Midwestern malaise
COLUMBUS, drama, not rated, Violet Crown,
3 chiles
Unless you live in the Midwest, chances are pretty good that Columbus, Indiana, isn’t a place that you have heard of. Nestled deep in “flyover country,” it seems to the outsider like the kind of small city that people only pass through on their way to some other place, whether it’s another phase in life or another part of the nation.
In this low-key character drama, Columbus resident Casey (Haley Lu Richardson) resists this pressure to move on. Fresh out of high school, she skipped college to take care of her mother (Michelle Forbes), who doesn’t seem to need Casey’s help. Friends tell her she’s too good to stay settled here; she knows this, yet also recognizes the buried insult to her city and mother in such sentiments. One day, while idling away at her library job, she meets Jin ( John Cho), a KoreanAmerican man who travels from Korea to Columbus to be with his dying father, and must remain there until the death occurs. Jin is another soul who finds Columbus to be a form of purgatory.
The relationship that blossoms between these two people should not be considered romantic, even if it follows that story arc, favoring emotional intimacy over physical. The two find comfort in each other’s company and talk through their problems, while she takes him on a tour through Columbus’ splendid examples of modernist architecture, which are plentiful and filmed evocatively enough to be considered a character in the story.
These buildings also serve a thematic purpose. In 2017, midcentury architecture seems somehow both of the past and the future, adding to the film’s sense of temporal displacement. The buildings stretch across the screen like a highway or a horizon, suggesting travel to distant points. Cinematographer Elisha Christian also favors deep-focus shots down hallways, giving the buildings depth, and he focuses on their extensive use of glass to make us privy to characters’ secrets. Few films this side of Jacques Tati’s Playtime plumb the expressiveness of Modernist architecture with such resonance.
Writer and director Kogonada, in his debut feature, complements his fascination with architecture and visual storytelling with a steady hand with his actors. Cho is still best known for playing a stoner goofball in 2004’s Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, but in the decade since, he’s grown into an actor who is able to convey frustration and emotional weight. Richardson, meanwhile, is a young actress on the cusp of stardom after wonderful turns in The Edge of Seventeen and Split. She recalls a young Mariel Hemingway, possessing a perfect ratio of youth to wisdom, and seems to tell a short story with each facial expression. Both actors play beautifully off each other. Even if the characters overshare a bit too much than feels realistic, and the story doesn’t go anywhere terribly satisfying, for the duration of the film, Columbus is a perfectly wonderful place to be. — Robert Ker