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The Sky Is Everywhere Review: Grace Kaufman's teen drama offers a visually evocative look at love and loss
Josephine Decker's The Sky Is Everywhere takes an intimate look at dealing with grief through Grace Kaufman's impressive act. Read Pinkvilla's review below.
The Sky Is Everywhere
The Sky Is Everywhere Cast: Grace Kaufman, Jason Segel, Cherry Jones
The Sky Is Everywhere Director: Josephine Decker
Streaming Platform: AppleTV+
The Sky Is Everywhere stars: 3/5
Two of the most powerful emotions, love and grief play tug of war in Josephine Decker's The Sky Is Everywhere. The director who is known for her work on film's such as Madeline's Madeline, finds herself giving Jandy Nelson’s young-adult novel an adaptation that marries realism and magic in an exquisite way. In Decker's film, emotions get a physical form as she creates a world that digs deeper into the crevices of her protagonist's mind and brings out the physicality of grief and the way it weighs down on you.
The Sky Is Everywhere embraces Nelson's young adult novel with such creative fashion that it successfully breaks away from being a cliche teen drama. The film revolves around a young woman, Lennie (Grace Kaufman), who is finding it hard to deal with the loss of her older sister, Bailey (Havana Rose Liu) who dies of a heart condition, leaving Lennie distraught. A directionless Lennie absorbed in the grief of losing the only person who understood her, finds herself struggling to find the music inside her. An otherwise talented Lennie finds herself bereft of her musical gift and struggles hard to play her clarinet.
While Lennie's grief remains the centre stage of this story, her oddball family consisting of Gram (Cherry Jones) and her Uncle Big (Jason Segel) are equally going through a hard time as they not only try to deal with their own devastation from the incident but also try hard to coerce Lennie out of her vulnerable state following sister Bailey's death. While trying to get a hold of her feelings, a broken Lennie at first finds solace in Bailey's boyfriend Toby (Pico Alexander), while their shared grief first brings them together, the guilt sets in soon and Lennie finds herself getting attracted to her classmate Joe (Jacques Colimon). Amid her sadness, Lennie also finds herself in a strange love triangle that soon becomes the trigger for her to sort out her life.
The thing about any kind of grief is that it has the ability to completely take over everything when not tended to. A dejected mind looks almost like a place that's forlorn of sunlight and it's these dark corners that get a beautiful representation in Josephine Decker's film. The filmmaker delves into Lennie's mind through gorgeous scenes as she finds herself walking amid a stunning redwood forest as she writes notes on papers and leaves to describe how left out she feels after her siseter's passing. In the meantime, Lennie is also seen finding herself getting lost in the world of Wuthering Heights and somewhere in her heart hopes to find Heathcliff to rescue her from her dark thoughts.
Decker brings to this film a visual language that seems to be the film's strength and in the hands of a less talented director, the same story could have looked far less mature. Decker's brilliant camera work consisting of close-ups teamed up with cinematographer Ava Berkofsky's ability to make every frame come alive even as it deals with a protagonist who only has death on her mind. The film also receives its fair share of whimsicality such as in the scene where Joe (Colimon) and Lennie (Kaufman) listen to Bach together after the former tells her that he mended his broken heart after his girlfriend cheated on him with his friend. Another scene where Decker plays with fantasy is the one where Joe and Lennie are seen floating in the air (literally) after the latter finally finds her heart in the right place to play the clarinet again. Their floating together also seems to be a metaphor for love eventually being the remedy to set you free of your grief.
The film features a mix of everything, Kaufman led voiceover, musical segments clubbed with CGI moments that are used for visual storytelling and at times it gets a tad too much. At certain points, we feel too lost in the world of Lennie which never seems to take a break from receiving a dramatisation that seems stretched at certain points.
In terms of performances, Grace Kaufman does a fine job of embodying Lennie's state of mind and her grief extremely well. Kaufman showcases the distinct changes that her character goes through as the film progresses in a manner that's impressive. From her empty stares to then being lit up with happiness as she finds love, Kaufman brings Lennie to life with a great deal of honesty. As for the supporting cast, Cherry Jones is beyond wonderful as the grandmother. Despite having limited scenes, Jones leaves a lasting impact. As for Jason Segel, the actor successfully brings out the humour about the otherwise gloomy tale.
With The Sky Is Everywhere, Josephine Decker brings a young adult story that expresses well how dealing with grief often paves way for self-discovery in ways that one would never imagine. The film also shows how the medicine to pain is not by shutting oneself out but by letting others in.
