The same goes for Corbet’s sophomore effort. Vox Lux goes through a number of themes, tones, and even genres in its frantic, animalistic quest to find some meaning (and even humor) in the numbing horrors of trauma itself and the brutal highs and lows of its aftermath. This is the reason why it feels so much like a confession. Paired with Childhood, Vox Lux plays like Brady Corbet staring you right in the face, giving you the finger and asking you, “Why are you letting me do this to myself?”

What makes Vox Lux interesting though is that it isn’t afraid to be critical of itself. Celeste (more so Portman’s garish troll) isn’t really a good person, just a flawed one making decisions based more on making an impression than actually having anything to say. And at times that is what Vox Lux feels like: a film that uses explicit material to make an impression…and yet that impression might just be part of the sick joke. In one of the most hypnotic scenes of the year, Celeste (Raffey Cassidy) explains to a young lover (Michael Richárdson) that her attacker listened to music that he made. They have a discussion about whether or not it was the music that made him do what he did or himself. The presentation of this discussion draws us to the main theme of the movie: That at the bottom of all of this is not the art itself, but how a sick wider culture allows that art to influence the many of us who are so scared. The joke is that the art is often too distracting, too influential to that sickness, to that fear, to actually help those in need. Brady Corbet might not hate pop music, but he knows that half of the equation is “pop.”

This manifested in my reaction to the film itself. After seeing it for the first time at the St. Louis International Film Festival, I walked away humming the main song at the center of the film, “Wrapped Up,” written and performed by Sia (who has produced some brilliant “pop anthems” for this work). It was only later that my brother pointed out to me that the lyrics to the song itself presented a twisted co-dependent view of the world. I was so wrapped up (pun intended) in the song itself that I forgot to listen to what it was telling me.

On that note, the portrayal of mental illness feels especially potent and real here.  Celeste (and therefore the film) bounces from a weeping, dazed, depressive mood to emotional highs of a startling quality. The final high, a dazzling concert that bookends the film, is immensely satisfying. So much so that you almost forget you’d spent the last 90 minutes suffering.

The actors holding up this crazy vision are almost all pitch perfect. Natalie Portman and Jude Law (who also executive produced this madness) both turn in performances that would be career makers if they weren’t already so prolific, Corbet collaborator Staci Martin finally gets to be in a good movie this year, and Raffey Cassidy (coming off of her perfect performance in Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Killing of a Sacred Deer) is shaping up to be a movie star. Much like with the best film of last year, Cassidy is saddled with incredibly difficult material but she handles it with ease, creating a realistic and terrifying portrait of a young artist.

One would be amiss to not mention the technical work as well. Not only are the songs produced perfectly for this film, the concert at the end is choreographed incredibly well. It’s the moment that we’ve been waiting for so it really has to be. Props also must be paid to the technical team of cinematographers, gaffers and camera operators who made that concert, as well as the many insane long takes that populate the film. It is a gorgeous looking movie that could only spring from a technical team as motivated as the creative one.

Vox Lux is something of a masterpiece, a film that is determined to shock you, excite you, drag you across the concrete and leave you conscious of the many factors that built Celeste. Of the factors that built us, our modern culture, and, most of all, our reactionaries. It’s a desperate cry into the void, one that you will hopefully hear.

5 out of 5

VOX LUX is currently playing in St. Louis only at The Chase Park Plaza Theater