Review: A Solid Outing in 'Hearts Beat Loud'
This review was originally published on UW Film Club, but has since been reuploaded here with the author’s permission.
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This film was seen at the 44th Seattle International Film Festival. The film is now in wide release in Seattle.
The “indie” scene is full of heart warming dramas, catchy music, and well regarded actors who take on smaller scripts with the hope of tapping into human emotion. The scene is well populated and represented, but Hearts Beat Loud is perhaps the most outward facing, indie movie so far this year. The question is can the film break free from these notions that plague the indie scene? Well no, but it is a solid outing.
The film centers around Frank Fisher (Nick Offerman) and his daughter Sam (Kiersey Clemons). While Frank struggles with his vinyl record store Sam is preparing to head off to college in the fall. In the final months of their departure, Frank tries to savor what time they have left by making music, a hobby Sam reluctantly participates in. When Frank uploads one of their collaborations to Spotify and it becomes a hit, the two come at odds as Frank pushes for Sam to pursue her talents while she wants to move on.
What is the biggest issue is how contentious the father daughter relationship can be. Frank is a man who hangs onto the past, but he never seems to over come that. Instead the film finds resolve in compromise which doesn’t lead to a gratifying arc for either Frank or Sam. As Sam is going off to college to study pre-med, Frank is losing the lasting remnant of his wife who he sees in his daughter, and he attaches himself to her to prevent that loss. The following interaction between Sam and Frank doesn’t result in anything learned, but rather a consolation as Sam accepts her father’s dependency and desire to remain the same, doing so through their collaborative music. By the end of the film, you feel as if neither father nor daughter have changed all that much.
It’s even weirder when you consider how much push back Sam has to the initial jam session, but then acceptance immediately after the song finds success. The film sets itself up for Sam to resent the success of their song because she wants to be a heart doctor, but instead she leans into it and takes it on. The conflict in the film wants to come out of a mismatch between what Sam and Frank want, but it never communicates that. It is much more concerned with how both Sam and Frank find an equal footing between themselves in a father-daughter relationship, but unfortunately that theme isn’t all that gratifying.
Hearts Beat Loud is trying to communicate the acceptance of differences between father and daughter, but ends up with an unsatisfactory result. The mild mannered indie film is harmless enough, but you won’t find much beyond the performances of Offerman and Clemons. There’s nothing that completely derails the film, but it’s also nothing to write home about either.