The titular lead character of Luce (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) is an ideal High School student. The adopted son of Amy (Naomi Watts) and Peter Edgar (Tim Roth) is in every extracurricular you can think of, he's a great speaker, he gets along equally well with his fellow students as he does with his teachers. Well, most of his teachers at least. Luce doesn't really get along well with his English teacher, Harriet Wilson (Octavia Spencer). Up to this point, Luce's just been mildly annoyed with his teacher. But things take a turn for the worse when Wilson calls Amy into her classroom to inform her that her son has written an extremely disturbing and violent essay and has also been keeping illegal fireworks in his locker.
Wilson is extremely concerned that these could be indicators of Luce being some kind of troubled student, a ticking time bomb just waiting to go off. From there, director Julius Onah's feature film Luce proceeds to explore everyone's differing & constantly evolving perspectives on Luce as well as how Luce sees the world around. This is a movie heavily reliant on intimate extended dialogue exchanges and it's no surprise that it's based on a stage play written by JC Lee (who also wrote the screenplay for this film adaptation with Onah). Translating this work into a cinematic form couldn't have been an easy task but it's one that's pulled off with remarkable intensity.
Some films based on plays tend to struggle to take advantage of specific perks afforded by the medium of cinema. Luce is not one of those features. It's hard to imagine a third-act montage of people preparing for a confrontation with Luce, set to the noises of a cheer routine, being able to be pulled off in a stage play, but it's something this film version can pull off with engrossing & chilling success and it's just one of many examples of this version of Luce utilizing the cinematic tools at its disposal. Another visual-based feat of the motion picture is Onah's direction, which relies heavily on smartly-executed extended single-takes of encounters between individual characters. Choosing to frame these conversations within the space of a single shot allows the unnerving moods of these sequences to be preserved without any cuts to interrupt the atmosphere.
This visual choice also feels fitting given how Luce is all about characters gradually revealing their true feelings for one another. The movie starts with everything being smiles and cheers before ending in moral compromises and lives shattering. Framing extended conversations between characters like Luce & DeShaun (Brian Bradley) or a masterfully filmed encounter between Harriet and her sister within extended single takes allows the gradual process of characters realizing how they actually feel about one another to be felt in real-time. There are no cuts forward in time to alleviate the audience from this intentionally discomforting process, we get to experience it in real-time just like the characters within Luce. Onah's exemplary direction makes all the intense dialogue exchanges in Luce the kind of scenes that will send you gasping and recoiling in equal measure.
This intense aesthetic is reinforced by the all-around remarkable performances of the cast. Save for Tim Roth struggling to deliver a believable American accent (though he does good work in the part otherwise), the cast in Luce is all-around terrific and that's especially true of the work delivered by Kelvin Harrison Jr. in the lead role of Luce. Harrison Jr.'s work in this part was gonna make or break this project given how the entire movie revolves around the character Luce and luckily, he's knocked it out of the park with a turn that thrives on fascinating ambiguity. Luce's smart writing choice to never show whose responsible for the malicious acts the character is being accused of (save for his essay) means that his performance is like a Rorschach test for the audience, you can easily read terrifying menace or normalcy into any of his given scenes.
Much like similarly impressive ambiguous performances delivered by Phillip Seymour Hoffman in Doubt or Steven Yeun in Burning, Harrison Jr.'s work in Luce works on multiple levels and constantly keeps you on your toes in terms of what you think this person is capable of. Octavia Spencer delivers similarly noteworthy work in the role of Harriet Wilson. It's a role full of complex nooks and crannies that Spencer handles with impressive chops and she especially excels in a climactic confrontation between her character and Luce. It's a scene where both characters, as well as the performers portraying them, leave everything out on the field and it's just so engrossing to watch. Luce doesn't make for easy viewing (and it shouldn't given the bleak subject matter it so frankly deals with) but scenes like that captivating tete-a-tete between Luce and Wilson does make it exceptional viewing.
Wilson is extremely concerned that these could be indicators of Luce being some kind of troubled student, a ticking time bomb just waiting to go off. From there, director Julius Onah's feature film Luce proceeds to explore everyone's differing & constantly evolving perspectives on Luce as well as how Luce sees the world around. This is a movie heavily reliant on intimate extended dialogue exchanges and it's no surprise that it's based on a stage play written by JC Lee (who also wrote the screenplay for this film adaptation with Onah). Translating this work into a cinematic form couldn't have been an easy task but it's one that's pulled off with remarkable intensity.
Some films based on plays tend to struggle to take advantage of specific perks afforded by the medium of cinema. Luce is not one of those features. It's hard to imagine a third-act montage of people preparing for a confrontation with Luce, set to the noises of a cheer routine, being able to be pulled off in a stage play, but it's something this film version can pull off with engrossing & chilling success and it's just one of many examples of this version of Luce utilizing the cinematic tools at its disposal. Another visual-based feat of the motion picture is Onah's direction, which relies heavily on smartly-executed extended single-takes of encounters between individual characters. Choosing to frame these conversations within the space of a single shot allows the unnerving moods of these sequences to be preserved without any cuts to interrupt the atmosphere.
This visual choice also feels fitting given how Luce is all about characters gradually revealing their true feelings for one another. The movie starts with everything being smiles and cheers before ending in moral compromises and lives shattering. Framing extended conversations between characters like Luce & DeShaun (Brian Bradley) or a masterfully filmed encounter between Harriet and her sister within extended single takes allows the gradual process of characters realizing how they actually feel about one another to be felt in real-time. There are no cuts forward in time to alleviate the audience from this intentionally discomforting process, we get to experience it in real-time just like the characters within Luce. Onah's exemplary direction makes all the intense dialogue exchanges in Luce the kind of scenes that will send you gasping and recoiling in equal measure.
This intense aesthetic is reinforced by the all-around remarkable performances of the cast. Save for Tim Roth struggling to deliver a believable American accent (though he does good work in the part otherwise), the cast in Luce is all-around terrific and that's especially true of the work delivered by Kelvin Harrison Jr. in the lead role of Luce. Harrison Jr.'s work in this part was gonna make or break this project given how the entire movie revolves around the character Luce and luckily, he's knocked it out of the park with a turn that thrives on fascinating ambiguity. Luce's smart writing choice to never show whose responsible for the malicious acts the character is being accused of (save for his essay) means that his performance is like a Rorschach test for the audience, you can easily read terrifying menace or normalcy into any of his given scenes.
Much like similarly impressive ambiguous performances delivered by Phillip Seymour Hoffman in Doubt or Steven Yeun in Burning, Harrison Jr.'s work in Luce works on multiple levels and constantly keeps you on your toes in terms of what you think this person is capable of. Octavia Spencer delivers similarly noteworthy work in the role of Harriet Wilson. It's a role full of complex nooks and crannies that Spencer handles with impressive chops and she especially excels in a climactic confrontation between her character and Luce. It's a scene where both characters, as well as the performers portraying them, leave everything out on the field and it's just so engrossing to watch. Luce doesn't make for easy viewing (and it shouldn't given the bleak subject matter it so frankly deals with) but scenes like that captivating tete-a-tete between Luce and Wilson does make it exceptional viewing.
Post a Comment