Mark Reviews Movies: VOX LUX

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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 6, 2018

Attached to the title at the end of Vox Lux is a declarative description: "A 21st Century Portrait." It is not, as one might expect, a cheery or optimistic picture of our age and what has led us here.

Indeed, the story's protagonist was born and grew up under the dismissive policies of Reaganomics. She came of age in and, for a good portion of her life, was defined by a school shooting, in the year that such a horror came to the attention of the American public—before it became a horrifyingly common occurrence. Her rise to fame was marked by the attacks on the morning of September 11, 2001, following a night that would transform her personal life in a major way.

By the time she's an adult, our heroine has suffered, has become reclusive, has distanced herself from friends and family and professional acquaintances, and, depending on what someone reads or who's talking about her, has turned into an equally beloved and notorious figure in the culture. Looking at the life of Celeste, whose success was born of a baptism of blood and which became as much of a straightjacket as a dream come true, is depressing enough. To see it, by way of the context of that final declaration, as a portrait of our contemporary age is even more so, because it seems sadly accurate.

Much of this realization comes in hindsight. Writer/director Brady Corbet's movie tries to reach at a lot of significance with those words at the end, but it's a significance that we don't especially feel throughout the course of the story. His screenplay relies so heavily on establishing the origins of the main character that we barely have much time to see and understand where that rise has left her. It's a complex study of a teenage girl that suddenly becomes a one-note examination of a wounded woman. Just when we think Corbet might delve a little deeper into this evolved incarnation of the character, the movie ends with an extended concert sequence.

That is also kind of the point. If this is an age defined by terror in a complicated world, it's also defined by the willingness and desire to shut out such pain and complexities. Corbet reflects that within the structure of his movie. Everything is awful for Celeste. The world has become mad. There is violence and misery everywhere. Why would we want to focus on that, though, when there's a big, spectacular show to watch instead?

There's little denying that this feels right on a conceptual level, and there's no denying that this is a very conceptual movie. Celeste's story begins and is interspersed with some narration (provided by Willem Dafoe), which does a lot to explain her childhood and, later, fills in considerable narrative gaps in Corbet's rush to get to the final concert. The story proper begins with a teenaged Celeste (Raffey Cassidy) in 1999, when one of her classmates kills a number of students and teachers.

With the help of her older sister Eleanor (Stacy Martin), she writes and performs a song that, overnight, becomes an anthem of mourning and resilience. The rest of the young Celeste's story is a rush of preparing to become a pop star with the aid of her manager (played by Jude Law). Songs are recorded. A music video is filmed. Celeste has a fling with an older guy from a heavy metal band. The towers fall.

About halfway through the movie, there's another terrorist attack—a shooting at a beach resort. The attackers are wearing masks that were featured in Celeste's first music video, and the pop star, now in her 30s and played by Natalie Portman, has to deal with the bad publicity, all while preparing for the first stop on her latest tour, dealing with a decades-old fallout with Eleanor, and, after much absence, trying to assert her role as a mother to her teenage daughter Albertine (Cassidy again).

The scenes with the adult Celeste don't add up to much, save for a simplistic view of how years of anger, addiction, and resentment have created a short-tempered, barely functioning person who has no regard for anyone beyond herself—or for anything beyond how she's seen. Corbet seems to have weighted this story in the younger Celeste's favor so that we can sympathize with or, at least, understand the woman she has become. Again, conceptually, we can appreciate the thought. In practice, though, the picture of this older Celeste is so scathing that we're not sure if the movie's tragedy is personal—in that society has helped to create someone this damaged—or cultural—in that society holds up a person this damaged as a star.

Corbet probably wants us to see it both ways, but in the end, the movie just comes across as a hollow critique of stardom on the sides of both the star and the general public. The point of cutting this character and social study short for a big show might make sense, but it also means that Vox Lux is giving into that temptation to ignore the complexities in favor of empty entertainment.

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