Unsettling, ironic, bitter, a little bit mysterious: Writer-director Brady Corbet’s second feature is either a scathing satire on celebrity, American violence and the dismaying symbiotic intersection of the two, or a gloss on the constant cultural churn from innocence—in an art form, here pop music; in a technology, here how pop music gets to our ears—to decadence. When she was a teen, in 1999, Celeste (Raffey Cassidy) endured a tragedy, and transformed her pain into a lovely, gentle anthem of suffering and survival that touched the nation, and launched her career as a pop star. In 2017, Celeste (Natalie Portman, unforgettably rageful) is attempting a comeback after more disaster in her life. But her childhood charm is now the spikiness of a burnt-out cynic.
Vox Lux’s two segments almost feel like two different movies—1999’s soft, 2017’s harsh. Corbet’s preference for jagged heightened reality, sometimes to the point of stiltedness (there’s a documentary-style narrator) is a challenge to our empathy. Which is kind of the point: His movie is itself part of the pop culture he wants us to reconsider.
By
MaryAnn Johanson