Vox Lux (2018)

In Latin Vox Lux translates roughly as "voice of light", this is an ironic title. The films full title Vox Lux: A 21st Century Portrait captures things better, though one could easily substitute the word "tragedy" for  "portrait" because that is what this movie is, a tragedy in the almost Shakespearian sense, if Shakespeare were to write a play about Brittney Spears.

***Some Spoilers***

This is the story of Statin Island native Celeste Montgomery, who as a 13 year old returns to her eight grade class after the holiday break in January of 2000 and is caught in a Columbine like school shooting. To save lives Celeste begs the troubled Cullen Active to let her classmates go and she will stay with him, when Cullen asks what they will do when the others go Celeste replies that they will pray, upon hearing this Cullen opens fire. Celeste is hit in the neck but survives, weeks later she and her sister perform a song of mourning they wrote at a memorial service, this song strikes a national nerve and by September 11th of the following year she has a full album under her belt and is on course for pop stardom.

The movie then flashes forward to 2017, there is another tragedy, a shooting at a beach resort in Croatia, the terrorists dawning masks like those featured in a music video from Celeste's first album, she handles this event with far less grace. In the succeeding years Celeste has become a mess, having a child as teenager, a troubled marriage that ended in divorce, a pattern of substance abuse, at one point resulting in a serious hit and run with an innocent pedestrian. Knowing she can no longer be a fit parent her daughter goes to live with Celeste's older sister Eleanor (Stacy Martin, nicely understated) who has her own resentments, but keeps them better contained.

Celeste is no longer the sweet innocent she once was, she is in fact something of a monster, for while the school shooting did not destroy her, celebrity may have. A powerful story, so attuned to our times. Natalie Portman gives an excellent performance, expect an Oscar nod for this, she's delusional, acts out, shifts emotions rapidly, and always feels she must be performing, even to those long tired of her act. As great as Ms. Portman's work is one should defiantly keep an eye on Raffey Cassidy who plays the young Celeste, here performance is not as "big" as Natalie's, but it's subtle and in some ways more powerful. Writer/director Brady Corbet really gives us something different in this, and there's a number of little compositional and editing flourishes to the thing that I really enjoyed. Quite a movie, you'll keep thinking about it after it's over. ****