The Sky Is Everywhere
Jandy Nelson adapts her YA novel about grief into a surreal cinematic fantasy that beggars belief.
Good grief! Grace Kaufman and Jacques Colimon float above it all.
Lennon Walker (Grace Kaufman) lives on the edge of a redwood forest in perhaps the most colourful house in the world, surrounded by the most colourful garden. She leads an enchanted life, alongside her older sister Bailey (Havana Rose Liu), her Uncle Big (Jason Segel) and her grandmother Gram (Cherry Jones). Then, “last summer I learned that the most terrible thing you can imagine can happen at any time.” Lennon is talking about how her soul mate, her best friend, her only sister, died of heart arrhythmia during a rehearsal of Romeo and Juliet. A tragedy is transformed into a tragedy. “There was no more music in me,” Lennon tells us, “not one note.”
Jandy Nelson’s 2010 YA novel of the same name has, apparently, been published in over twenty-two countries and Nelson herself wrote the screenplay to this extraordinary film. She also lands an executive producer credit and so obviously has a lot to answer for. One might call it a brave parable about grief, or a misjudged one. The problem is the tone. This is heightened naturalism, a melodrama awash with moving parts and flashes of theatrical absurdity. For one brief, shining moment it recalls Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures (1994), but then swoops back into the banal.
The Sky Is Everywhere is congested with look-at-me effects, from an over-saturated colour scheme, to a constant barrage of idiotic sound effects, with a jokey, frenzied score and a whole lot of high school clichés. As Lennon – or Lennie – Grace Kaufman struggles manfully to give the film some centre of human gravity, but is defeated by Josephine Decker’s direction. Thus, she is required to jump for joy (literally), float above the ground in ecstasy (literally) and engage in little hissy fits. And who can survive such stick-in-your-throat dialogue as “Grief is a house that blows into the air at the slightest gust.” Lennie’s Uncle is meant to be an endearing eccentric in amusing knitwear, but just comes off as ridiculous, while even the normally magnificent Cherry Jones struggles to inject a note of credibility.
Some movies just need to be put down, to be put out of their misery. This is one such puppy.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Grace Kaufman, Pico Alexander, Jacques Colimon, Cherry Jones, Jason Segel, Julia Schlaepfer, Ji-young Yoo, Havana Rose Liu, Tyler Lofton, Augie Isaac, Sol Landerman.
Dir Josephine Decker, Pro Josephine Decker, Denise Di Novi, Margaret French Isaac and Allison Rose Carter, Ex Pro Jandy Nelson, Screenplay Jandy Nelson, from her novel, Ph Ava Berkofsky, Pro Des Grace Yun, Ed Laura Zempel, Music Caroline Shaw, Costumes Christopher Peterson, Sound Martín Hernández.
A24/Di Novi Pictures/Alice the Who-Apple TV+.
103 mins. USA. 2022. UK and US Rel: 11 February 2022. Cert. PG-13.
