Review: A Prescription for Love and Healing from Trey Edward Schults’ ‘Waves’
“Love is patient. Love kind. Love is not rude. It doesn’t boast. Love also forgets wrong.”
In the mind of Trey Edward Schults, life is like a wave. It has its highs. It has its lows. It advances, and it recedes. While our time on Earth is full of great joys, it is equally met with great challenges. Sadness, remorse, and loss are ever-present in our lives, and if we’re not careful, these ‘waves’ can consume us. But choosing to endure is how we find the next joy, and when do, we see an inherent existence in life: that to live is to learn and the essence of happiness comes from our choices to make it so.
It is this message that Schults adopts in his latest film Waves, a melodrama focusing on family during a time of great hardship brought upon them by their son’s actions. In a melancholic way, Waves snaps us into a reality that sees trying ordeal after trying ordeal, and asks our characters to make decisions regarding their ability to cope in response to tragedy. For us, their choices become a prescription for how we should live our lives. Not with hate nor anguish, not malice nor grief, but rather with happiness and joy, humility and forgiveness, and most importantly love for all things.
This story is told in two parts: one from the perspective of son Tyler (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) and another from daughter Emily (Taylor Russell). We start in the former and are given a slice of life where everything is on the up and up. Tyler is succeeding in his pursuits, he has a happy relationship, and his entire life is in front of him with wide eyes. But it wouldn’t be a melodrama without set backs, of which there are many. Slowly events take a toll on Tyler, culminating in a tragic incident that disrupts everything. Waves then shifts perspectives to Emily as she tries to navigate life in the aftermath of the ensuing events. Guilty by association, she takes on undue blame for what her brother did, and the onus now falls on her to pick up the pieces and learn to live with this new burden.
The aforementioned wave metaphor isn’t just something Schults uses as a theme. It’s also a guiding principle for Waves’ structure. The bifurcated narrative lets the film end where it began: we start on the highs, descend into the lows, and come out on the crest of a new wave. In between there are tinier swells. One moment you’ll be watching two lovers barrel down the high way without a care in the world listening to Animal Collective, and the next you’ll be witnessing someone hear they can’t compete for the rest of their life because of an injury. And those are the only minor ‘waves.’ The real heart wrenching events come later and push Tyler and Emily much further. How each reacts in each scenario is where meaning starts to emerge in the film.
Schults presents two ways of living: consumption or endurance. You can let life sink you or you can persevere through it. There is hate or love, grudges or forgiveness, self-ruin or healing. Waves affirms that you cannot avoid hardship, but you can choose between these virtues, and it emphatically proclaims that the later ones are the best attributes in which we can live by.
It’s a rather useful allegory for life, and when we watch, it’s as if Schults is speaking from personal experience. Locking the perspective to Tyler and Emily gives the film a youthful texture. These are kids encountering hardship for the first time and they have yet to learn how to deal with it. You can imagine this is something Schults himself had to encounter in his youth, and without bearing, he had to make decisions on his own to help guid his recovery. By presenting two sides of the same coin in both Emily and Tyler, Schults can provide a warning and a model for how to live. You can be like Tyler or you can be like Emily, and for Schults, it proves more meaningful to heal through hard times than succumb to them.
For all its heart, the film is not without fault. It is a stylistic beast that can get unwieldily at times. To emphasize life’s more euphoric moments, there are extended sequences that are reminiscent of a Terrance Malick film (*cough* Song to Song *cough*), and as such, you get a little weight on the run time. Additionally, though this is a family drama, both parents (Catherine and Donald played by Renée Elise Goldsberry and Sterling K. Brown) are relegated to the secondary. Their moments in particular are rich with emotion, and a large portion of the drama occurs between them and the children regarding their lofty expectations and their true affection for one another. It gets touched on momentarily, but not as much as you would hope especially in the second half when the shit has hit the fan and tensions are high thereafter.
The soundtrack though is a total jam. Seventy percent of the budget must have gone to licenses because you get everything from Frank Ocean and Kanye West to Tame Impala and Amy Winehouse. It’s a nonstop playlist of energy and melancholy that sets the tone for Schultz’ ambitious style. Plus bonus points for ending on “Sound & Color” because why would you not?
The ebb and flow of life is at the heart of Waves. Over and over again, life will advance and recede in unexpected and often challenging ways. We come to see through Tyler and Emily that our existence is made up of great happiness and great sorrow, but we cannot experience the former without the later. Life requisites both, and how we choose to endure is up to us. With each passing moment, the lessons prescribed in the images on screen leave a lasting wisdom on how we should live daily. Through tragedy, loss, and trauma, Waves gives us hope that we can be better versions of ourselves.
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