LULLABY
DIRECTOR: Andrew Levitas
CAST: Richard Jenkins, Garrett Hedlund, Terrence Howard, Jessica Brown Findlay, Amy Adams
CLASSIFICATION: 16 L
RUNNING TIME: 117 minutes
RATING: ***
A terminally ill man’s plan to end his life sparks a healing crisis in his family, his black-sheep son in particular, in Lullaby. Inspired by personal experiences, writer-director Andrew Levitas has dramatised a debate about assisted suicide, hitting points both tender and political rather squarely on the head.
His compassion is clear. But unlike another film that addresses the same subject, Marco Bellocchio’s Dormant Beauty, this feature debut deals mainly in clichés, never transforming the tough question at its centre into compelling cinema.
Though a drawcard, the ensemble of well-known actors are all saddled with one-note characters. The notable exception is Jenkins, whose dying patriarch anchors the unconvincing story with contradictory energy – he’s quietly brave, slyly mani-pulative, loving, smart and funny, and ready to end his suffering.
Jenkins plays Robert, a once high-flying businessman who is in hospital and hooked up to several machines, including a ventilator. Estranged son Jonathan (Hedlund) arrives, expecting to find his father facing another round of surgery or treatments. But after living with cancer for 12 years, against the medical odds, Robert is wracked with pain. He’s tired of the toll his deteriorating condition is taking on his devoted wife (Anne Archer) and has asked his doctor (Howard, wasted) to take him off life support.
While Jonathan’s lawyer sister (Findlay) files an injunction to prevent the plan from proceeding, Jonathan acts out, reconnects with the one who got away (Adams) and befriends a young hospital patient who’s facing her own mortality.
As the 17-year-old Meredith, Jessica Barden transcends the sentimentality of a stock role – a terminal patient who’s precociously blunt and wise beyond her years – and makes Meredith’s vulnerability fully felt.
Similarly underplaying the feisty, mouthy aspect of her part, Jennifer Hudson delivers some of her most convincing film work so far, as a nurse who minces no words when she thinks Robert’s kids need a reality check.
It’s not necessary to like the characters, but it’s hard to feel invested in them. The emotional currents in Levitas’ screenplay have a shallow transparency that could have used some muddying complications (Archer’s tensely smiling caretaker suggests a barely acknowledged undertow). Unfolding through on-the-nose dialogue and uneven direction, the drama fails to take hold. Most problematic is that the familial tension at the heart of Jonathan’s rebirth feels manufactured – referred to, not deeply ingrained. Although Jonathan is meant to be something of a bad boy and often speaks in anger, Hedlund imbues the musician with a laid-back decency; he’s wounded, not implacable. Having turned his back on an Ivy League education, he’s ashamed that his rock ’n’ roll dreams haven’t panned out. There’s no room for truly revelatory interactions, though, when everything is so clearly spelled out.
Hedlund’s three quite good musical numbers express more about Jonathan than any conversations do. But in a supporting role with few lines in Inside Llewyn Davis, the actor created a far more full-blooded character, and an indelible one.
Jenkins, who is out of bed only during a couple of flashbacks, uses Robert’s physical limitations to strong effect, his absorbing performance built on voice (weak and cracked) and gaze (sharp and observant).
The story plays out as an extended family goodbye that includes a winningly strange Passover seder, all of it set in or around the hospital. With little sense of the chaos and despair that underlie the heavy quiet of such a place, it’s a hermetic setting, reflecting the affluent family’s privilege. It also feels underpopulated, except for the children’s ward where a couple of particularly heavy-handed scenes take place.
Cinematographer Florian Ballhaus captures the subdued gleam of the state-of-the-art facility, and the contrasting freedom of Manhattan’s night-time streets, where Jonathan and his kind, truth-speaking ex-girlfriend have a key encounter. Levitas makes a few visual choices that are self-conscious and overwrought in their attempt to convey Jonathan’s state of mind. In keeping with the tone of the movie, the score by Patrick Leonard strikes obvious chords.
If you liked A Necessary Death, you’ll like this.
The Hollywood Reporter