HOW I LEARNED TO FLY - Mark Reviews Movies

How I Learned to Fly, Film Movement

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Review by Mark Dujsik | November 30, 2023

It's a fine line between drama and melodrama, and How I Learned to Fly crosses it a few too many times to ignore. Writer/director Simon Steuri wants us to be and often allows to become invested in the lives of two brothers, who find themselves suddenly orphaned and struggling to keep afloat. The filmmaker, unfortunately, forces that intention in ways that undercut the movie's effect.

We're thrown into the lives of Daniel (Marcus Scribner), who works as a dishwasher while looking to go to college, and Eli (Lonnie Chavis), who has an unspecified intellectual or developmental disability, after the former discovers their mother has a suffered a violent death one night. Daniel keeps the fact of her death a secret from Eli, and in a move that unnecessarily and anticlimactically shifts the emotional and dramatic intentions of the story at the very end, Steuri keeps the specifics a mystery until the very last moment of the story.

For the most part, though, the story revolves around Daniel trying and failing to pay the bills, while also making certain that Eli takes care of himself to the best of his abilities. The two actors here show a real and often difficult bond, since Daniel wants to understand his younger brother and is occasionally frustrated by how little Eli is willing or able to communicate.

It doesn't help that their now-absent father (played by Cliff "Method Man" Smith) was abusive toward Eli and that both brothers see a bit of their old man in Daniel's moments of exasperation. A scene in a shower juxtaposes the father's abuse and Daniel's helping manner, and it says everything we need to know about the man and the reason Eli retreats into himself at any sign of antagonism. Clearly, Steuri understands these characters to a notable degree.

In other words, there's plenty of drama here without all of the inevitable complications and troubles that befall these two characters, but Steuri keeps them coming, regardless of that simple and more grounded setup. To be fair, most of those issues make sense, as Daniel comes up short financially to pay for utilities and rent on the house, leading to increasing insecurity and an inevitable outcome.

The movie is at its best when it serves as a slice-of-life tale about surviving under such difficult circumstances, mainly because it allows Scribner and Chavis to inhabit these characters and this relationship. Even then, Steuri can't help but fill the soundtrack with mawkish piano music and an anguished singer, putting a manipulative point on the mournful tone that's right there within the plot and the performances.

The movie often seems at battle with itself in this regard. Take a collection of supporting or ancillary characters, such as neighbor Louis (Cedric the Entertainer) and Yaya (Michele Selene Ang), who help the brothers along the way. Louis, who knows a lot more about the brothers' situation than he's willing to admit, gives Daniel the business card of a local shelter, and it's not until later, when that key piece of information about the mother's death is revealed, that we have an idea why the young man doesn't take advantage of the help.

As for Yaya, she enters the story through some brief business with a lost dog and returns to it by way of a too-convenient coincidence. She's more than happy to help, though, and, because Eli is a bit smitten with her, get the isolated teenager to open up a bit. There's a scene of the two lying in the middle of an empty street at night that does a simple but neat trick with the camera, swapping the perspective as Eli realizes that how he views himself and the world is the only thing that really matters.

One can appreciate the optimism of this outlook, as aid and comfort and sympathy are there if and when these characters need them. Consider, though, how each of those other characters eventually becomes a mouthpiece for that worldview in no uncertain terms.

Each one gets a monologue that helps Daniel and/or Eli realize something about themselves or their situation, and it's a quite a stretch when a helpful cop shows up to offer moral support and nothing else. It's a nice sentiment, as well as a scene that thankfully avoids any kind of obvious complication-making. What does the scene do, though, other than to subvert those expectations and vocalize something Daniel already knows? He has already had that scene and conversation with Eli, so the whole non-confrontation with the cop just exploits potential tension in order to manipulate us further.

Obviously, there are a lot of issues with the narrative and the movie's naïve view of the circumstances on display here. Something about the sincerity of it—even with and partly because of the movie's simplistic in its opinion that love and human connection and accepting one's circumstances in order to overcome them—almost surpasses all of that.

It greatly helps that, again, Scribner and Chavis are so committed to these roles and to exploring the depths of this fraternal bond, but as the problems for the brothers become tougher and the solutions to them become more touchy-feely, it's impossible to ignore that How I Learned to Fly is too concerned with making us feel something, instead of simply allowing us to in the face of a more realistic depiction of this story.

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