Marie, a 40-something actress, lives in a beautiful home perched above the beach in Malibu. She is beginning to come face-to-face with harsh realities of the film industry, finding it a lot harder to find acting opportunities. As Marie struggles to cope with her new life and career crisis, she is visited by her young, aspiring-actress niece who stays for the weekend. Like many of Swanberg's films, All The Light in The Sky is a very quiet endeavor that at times feels almost inconsequential, but unlike many of his films, it slowly achieves its small, but powerful intentions in a way that feels very organic and genuinely affecting. Jane Adams gives a great performance as Marie, a role that feels developed in a way that is part character, part actress, as we see the insecurities and fears of a woman entering her mid-life in Hollywood. Swanberg is able to capture Marie's uncertainty and fragility, as she feels her life slowly slipping away due in large part to her age, feeling ugly and unwanted in a town only interested in youth. Marie is a character who encompasses a very specific type of character, a Hollywood actress living in Los Angeles, with All the Light in the Sky capturing the ugly age bias and superficiality of Hollywood but many of Marie's internal struggles are very relate-able to nearly anyone who feels their life passing by to fast. This creates an experience that is almost cosmic, capturing how insignificant and brief our time is in this universe, an incredibly impressive feat. Perhaps what is most impressive about All the Light in the Sky is how much Swanberg is able to step out of his typical comfort zone, moving away from the onset of adulthood and looking at the dead opposite - the loss of adulthood through aging.
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AuthorLove of all things cinema brought me here. Archives
June 2023
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