In classical Hollywood cinema, most movies rush forward, like a river or roller coaster, along a steady course toward a certain objective. Not so Trey Edward Shults’ brilliant, audacious third feat…
,” whose enigmatic title suggests how its visionary young writer-director sets out to challenge our ideas of how and why things happen in life.
These telling glimpses don’t necessarily advance a clear narrative, but serve to deliver the small, perceptive truths that convince us the characters’ lives carry on in the gaps between all those high-impact jump cuts. With every scene of “Waves,” Shults takes the substance of life and elevates it, surging from one supercharged moment to the next, much as such form-bending filmmakers as Terrence Malick, Alejandro G. Iñárritu and Claire Denis do in their own respective ways.
Midway through “Waves,” Shults elbows Tyler aside to refocus on his sister — a shift as radical as what follows the shower scene in “Psycho,” and for which he was inspired by the bifurcated structure of Wong Kar-wai’s “Chungking Express.” Emily’s dreams aren’t nearly so conventional. “I want us to be a family again,” she writes at one point, before thinking twice, and deleting that text message.
On the surface, Harrison embodies a character not unlike the star high school athlete he tackled in “Luce” earlier this year, but for that film to work, he was obliged to keep things ambiguous, whereas Shults encourages him to explore Tyler’s turmoil. “We are not afforded the luxury of being average,” Ronald tells him, as Brown channels the high-pressure black father, hyper-present in his son’s life, but withholding of the affection a child also needs.
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