Sweat (2020) - Magnus von Horn

​Vulnerability unless commodified has no purpose in a contemporary culture that strives for engagement and a facile definition of positivity rooted in subversion instead of acceptance of existential longing. Featuring a familiar conceptual framework, Sweat could have easily been another pointed critique of narcissistic social media culture and the artificial and performative facade it creates over reality. While the film certainly navigates around these ideas, it's the filmmaker's dedication to the principle characterization and her complexities as a person that helps elevate Sweat, ultimately differentiating itself in the way that her journey isn't simplistic or linear but a consistent struggle in service for her underlying identity, as she implicitly searches for a sense of self-worth and happiness that cannot be defined by external forces. In a sense, Sweat is optimistic, determining that humanism and our behavioral impulses will ultimately repudiate the pervasive nature of technology and its effects on the social. Sweat is familiar but genuinely crafted, a film that in its thematic intentions never forgets that the key to success lies in its principle characterization