Film Review: Serenity

Man, we’re not even done with January, and we already got something that I’m not going to forget about anytime soon. I’m not entirely sure what to say about this movie. I really don’t. A part of me thinks I fell asleep halfway through and dreamt the insanity that I’m still trying to recover from. I’m talking about Serenity, not to be confused for the Firefly movie by Joss Whedon, but the latest film from English filmmaker, Steven Knight, who is known for works such as the TV series, Peaky Blinders, the Jason Statham vehicle, Redemption, the acclaimed drama with Tom Hardy being in a car, Locke, and – oddly enough – being one of the creators of the game show, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?

Now, if you were to see the trailer for Serenity, it seems simple enough. Matthew McConaughey plays Baker Dill, a fishing boat captain, who is struggling to make ends meet, until one day, a woman from his past, Karen (Anne Hathaway), comes out of nowhere, and offers him a lot of money but only if she takes her abusive husband, Frank (Jason Clark), out on a fishing trip, and kill him. Right? Simple enough. To be frank, my biggest worry was just that the movie would kinda pedestrian and boring. But boy, did I not expect this. The thing is, that premise I just described is merely the tip of the iceberg because it turns out there are a number of story elements that was never advertised, and it results in one of the most baffling moviegoing experiences I’ve had in a very, very long time.

Movies like this make me happy that I decided to forego scoring because it would be impossible to do so. Knight has been known for bringing meditative and introspective elements to genre stories, but he hasn’t made anything quite like this before. It’s the sort of swing that could only ever come from a genuinely great filmmaker and storyteller. It takes turns so wild that I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I couldn’t believe that financiers saw this pitch and thought it was worth investing in, and that actors like Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jason Clark, and Diane Lane read this script and thought this was something not only worth their time, but worth giving a 110% earnest commitment to. At this point, all I could do was let it all wash over me, and hope I come out the other side with my mind still intact.

I won’t give away what the big reveals are, I sincerely recommend checking this out, if you are the least bit curious – it’s best to go in as blind as possible. I will say there’s a lot of metaphorical stuff at work, and I was actually able to see what the twist was before it was revealed, though, I was in denial of until it was eventually confirmed. Thinking back on it, just because the choices are strange as hell, it doesn’t necessarily invalidate its thematic importance. There are plenty of films that take wild swings for the sake of an emotional throughline. However, even acknowledging that, the film approaches its metaphor in a sloppy way. The foreshadowing lays it on a bit thick, and it’s a bit too knowingly clever to the point where the big reveal you would have seen coming would now seem far too obvious to be true, and it then lends itself to some odd implications. Although, I’m legitimately curious to see if rewatching it, now that I’m over that initial shock, will paint the picture in a different light for me.

There’s nothing quite like Serenity, at least in terms of mainstream movies with big stars, but if I had to compare it to anything, I would say it shares a similar wavelength to Winter’s Tale (which I’ve previously written about how much I adore it). It’s a weird movie with weird choices and weird sensibilities, but it is super purposeful and sincere about each and every one of those choices, grounding them in ideas rooted in emotional truth. It’s wildly entertaining, featuring Hathaway doing a cool, over-the-top femme fatale thing, Clark being weirdly good at being a raging asshole, Lane using McConaughey as a booty call on multiple occasions, there’s just so much…stuff. You really just need to see it for yourself because my words are not doing it justice. At this moment, I do not know what to make of this film, I can’t even tell you if it even works, but I sure as hell respect it.