This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
Carl Hudson’s review published on Letterboxd:
This review may contain spoilers.
Wonderfully uncompromising and thoroughly its own thing, but it spreads itself in so many directions that it never grows into a complete whole. Maybe that's fitting, as its central theme seems to be about divisions - in relationships, in ourselves, in organizations as well as society at large - but then it makes references to past and current traumas, from the Holocaust, the Cold War, to terrorism, in an attempt to become a grand text about whether it's better to forget or remember, a theme that's never, as well as I could see in this first watch, cohesively connected to all these dualities. And in all the themeing, it seems to forget to tell Susie Bannion's story of growth in an emotionally affecting way, leading all its gorgeous imagery to be offered up without any sense of what it all means.
But then I've been mulling this all over in my head for the last four days, and I'm still not sure what I think of it all. And, even if it doesn't all work, there's enough here to flat-out love, such as its eeriness and Susie's haunting line, "Why is everyone so ready to believe the worst is over?". It's a gorgeous nightmare you don't want to wake up from, a film that stares into the face of a terrifying future and asks why we didn't see this coming, that cleanses both itself and you in the process, even if you're not sure the cleansing is a good or a bad thing. You just know it happened, and now you have to live with it; dualities are everywhere, they will never be solved, unless through horrifying violence, and yet this is the world we live in. And yet, some things lasts.
In many ways, it can be seen as Call Me By Your Name's polar opposite; that film is all about how we cling to a past that meant something to us, while this film asks whether it is better to forget it and move on or cling to it forever. Yes, it's messy and it overcomplicates itself for no good reason (as far as I can see), but it has staying power and is unlike anything else I've seen this year, and in a good, long while. I hope it feels clearer or more cohesive on later watches, which I look forward to. In this day and age, where the twenty-first Marvel-film, the twelfth Harry Potter-film and the sixth DC-film are what people look forward to, I'm glad something so singular and unique is available in cinemas, even if it's messy.