Clouds: A ray of sunshine

Clouds (2020) • View trailer

Four stars. Rated PG-13, and too harshly, for brief profanity

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.20.20

John Kennedy Toole was 25 when he wrote A Confederacy of Dunces. He committed suicide six years later, having long suffered from grief, escalating paranoia and (very likely) despair over having failed to get his book published.

 

Zach (Fin Argus) and Sammy (Sabrina Carpenter) noodle their way through the first
few lines of a song-in-progress, little realizing where this creative burst will
eventually lead.

His mother found a carbon copy of the lengthy novel in his effects; she, too, struck out with several publishers before Louisiana State University Press accepted the manuscript. The book was published in 1980, became a best-seller and — the following year — won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: a level of recognition Toole was long past being able to enjoy.

 

Zach Sobiech, on the other hand, didget to watch one of his songs become a hit.

 

But only briefly.

 

Director Justin Baldoni’s deeply moving Clouds depicts Sobiech’s final tumultuous year — as a high school senior — after having battled osteosarcoma (bone cancer) for several years. Baldoni’s heartwarming film is a dramatized expansion of an episode of the documentary series My Last Days, which he produced in 2013, and which featured Sobiech.

 

This film’s screenplay — by Kara Holden, Casey La Scala and Patrick Kopka — is adapted from the memoir Fly a Little Higher, by Sobiech’s mother Laura. The scripters have taken a few liberties — shortening the key timeline, adding a bit of dramatic tension and a few “movie moments” — but the core story is quite accurate.

 

Accurate enough, in fact, to have earned the approval of Zach’s family and close friends (many of whom pop up in various background shots).

 

Fin Argus, best known for the TV shows The Commute and Total Eclipse, makes a solid feature starring debut as Zach. It’s a challenging role; under Baldoni’s careful direction, Argus deftly navigates the extremes of stubborn determination — without becoming some sort of overly cheerful poster child for cancer sufferers — and, alternatively, bouts of grinding despair.

 

The family dynamic also feels wholly natural, notably the good-natured teasing and jostling that takes place with older siblings Alli (Vivien Endicott Douglas) and Sam (Dylan Everett), and younger sister Grace (Summer H. Howell). The interactions between Argus and Howell are particularly strong, and one of their later scenes is a killer.