3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity and sexual candor
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.22.14
We certainly can’t imagine what
it would be like, for a soul stalled between life and death — the likely wealth
of conflicting emotions at play — but Chloë Grace Moretz makes a persuasive case.
 |
| In the aftermath of a horrific accident, Mia (Chloë Grace Moretz) gradually realizes that her soul remains in limbo, able to watch but not affect the efforts being made to save her comatose body, which hovers near death in a hospital bed. |
As the young star of director
R.J. Cutler’s adaptation of Gayle Forman’s enormously popular young adult
novel, Moretz is a memorably tragic heroine: engagingly shy and vulnerable,
winsomely sweet, undecided in the ways we all remember from our high school
years, and then forced to confront a horrific tragedy that, inexplicably,
places her in a position to make an almost impossible decision.
The question is the degree to
which we get involved with her unusual plight.
Forman’s book is yet another entry
in the currently popular sub-genre of “doomed youth” sagas, many recently
adapted to the big screen, several of them this year. The current leader of the
pack obviously is John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars, but we also can point
to Tim Tharp’s The Spectacular Now, John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pajamas and several books by Nicholas Sparks, among others.
Although this trend seems
somewhat masochistic, I suppose enjoying a good cry is a lot healthier than
wallowing in a gory slasher flick.
The book has been carefully and
sensitively handled by scripter Shauna Cross, who came to our attention after
adapting her own novel Derby Girl into 2009’s under-appreciated roller-derby
drama, Whip It, which gave Ellen Page a similarly endearing character arc.
“If I Stay” has the added benefit of strong casting in all the supporting roles,
and I’m sure Cutler had a hand in that, given his position as one of the
executive producers of TV’s sharply assembled Nashville.
Moretz’s Mia Hall is a school
misfit: a quiet outcast who assigned herself that role, due to a (probably
justified) concern that her peers wouldn’t think much of a girl who prefers the
cello, Yo-Yo Ma and Beethoven to electric guitar and the gyrations of the
newest “it” band. Mia also is something of an anomaly at home: Her father,
Denny (Joshua Leonard), was the drummer in a punk band before becoming a
teacher; her mother, Kat (Mireille Enos), was the ultimate groupie-turned-wife,
who carted Mia to gigs as a toddler and reveres tough rock chicks like Deborah
Harry.
And Mia’s little brother, Teddy
(Jakob Davies), idolizes Iggy Pop.
Not that anybody in Mia’s family
makes her feel like an outsider. Denny and Kat are warm, supportive, tolerant
and wise ... frankly, the best parents anybody could imagine. But they don’t
look, feel or sound like impossibly ideal archetypes; armed with Cross’
note-perfect dialogue, and assisted by Cutler’s deft direction, Leonard and
Enos simply emerge as caring adults who relate to their daughter’s angst
because, well, they never quite abandoned their own anti-establishment younger
selves.
This story comes armed with
several moral imperatives, including this biggie: To thine own self be true.
Denny and Kat know this.
Our shy heroine also has a great
best friend, Kim (Liana Liberato), who is delighted, one day, to point out that
Mia has come to the attention of Adam Wilde (Jamie Blackley).
Impossible, Mia insists; he’s a
senior, a year older, the coolest kid in school, and fronting an increasingly
popular band, Willamette Stone, that could be destined for greater glory. How
could a guy like that be interested in a girl who hides in music class to
practice the cello?
Ah, but that’s simple. Adam
recognizes what Mia’s parents have known for years: that she “blisses out” and
becomes one with her instrument, and with her music. You can’t help admiring,
even loving, a person who can wholly abandon herself to her passion.
These back-story details
initially are sketched thinly, even only suggested, because we’re scarcely 10
minutes into the film before the aforementioned tragedy strikes: a road
accident that leaves Mia comatose in a hospital bed, kept alive by pumps and
monitors that doctors are afraid to remove.
All of which Mia watches, thanks
to an out-of-body experience that allows her to see and hear the hospital staff
working so hard on her behalf, and the friends and family members who gather at
her bedside. They don’t see or hear her, of course, nor can she interact with
anything or anybody.
The story’s big decision rests
with this “astral Mia,” which we can regard as her soul. It would be easy, even
comforting, to surrender to death and heaven’s warm embrace: the blinding white
light she occasionally sees filling one of the hospital hallways.
Alternatively, fighting for life would be hard, the results far from certain,
possibly even calamitous.
So ... should she stay, or go?
The choice seems obvious at
first, but only because we’ve not yet experienced the harsher elements of
Forman’s storyline.
All of this could be profoundly
depressing, particularly because Moretz so skillfully channels uncertainty,
confusion and anguish. Our hearts break any number of times, most notably when
Mia’s astral self watches her grandfather (Stacy Keach, also quite fine) at her
bedside. Rough stuff, to be sure.
But Cutler and Cross wisely
dilute the melancholy by granting this unfolding tragedy the context of Mia’s
memories. We thus learn of her parents’ rocker pasts, their puzzled confusion
over a young daughter who fell in love with a cello. We observe the evolution
of Mia and Adam’s relationship: joyous as long as high school bonds them,
fraught with uncertainty thereafter.
Talent can’t help but pull their
lives in different directions. Mia dreams of landing an audition to enter
Juilliard, which would send her to New York, far from the cozy Portland suburbs
given such earthy charm by cinematographer John de Borman (although actual
filming was done in Vancouver). Willamette Stone gains popularity and sends
Adam on the road for increasing stretches of time. Can love endure?
And if it doesn’t, is that anguish
enough to give up on everything else?
Such angst notwithstanding, I’m
not sure Cross ever sells that conflict. Mia is a gutsy rebel who has grown up
proud of her individuality and uniqueness; she also draws strength from the
music she adores, and the people who adore her.
Yielding to despair feels out of
character, no matter what the circumstances.
Mia seems far more likely to
respond to the compassionate nurse (Aisha Hinds, in a small but telling part)
who whispers in the comatose girl’s ear, telling her to fight, that hospital
staff can do only so much, and that, ultimately, it’s up to her.
Much depends on the relationship
between Mia’s astral self and her comatose body; it’s not clear, in this film,
whether the astral Mia can “share” what she sees and hears, in the outer world,
with the bedridden self that struggles for life. That’s an important detail,
since it obviously plays a sizable role in her eventual choice.
This existential struggle aside, Cutler’s
film (fortunately!) is dominated by the warmer, richer and even humorous
interactions between its characters. Moretz and Blackley fall in love quite
charmingly, the latter blessed with a guileless sincerity that’s both adorable
and unexpected. And if Moretz seems far too cute a girl to be ignored in high
school, regardless of her music taste, well, that’s a long-familiar movie
cliché; we have to roll with it.
Moretz has an expressive face,
particularly the bashful, faltering smile that Mia displays when surprised;
she’s simply adorable. Blackley has earnest charm to burn, although he’s less
successful when the script forces Adam to be short-tempered or cross; such
behavior seems forced and artificial, demanded more by scripted insistence than
credible discord, and we sense a manipulative master puppeteer at work.
Fortunately, you’re more likely
to be charmed, throughout, by various little touches: a sweet montage during
the early stages of Mia and Adam’s blossoming love, notably a skateboard
sequence in the rain; a Hall family tradition that unites friends, family and
“stragglers” for a massive Sunday meal; a quiet exchange between Denny and Kat,
on the stairs outside adolescent Mia’s bedroom, as they listen to her practice
that cello for hours on end.
The film’s score is equally
enchanting: a blend of classical Beethoven and Bach, composer Heitor Pereira’s
evocative underscore, and music supervisor Linda Cohen’s carefully chosen pop/rock/punk
anthems from Sonic Youth, Blondie, Zoltan Kodaly, Buzzcocks, The Dandy Warhols
and numerous up-to-the-minute Pacific Northwest bands. Willamette Stone’s sound
hearkens back to the Ramones, and Blackley does a nice job with the five songs
that Adam’s band delivers throughout the story.
No question: Cutler, Cross,
Moretz and the rest of this cast have treated Forman’s novel quite honorably. This
film is genuine, heartfelt and poignant, without sliding into pathos or
treacle. That said, I was much more emotionally involved with all these
characters during their happier moments — all those flashbacks — than with poor
Mia’s momentous, fateful, final choice.
That simply didn’t move me ...
which probably isn’t the reaction Forman would have preferred.
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