Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
In 1999, teenage sisters Celeste and Eleanor survive a seismic, violent tragedy. The sisters compose and perform a song about their experience, making something lovely and cathartic out of catastrophe — while also catapulting Celeste to stardom. By 2017, the now 31-year-old Celeste is mother to a teenage daughter of her own and struggling to navigate a career fraught with scandals when another act of terrifying violence demands her attention.
Vox Lux is a genuinely singular film — Brady Corbet's formal audacity, the Malickian narration by Willem Dafoe, and the way it links mass violence to pop celebrity mythology make it unmistakably one-of-a-kind. Natalie Portman's unhinged, chameleonic performance as the adult Celeste is a career highlight, earning a well-above-average acting score. The narrative structure, split across time with a prologue/epilogue conceit, is intellectually ambitious but emotionally cold in ways that feel partly intentional and partly like unresolved tension — the plot earns a solid above-average. Cinematography is competent and occasionally striking but not a standout element. The ending — a bravura extended concert sequence — is both mesmerizing and deliberately abrasive, landing above average but not quite transcendent given how much it leans on spectacle over catharsis.