Film Review: Lucy in the Sky
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How does one quantify a movie that’s both completely easy to understand but also frustratingly opaque? If you, dear reader, are able to figure that out please send some help my way as I have just come home from seeing Lucy in the Sky and am struggling with this very conundrum. There’s much to admire about the movie and the ensemble is enough to carry you where you need to go, I’m just not sure I understand where that is exactly.
Lucy in the Sky tells the story of Lucy Cola (Natalie Portman), an astronaut who seems to have a pretty well made life. She’s got a loving husband (Dan Stevens), her grandmother (Ellen Burstyn) is still a pistol, and she’s been taking care of her niece. However, something feels off and Lucy struggles to deal with returning home to her smaller life after experiencing the thrill of being in space. She begins seeking out ways to gain that back while preparing for a potential new mission, leading her into the arms of Mark Goodwin (Jon Hamm). What starts as just an illict affair becomes an obsession and Lucy begins to spiral in more ways than one.
I have just written many words above, and while the movie is interesting, it does ultimately boil down to a woman going crazy with the help of a man spurning her advances. Though when the man driving a woman crazy is in the form of Jon Hamm, you completely understand. Described by one character as “an action figure who likes to go fast”, you have an understanding of just the kind of man his character is just from the way he walks into a room. Fairly soon into his introduction, the audience is informed that he’s a divorced father of two and likes to go bowling with coworkers over drinks. It’s a ruse though, this is exactly the type of dude your parents would warn you about and the longer the film goes on, the more Hamm leans into the character’s humanity and magnetism, becoming the sun that both Lucy and the audience feel a gravitational pull towards. He does impressive work really straddling the line of being in service of the narrative and creating a fully realized character.
Also, bringing the heat acting wise are Dan Stevens and Ellen Burstyn, kind of the angel and devil on the shoulders of Lucy. Both characters ground Lucy in her past and present, but their approaches to life actually help spin Lucy into the future.
All of these actors are in the orbit of Natalie Portman, who is in total control of her gifts as an actor here. We’ve come to expect incredible intensity from Natalie and she is definitely intense here. This movie will bring to mind happy thoughts from her Oscar winning turn in Black Swan, but this is kind of another step up. Whereas Nina Sayers is a young woman who becomes overcome, Lucy is a grown woman, fully capable even as she’s making a downward spiral.
However, it’s in the downward spiral that the movie begins to lose it’s steam. Noah Hawley is a gifted storyteller, but sometimes being too technical and too obfuscatory can hurt a narrative. His choice to continuously shift the aspect ratios puts too much emphasis on the frame rather than what’s happening in them. Were it not for such strong central performances, you might get lost. But more than that, these beguiling visual choices bely what is a pretty straight forward narrative with an ultimately disappointing ending. It’s like the movie wants to make you work harder to be in the mindset of Lucy, but the movie can’t find many ways to make the audience work smarter. Overall, Lucy in the Sky is a film that never really takes off outside of the performances.
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