A Monster Calls
Directed by: J.A. Bayona
Written by: Patrick Ness - Based on the novel by Patrick Ness & an original idea by Siobhan Dowd
Starring: Lewis MacDougall, Sigourney Weaver, Felicity Jones, Tony Kebbell, Liam Neeson, James Melville
Drama/Fantasy - 108 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 6 Jan 2017
Written by: Patrick Ness - Based on the novel by Patrick Ness & an original idea by Siobhan Dowd
Starring: Lewis MacDougall, Sigourney Weaver, Felicity Jones, Tony Kebbell, Liam Neeson, James Melville
Drama/Fantasy - 108 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 6 Jan 2017
A Monster Calls takes its kid seriously. He is only 12 years-old, but with an unblinking eye and zero sugarcoating of harsh truths, A Monster Calls studies the kid as he struggles to comprehend, process, and understand the pure grief caused by the near certain death of the one person closest to him in the world. Youth is an acceptable excuse for emotional immaturity. “He is too young to understand.” “He’ll understand when he’s older.” Conor O’Malley has no choice but to figure it out now. To help make sense of his harsh reality, he employs fantasy to guide him toward certain truths. Through a metaphor full of meaning and intense feelings, A Monster Calls will kick your empathetic faculties into overdrive and even though you thought you were not capable of it, leave you sobbing in your chair.
Conor O’Malley (Lewis MacDougall, Pan) is scared to death. His rational fear of loss manifests itself in the familiar stages of denial, anger, et al. The adults in the room try to obscure the facts of the case, hide it behind a curtain, and close the door on it. Director J.A. Bayona shines a high-wattage interrogation light on it. Conor hurts and Bayona is masterfully effective at making us feel the hurt too. Conor’s beloved mother is dying, the last ditch chemotherapies are not working, and Conor is powerless to save her. To fight this battle, Conor summons the ancient but mighty yew tree outside his bedroom window to life. The gargantuan tree, performance-captured and voiced by Liam Neeson (The Huntsman: Winter's War), says he will tell Conor three stories and then Conor will tell him a fourth.
Conor O’Malley (Lewis MacDougall, Pan) is scared to death. His rational fear of loss manifests itself in the familiar stages of denial, anger, et al. The adults in the room try to obscure the facts of the case, hide it behind a curtain, and close the door on it. Director J.A. Bayona shines a high-wattage interrogation light on it. Conor hurts and Bayona is masterfully effective at making us feel the hurt too. Conor’s beloved mother is dying, the last ditch chemotherapies are not working, and Conor is powerless to save her. To fight this battle, Conor summons the ancient but mighty yew tree outside his bedroom window to life. The gargantuan tree, performance-captured and voiced by Liam Neeson (The Huntsman: Winter's War), says he will tell Conor three stories and then Conor will tell him a fourth.
A Monster Calls works so well because of how matter of fact it takes Conor. It doesn’t patronize him or his feelings; they are just as valid as any adults. Kids are frequently skipped over and deemed incapable of grasping the situation’s gravity, but Conor feels the true dread of his place in the world. His main coping mechanism is the pencil in his hand and the drawings, whether he is aware of it or not, which order and categorize his emotions into where they need to be. The yew tree, which visits him at precisely at 12:07am, is Conor’s inspiration and arboreal storyteller.
Bayona carefully balances the read world and Conor’s fantasy lands which take the form of watercolor for medieval knights and witches and deeper dramatic reds for faithless priests. Bayona, familiar with family dramas from The Orphanage (2007) and The Impossible (2012), makes it work because he doesn’t pull the punches the way most movies with kid protagonists do. He allows them to hit Conor and the audience square in the solar plexus.
Patrick Ness, who wrote both the 2011 bestselling novel and adapted the screenplay working from an idea by the late Siobhan Dowd, gambled how much audiences were willing to expose themselves to such brutal realities. I believe viewers will welcome the frankness and respect the story gives to Conor. Perhaps the character who is the most one-on-one and in your face with Conor is his grandmother (Signourney Weaver, Finding Dory). Weaver, stepping up the generational ladder to play a grandmother for the first time, is not a reliable comfort. She is not an enemy, but certainly an unwanted, chilly obstacle to Conor.
When Conor’s mom (Felicity Jones, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story) must remain in the hospital, Conor is forced to make the reluctant move to grandmother’s house, a sharp, linear, and sterile environment compared to his warm, round, and encompassing home he shared with his mother. Bayona and Director of Photography Óscar Faura (The Imitation Game) share keen eyes for details like these. The yew tree follows Conor to the new home and its imposing size and booming voice feel real and present. Bayona says he was inspired both by Jim Kay’s illustrations from the novel and from Goya’s “The Colossus”, featuring an aggressive looking behemoth in the distance with petrified humans in the foreground.
The monster is not always 100% computer-generated either. An invading hand into Conor’s bedroom, a titanic foot in the backyard, and and all-encompassing head staring with fiery eyeballs through Conor’s second-story window are real. There were complex hydraulics and tangible materials to convey an authentic being in a confined space. Reacting to and interacting with the monster, Lewis MacDougall gives one of the most impressive youth performances in recent memory. His ability to operate alongside a mostly absent tree monster and then evoke intense tears and sadness beside his terminal mother go a long way to ensure the audience will not forget how they felt watching this film. Don’t be afraid of the emotional and stark subject matter, you will feel all the better for it on the other side.
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