‘Blue Heron’ review: Sophy Romvari confronts time

There’s no need to leave your baggage at the door when approaching writer/director Sophy Romvari’s evocative familial drama, Blue Heron.

In the contemplative and emotionally arresting Blue Heron, the direction adopts a proactive, dominant role from the start. Behaving in a way that toes the line between self-insertion and calculated distance, the story is both observational and deeply intimate. Having already solidified herself as an up-and-comer to watch with her short film, the award-winning Still Processing, Romvari’s work here secures her as a formidable artist ready to take the reins and blend cinematic history with a fresh, modern gaze.

The film follows a family of six who’ve just moved to a new home on Vancouver Island. Led by the diligent, prickly mother and their artistic, passive father, the family is constantly in flux. While the three youngest spend their days in the childlike fugue state of summer, either outdoors, thriving, or indoors, rotting in the increasingly enclosed space, the eldest, Jeremy, is on the precipice of self-destruction and tragedy.

Through what means is unclear, as his journey is told through the eyes of the youngest child, Sasha. Sasha, who sees the warning signs, but can’t mentally articulate or grasp just what turmoil he’s winding the family up into.

A slow-fracturing foundation.

You’ll recognize parts of Blue Heron in the blueprints of other notable work. There’s the image of fractured humanity through the lens of nostalgic innocence – unassuming yet curious that evokes a similar energy as Charlotte Wells’s Aftersun. And then there’s the clear evocation of titan filmmakers Jafar Panahi and Abbas Kiarostami, filmmakers whose careers play with the careful rewiring of the expectations of linear storytelling.

The seams of the work are evident, the stitching of form and function as Romvari attempts and achieves her own story that eschews easy and consumable narratives. Instead, she pushes on the pulse of inevitability through a revolving perspective that delivers the story in piecemeal before culminating into something whole.

Jeremy’s increasingly dangerous behavior takes a tremendous toll on the family. And something that Romvari does so well is that she refuses to plainly say just what he’s dealing with. Instead, the tragedy stems from the fact that sometimes love, care, and attention don’t matter. Sometimes, when people are hurting, when people are prone to lashing out, or succumb to addiction, there’s nothing you can do or say to reach them. It becomes a tiresome act of resistant repetition – because it becomes harder to resist the pull of apathy when faced with such a steep, emotional climb.

The devastating cyclical functions of life.

The first half of Blue Heron operates as a tone poem. These are snapshots of a childhood struck by unforeseen but unavoidable turbulence. The camera spends a lot of time on Sasha and Jeremy’s faces – the former is inquisitive, the latter closed off. Through Romvari’s contemplative perspective, we watch the slow wear and tear of a family in crisis, suffocating under the weight of subtle volatility, with no clear way to keep them from sinking beneath the surf. It’s heavy stuff, visceral in its depiction of the burdensome weight of caring about someone and not knowing how you’ll be able to help them.

That’s where Romvari finds the magic in the narrative, even if she handles the transition between the telling of the story and who is leading the film with less finesse. As the story progresses and Jeremy’s outbursts become more frequent and less predictable, the writing shifts gears. Suddenly, we’re with adult Sasha. Sasha leading a conversation where she asks health care professionals and mental health advocates how they might approach a case like Jeremy’s in the present day with more resources at their disposal.

In and of itself, it’s one of the film’s weaker scenes, too blunt in showing Romvari’s hand. But it lends itself to what follows, which is a gorgeous, ruminative examination of the cyclical nature of life, depicted through a studied direction and narrative that brings us out of the past, into the future, before coming back around the bend as a means to confront unresolved demons and heal the inner child that lives forever in the specific ways we smile and scowl.

Piecing together a lyrical yet tumultuous history.

Low-set suns and cozy nights adorn Sasha’s childhood. There are the warm, muggy afternoons and the promise of new days. But there’s the constant, crucial threat of what’s to come. And it manifests through moments just out of sight or observed but not digested. The childlike innocence of her sitting on the lawn next to water balloons as she watches the police show up with her eldest brother, her father’s camera still rolling as she clutches it.

It’s the devastation of seeing someone you look up to, someone older whose meant to be wiser, crumble and break, a soured note in your gut that shatters the first line of defense childhood is meant to grant us. Those who look after us aren’t all-powerful.

Blue Heron is a masterful examination of how our personal history haunts us for all we’ll never know. Weaponizing painful clarity, the story acts as its own autopsy, shifting the rubble of old wounds and familial battle scars to discern just what went wrong and where, before the most exacting truth arrives: no roadmap might’ve shifted the destination. The route might’ve changed, but that inevitability thumped with enough vigor to bruise.

No easy answers or tidy resolutions.

Compassionate without reducing the story to cloying messaging or an easy resolution, Blue Heron is a staggering achievement for a first-time feature-length filmmaker. There’s such a tremendous amount of consideration in how the film moves and frames itself, locked in both the visage of time and the attempt to reach beyond the rigidity of a linear story with a clear objective.

Instead, in just a few poignant scenes, the story evolves from just a meditation on what time takes from us into one that highlights the power of self-reflection and personal confrontation. To be whole is to see every part of yourself and see the sanctity of home for what it is – a human design, plagued by creaking floors and leaky roofs.

The bottom line.

Presented with an observed, calculated restraint, Romvari delivers a quiet yet contemplative drama that understands the weight of what is left unsaid. Aided by earth tones and Maya Bankovic’s cinematography that evoke a sense of bygone youth, along with strong performances by Edik Beddoes and Amy Zimmer, Blue Heron is packed with promise. Demonstrative of Romvari’s clear sense of self and obvious confidence as a filmmaker with a specific vision and intent on how to tell it, the story at the center shows how we incessantly pull on the thread of life for answers, meaning, and justifications for a higher power and easy insights. And then, just as carefully, it shows what happens when we accept that whatever happens, happens—Que sera, sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be).

Blue Heron is out now in limited theaters. Watch the trailer below.

---

Images courtesy of Janus Films.