Lawrence stars as vet readjusting to life, but Henry film’s real draw
One of the top actors of his generation, it’s only a matter of time before Brian Tyree Henry lands a project that puts his talents front and center.
But even in supporting roles, whenever he’s on screen, suddenly you’re locked in to what he’s doing regardless of genre. In the indie movie “Causeway” on Apple TV+, he’s showing off his looser side as an actor, playing an auto mechanic who befriends a young woman back home after serving in Afghanistan. It’s a wonderfully layered performance that elevates director Lila Neugebauer’s film — with a screenplay from Elizabeth Sanders, Luke Goebel and Ottessa Moshfegh — at every turn.
However, Jennifer Lawrence is the film’s primary interest as Lynsey, the aforementioned veteran who has suffered a traumatic brain injury after an explosion. Numbed, closed off and dealing with some serious physical disabilities, she first rehabs in the residence of a gentle but practical home health care provider (Jayne Houdyshell) who literally gets her back on her feet.
Then Lynsey is on a bus heading back to her dilapidated working-class childhood home in New Orleans, which is where the bulk of the story takes place. The physical effects of her injury are mostly dispensed with, but the emotional issues linger.
And so Lynsey gets a job cleaning pools. The job is a way to pass the time until Lynsey can get her doctor to sign off and allow her to redeploy. That was her ticket out the first time, and it’s all she knows.
Then she meets a mechanic named James, played by Henry, and they form a tentative friendship. He’s friendly and funny without being pushy. He’s also watchful and quietly repressing some trauma of his own, and he recognizes something in her that hits a little too close to home: She’s lost and unmoored. Maybe he finds the sharp edges of her personality intriguing as well, so he extends her more courtesy than he might otherwise. As for Lynsey, she needs a helping hand (or a ride) every so often and sees something genuine and familiar in James’ low-key gregariousness.
As a film, “Causeway” is perhaps too cautious and oblique about the story it wants to tell. Is it about the struggle for veterans to reacclimate Stateside? Sort of, but Lynsey reveals almost nothing about her time in the military. Is it about returning to a place that feels like the ghost town of your soul and forging new and unlikely connections? Yes, but it’s maybe too hands-off in that regard.
Lynsey is reticent and detached from the world around her, and Lawrence’s performance can’t do enough to sketch in the contours of this woman’s personality beyond her outward qualities. The movie also takes a colorblind approach, which has a way of erasing some specificity along the way.
Pain and guilt and unresolved anger can become so embedded they shape the way you interact with the world. Maybe getting to know a stranger can feel like a reprieve. Here’s someone who doesn’t view you through the prism of your history; you are the person who stands before them, not an accumulation of your past. That’s what the movie seems to be getting at most effectively, particularly when it comes to James and why he might be drawn to Lynsey.
The title itself refers to the Causeway bridge, which spans 24 miles over Louisiana’s Lake Pontchartrain. James was in a car accident on the Causeway that has left him sorting through the emotional wreckage, though he keeps most of that tamped down beneath his easygoing demeanor. Being around Lynsey offers him the opportunity to interact with someone new who doesn’t look at him with pity — until she does. That amounts to the film’s climax, and I’m not sure it’s actually enough.
Where to watch: Apple TV+