Post by stephen on Jul 21, 2018 16:21:52 GMT
It’s interesting that I saw Hearts Beat Loud the same day as Leave No Trace, as both films deal with strained father/daughter relationships, the effects of parental loss, and teenage girls learning to ride bikes. There are an awful lot of parallels to both films, making them a fascinating double-feature I would highly recommend, and you could probably reverse the castings of both films and lose almost none of the impact of either film.
In Hearts, Nick Offerman plays Frank, a widower and nascent musician who runs a record shop in Red Hook. He spends his downtime in “jam seshes” with his daughter, Sam (Kiersey Clemons), who is prepping for her imminent move to Los Angeles to begin medical school. Frank’s life is at a crossroads: his shop is going under, his only kid is moving across the country, his doddering mother (Blythe Danner, fun but unfortunately disengaged with the main story) is turning to kleptomania, and his hopes of “making it” as a musician are going down the tubes. So he sees this summer as the last hurrah in many ways. For her part, Sam is trying to cope with the big life-changing move that is affecting her dynamic with her father and her budding relationship with a vivacious artist (Sasha Lane).
During one of their jam sessions, Frank and Sam craft a song based on one of the latter’s poems, and Frank decides for the hell of it to upload it to Spotify. Suddenly, the song gains a modest indie following, propelling Frank to try and put more songs together with his daughter as a way not just to make their own stamp on the music scene, but also for one last chance to bond and, hopefully, recapture glory days. Sam, however, is unsure of her father’s enthusiasm and knows that what success they have will be short-lived in the face of her responsibilities.
The film has a bracingly beautiful soundtrack, and as someone who loathed indie-music indies like Begin Again and Sing Street, I found this film refreshing in its honesty. The film lives and dies by its central duo, and Offerman and Clemons are so wonderful together that you could not just believe they are father-and-daughter, but you feel the weight of the years between them, and it’s fascinating that there are moments where Clemons has to play the “parent” of sorts in the face of Offerman’s man-child excitement. It works so well, even if there are moments where I feel like other characters kind of get shafted in importance (Danner in particular).
In Hearts, Nick Offerman plays Frank, a widower and nascent musician who runs a record shop in Red Hook. He spends his downtime in “jam seshes” with his daughter, Sam (Kiersey Clemons), who is prepping for her imminent move to Los Angeles to begin medical school. Frank’s life is at a crossroads: his shop is going under, his only kid is moving across the country, his doddering mother (Blythe Danner, fun but unfortunately disengaged with the main story) is turning to kleptomania, and his hopes of “making it” as a musician are going down the tubes. So he sees this summer as the last hurrah in many ways. For her part, Sam is trying to cope with the big life-changing move that is affecting her dynamic with her father and her budding relationship with a vivacious artist (Sasha Lane).
During one of their jam sessions, Frank and Sam craft a song based on one of the latter’s poems, and Frank decides for the hell of it to upload it to Spotify. Suddenly, the song gains a modest indie following, propelling Frank to try and put more songs together with his daughter as a way not just to make their own stamp on the music scene, but also for one last chance to bond and, hopefully, recapture glory days. Sam, however, is unsure of her father’s enthusiasm and knows that what success they have will be short-lived in the face of her responsibilities.
The film has a bracingly beautiful soundtrack, and as someone who loathed indie-music indies like Begin Again and Sing Street, I found this film refreshing in its honesty. The film lives and dies by its central duo, and Offerman and Clemons are so wonderful together that you could not just believe they are father-and-daughter, but you feel the weight of the years between them, and it’s fascinating that there are moments where Clemons has to play the “parent” of sorts in the face of Offerman’s man-child excitement. It works so well, even if there are moments where I feel like other characters kind of get shafted in importance (Danner in particular).
How was my girl Toni Collette ? Is her part important/big enough ?