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| Jennifer Lawrence in "Causeway" Photo Credit: RottenTomatoes.com |
While movies about war are mostly well-known for showing what happens on the battlefield, it’s also important to show what occurs when the servicemen and servicewomen are back home. Classics like “The Best Years of Our Lives” and “Born on the Fourth of July,” and modern examples like “American Sniper,” “Thank You for Your Service,” and “Leave No Trace,” in one way of another, deal with how veterans adjust to life after they serve their tours of duty.
In her feature directorial debut, Lila Neugebauer gives us the psychological-drama, “Causeway,” which provides a nuanced and poignant examination of a veteran planning the transition into a new phase of her life.
Lynsey (Jennifer Lawrence) returns home to New Orleans as she continues to recover from a severe brain injury that she sustained while serving in Afghanistan. As time goes on, she tries to readjust to society, all while facing the choice of whether or not to redeploy.
Now that Lawrence is finished with franchise films, it’s great to see her get back to the intimate kind of drama that propelled her to stardom over a decade ago with her work in “Winter’s Bone.” She portrays a similar kind of character in “Causeway,” an individual who has a fierce independence and a method of moving about in the world. In the film, Lynsey goes from thousand-yard stares into eventual looks of intense contemplation as she tries to figure out a future purpose. There’s a resiliency that Lawrence brings out that’s as admirable as it is heartbreaking because, as much as you applaud Lynsey’s desire to get by on her own, you want her to get the help that she needs and not feel like she has to go at it alone, and Lawrence finds that balance of someone who knows what she’s doing, but is also lost. She gives one of her finest performances that thrives on hard emotions delivered in low-key ways.
Brian Tyree Henry gives an equally great performance as James, a mechanic who befriends Lynsey and who’s trying to overcome his own traumatic past. His friendly, understanding personality is a solace that brings us through this uncertain period of Lynsey’s life as she travels through rough terrain to do what she needs to do, and at the same time, Henry displays a relief of having Lynsey as someone with whom to talk. Henry gives his character a laid-back charm of someone who will help you and talk with you, but is also weighed down by a troubled past.
The screenplay by Ottessa Mosefegh, Luke Goebel, and Elizabeth Sanders has the whole narrative take place in the U.S., with us only receiving accounts about Lynsey’s tour of duty as she describes it to others. This is an uninterrupted view of Lynsey’s character, with the screenplay having her being in every scene and showing her time as a civilian. It all offers an intimate study of how trauma impacts someone, with the narrative showing us scenes of both Lynsey by herself and with people, exhibiting how she manages herself in both cases.
Throughout the story, we’re given tidbits about the trouble that Lynsey had growing up in her household, and it’s just enough to go by without losing track of what’s important in the story. Although we get a couple of meaningful scenes between Lynsey and her immediate family, the movie doesn’t forget that this is about Lynsey readjusting to the life she left behind, not so much confronting her past as it is about focusing on her present and future.
Neugebauer often frames Lynsey against out-of-focus backgrounds that emphasize the fogginess of her mind following the injury and to place us in the disconnect that she feels with her home and the people around her. With this type of cinematography by Diego García, we remain in Lynsey’s headspace as she tries to navigate civilian life and consider the next stage of her life. The way in which Neugebauer and García have the camera follow Lynsey has us feel the displacement that she experiences as she tries to reacquaint herself with her hometown.
In a film about overcoming a painful past, “Causeway” shows that how, even after we’ve been through the worst, there’s always a way back.
Grade: A
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