Mark Reviews Movies: HEARTS BEAT LOUD

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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 14, 2018

The father is in pain about things that have come or are about to come to an end, and he's clinging to the one thing he doesn't want to end. The daughter is worried about beginnings, because they mean that things have ended or that they will eventually end. Beginnings, endings, and how these two people react to and cope (or don't cope) with them are at the center of Hearts Beat Loud, a sweet and affecting story about a father and daughter bonding while they still have a chance.

This is the kind of film that establishes its central relationship so subtly, so naturally, and so thoroughly that those moments might seem like throwaway ones. Take the first time we see Frank (Nick Offerman) and Sam Fisher (Kiersey Clemons) interacting. She's in her room, doing some homework. He comes in to interrupt, because it's time for their routine jam session. This is a tradition that has gone on for as long as either of them can remember, we figure.

Things have changed, though. Sam has other concerns: She's in summer school, taking a pre-med class before she leaves the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn for UCLA in the fall. She'd be willing to pass up on this tradition. After all, it's not as if she's going to be making weekly trips back to New York City to play music with her dad.

Frank pushes it, but in that off-handed, jovial way that tries to disguise just how much this routine means to him. The jokes come, and they keep coming, even though Sam doesn't laugh. At one time, she must have laughed at her father's corny jokes. Why else would he keep up with them now, despite receiving no reaction?

Both of them, we gather, are defensive in this situation, and their respective defenses tell us what we need to know about this situation and this relationship. This is tough. These two people clearly were close, but over the years, as Frank became stuck in a rut of owning a flailing business and Sam seriously started considering her future, something changed. Now, they're both at a standoff, with Frank trying to hold on to whatever remains of the bond with his daughter and with Sam trying to prepare him for the inevitable moment that she'll have to say goodbye as she goes off into the wider world.

It's one scene, but it speaks volumes about the depth of, as well as the unseen changes within, this relationship that no direct words could really say. The rest of the film follows their lives, as they intertwine in a previously untapped way and move toward the inevitable in the weeks before Sam leaves for college.

Frank runs a record store, and from his first appearance, smoking a cigarette in front of a disapproving customer, it's obvious that his heart is no longer in his work. The shop, he decides, will have to close for good. With Sam preparing for school, Frank mainly commiserates with his landlady Leslie (Toni Collette) and Dave (Ted Danson), the owner of a local bar where Frank drowns out the day.

On her end, Sam starts up a romantic relationship with Rose (Sasha Lane), an artist who has no plans or finances to leave the neighborhood. It's going to end, but Sam decides to move forward with it while she can.

These other relationships—mainly the romantic ones, including Frank and Leslie's will-they-or-won't-they flirtations—take up a decent portion of director Brett Haley and Marc Basch's screenplay, but they exist primarily to further establish the main characters. Frank is far more eager and willing to start up something with Leslie, who may or may not have a boyfriend and/or isn't interested in Frank in that way. The point isn't whether or not they'll ultimately connect. It's in his desperation for something—a replacement, if you will, for the relationships that he has lost or is about to lose.

The previous loss is the death of his wife—Sam's mother—who was a singer. Sam has inherited that talent, and the plot, such as it is, follows the father and daughter as their traditional jam session becomes a recording one. The song becomes an online hit, and the two begin to write and record more songs—about change, about love, about grief, about beginnings, about endings.

There are two things the film does quite well: 1.) It actually cares about the creation of this music, and 2.) the act of creating the music is less about the songs (which are good) and more about how the music gives both of these characters a chance to see each other in a new light. While looking for Sam's birth certificate for college admissions, he stumbles across his old notebook, filled with lyrics and poems from a different time of his life—when he had love that was new, filled with promise, and unaware of the tragedy that would come. Listening to her father singing and watching him strung an acoustic guitar, Sam catches a glimpse of the man she never knew.

The various subplots—from Frank and Leslie to an offer from a record company that, thankfully, doesn't go anywhere—never reach the level of understated conflict and genuine tenderness that exists in this central relationship. They don't get in the way, either, which is a blessing (In fact, the Sam-Rose romance offers one of the film's most bittersweet moments, as Sam sings everything she's feeling to Rose). Backed by very fine performances from Offerman and Clemons, the core of Hearts Beat Loud is in those looks of sudden recognition—of a father's pain and of a daughter's potential—and the growing realization that, while change may be inevitable, it doesn't have to mean an ending.

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