Lucy in the Sky Showcases Noah Hawley’s Aspect Ratio Fetish
It’s no secret that Noah Hawley’s fetish is Aspect Ratios — a fetish as profundly fucked up as Quentin Tarantino’s foot fetish. If you watched Legion, as the series progresses (from season 1–3), the different aspect ratios change in starker ways than in the first episode. Lucy in the Sky utilizes so many aspect ratios (more than Michael Bay in Transformers: The Last Knight) that your head will ultimately spin until the only thing you’ll watch is the aspect ratios changing. The film tells the story of Lucy Cola (Natalie Portman)’s space fetish, as she is obsessed over the experience of going to space, one week after her first mission. The film follows Cola as she tries to get on board another space mission, but her experience in space starts making her mentally unstable and an emotional wreck.
It’s a weird-ass movie, with shreds of brilliance. Natalie Portman is excellent as Cola — a character slowly descending into madness. The progression is fantastic and Portman steals every inch of the [ever changing] frame. The cast is also star-studded, with Zazie Beetz, Jon Hamm, Dan Stevens, Nick Offerman, Tig Notaro and Colman Domingo who all excel in their respective supporting roles. Really, the best element of the film are the performances. Noah Hawley knows how to direct actors and get, through their performances, what he wants the audience to feel. He is a master character director and knows how to make their actors comfortable in doing really weird shit. In Lucy’s descent into madness, the scene is profundly goofy, but works, because you’re glued to the screen in awe at how wonderful Portman, Hamm and Beetz are. The true star of the movie, however, is the cinematography and the film’s everchanging aspect ratios. The film is presented in, at least, six different aspect ratios, and each shot is pure art. The cinematography, and visual effects, are absolutely stunning and plunge the viewer in Lucy’s descent into madness.
However, the film is incredibly muddled. Running at 124 minutes, the film sometimes has shreds of brilliance, sometimes shreds of goofiness. I don’t want to give anything away, but there are times in which you, the audience member, will be compelled to see what will happen next — until the next sequence is ruined by goofy dialogue and/or goofy situations that result in unintentional hilarity. This is a movie to see completely blind, like any Noah Hawley experience. Let the soul-stirring images arouse you, visually, and Hawley’s aspect ratio fetish distract you from the muddled story at hand, so you can focus on the film’s terrific performances, and then walk out and say “This wasn’t half-bad!”, until you start thinking about the movie’s goofiest moments. The film has great performances that elevate a pisspoor script and moments that are absolutely atrocious, with beautiful cinematography, musical score (& soundtrack…oh hi, The B-52!), + good CGI. It’s a shame the story is all over the place. Now, Onto The Addams Family. And, tomorrow, we vote.
✯✯✯
