Causeway – Review
92 Minutes, Rated R
Written by Ottessa Moshfegh, Luke Goebel, and Elizabeth Sanders
Directed by Lila Neugebauer
**NOTE: this post will be updated with audio once we actually have the chance to talk about it. Until then, you can read Mark’s review below. Stay tuned.**
Synopsis:
A US soldier suffers a traumatic brain injury while fighting in Afghanistan and struggles to adjust to life back home.
Well, this one certainly seems like awards-bait, doesn’t it?
Female veteran with a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) trying to rehab and go back to Afghanistan? Not typical, to be sure, but there we are.
Returning to the New Orleans area she grew up in, she is also faced with the daunting task of dealing with her mother, whose deficiencies when she was a a child are both frustratingly vague as well as keenly felt by the audience.
This is really a return to form for Lawrence, a reminder of the promise first shown in Winter’s Bone and fully realized in Silver Linings Playbook, but which went dormant during her X-Men days and big-budget misses like Passengers.
Jennifer Lawrence is subtly effective in the lead role, embodying the battle not only against her body’s physical injuries, but the mental and emotional ones, as well. It’s a hard thing to portray someone with a TBI without it feeling like a parody, but she is really impressive in showing us the limits that result and the frustration at the slow rate of improvement, the pushing of those limits in order to return to “normal.”
Really first-class work here (no X-Men pun intended).
As the friendly mechanic tasked with fixing her pick-up (the classic 1985 GMC Sierra, which he appreciates from a mechanical standpoint), Brian Tyree Henry is finally given a role he can sink his teeth into, carrying half this film instead of being relegated to supporting roles in otherwise forgettable fare such as Hotel Artemis and White Boy Rick (though his TV resume reads a bit better).
[And don’t bring up Eternals; that movie was hot garbage.]
Guilt (both legitimate and survivor’s) permeates Causeway (as does Purpose, Avoidance, Doubt and Fear) like traffic at rush hour, and he and Lawrence play well off one another as they both navigate those streets.
It can often feel like there are stretches of the film that linger too long, but taken in context of a woman whose mind is betraying her and a man whose past is haunting him, the lingering acquires meaning, adding to the depth of both characters’ despair and desperation.
While I was probably going into this one thinking I wouldn’t enjoy it, I’m happy to admit I came out with an appreciation for what the filmmakers were shooting for and, more importantly, what they accomplished.
Causeway hits Apple TV+ (as well as in select theaters) on November 4, and stars Jennifer Lawrence, Brian Tyree Henry, Stephen McKinley Henderson, and Linda Emond.
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