A24 was a film distribution company that immediately aligned itself with some of the more unconventional and critically successful directors like Sofia Coppola, Harmony Korine, and Denis Villeneuve as well as movies such as Under the Skin and Locke. But by 2016 they have emerged as an important production studio in their own right; Moonlight’s great success story is theirs since it was the first movie by A24 made in-house which won Best Picture. Since then, they’ve become one of the major players in the world of cinema, introducing some of the greatest contemporary directors and creating some of the best recent films.
Jandy Nelson may not seem like she belongs in the canon of A24 movies including their bold documentaries, art films, and elevated horror projects. Jandy Nelson wrote I’ll Give You The Sun for young adult readers–Warner Bros. has reportedly been developing this for eight years now. Her first novel before that celebrated sophomore work has just dropped on Apple TV+ via A24 after four years (one among few movies to come out from them given that it is a bit boutique production house), which will also release Everything Everywhere All at Once soon.
The Sky is Everywhere does not fit with what A24 normally does initially or really belongs to its director’s filmography. Josephine Decker has directed some of the most bizarre psychological thrillers you will ever see–she is a brilliant filmmaker. Because Decker is simply too much to handle when it comes to conventional filmmaking he defies these rules in his highly distinguishable Madeline’s Madeline through his experimental Thou Wast Mild and Lovely.Decker had just come off her 2020 film Shirley (with Elizabeth Moss playing Haunting Of Hill House author Shirley Jackson) when she was picked up by A24 to helm…a YA romance?
This combination of talent is entirely weird but mostly works because it’s an invigorating counterpunch to so much self-destructive, and often misogynistic romantic movie tropes. Is it like the other A24’s Ex Machina, Hereditary, Uncut Gems or The Florida Project that were more than revealing? No, and it is incredibly tempting to just point someone toward any number of other A24 movies that deserve recognition; nevertheless, The Sky Is Everywhere deserves serious consideration as a YA romance film. It is sweet and gentle and whimsical and flies by (just like the numerous leaves drifting through the air in the film) for such a short time yet also delves deeply into themes of loss and teenage angst. Moreover, it quietly destroys some toxic romance stereotypes while also playing with them in more subtle ways.
The film frequently shows the wind-whipped, lingering leaves. It is about Lennie Walker (initially played by Selena Gomez but she was well outdone by Grace Kaufman) who is a protagonist of the story. Like one of those intriguing and sweet ‘manic pixie dream girls’ before her, Lennie writes on leaves (and walls and shoes and just everything else really, but mostly organic material); it is littered with her nature notes. A little more realistic than those whimsically dorky characters that pervaded the 2000s in insufferable sweetness like New Girl, Garden State etc., for instance. She has lost Bailey her sister and best friend to a sudden aneurysm which robbed life of any kind of joy and love for music which used to be her favorite thing.
Thematically beginning the movie with Lennie’s overwhelming grief still haunting her many months after Bailey died as she gets back to school makes sense even though it could have been a narrative misstep. While there are (very short) flashbacks, we don’t actually get a feel for who Bailey was or what their relationship was like; The Sky is Everywhere breaks the cardinal film rule (and presumably the book’s strength) of ‘show, don’t tell,’ by simply telling the viewer repeatedly how close the sisters were without ever really exploring that connection. Another strange but very brief flashback where everyone laughs and claps at Bailey’s funeral does not show any emotional or psychological context at all—it’s empty and hollow.” Other movies like this Room are divided into two parts-one section focused on Bailey when she was alive.
The reason it works thematically though, is because The Sky is Everywhere seems primarily concerned with moving beyond negativity and not allowing pain, tragedy, or grief to determine one’s character. Lennie has changed so much since her sister died according to many people in the movie. Of course this makes sense; as one character (a delightful Jason Segel) also puts it, “it’s something you never get over; “she’s going to die again and again every day for the rest of my life, isn’t she?” Lennie asks this poignantly.
But such sorrow has taken up all of her that she cannot do what she loves (music), instead developing emotional and sexual feelings towards her late sister’s boyfriend, Toby. What the film does well is show how transference can work – this woman who lost a sister and this man who lost a lover are drawn to each other because they seem like the only two people in the world who have suffered the same wound and being together is as close as they come to having Bailey still alive with them.
Though the film knows that this is destructive. It is a remarkably aware book. For example, Lennie has read Wuthering Heights twenty-three times by her own admission and proceeds to pattern her ideal romance after Heathcliff and Catherine’s love story, who are the 19th-century Edward Cullen and Bella Swan of that epic. Gone with the Wind, Twilight, Fifty Shades of Grey even any other romantic novels about brooding men who are dark and mysterious have all turned romance into something toxic, if not outright chauvinistic in some cases. The feminist critic Samantha Ellis wrote How Heathcliffe Ruined My Love Life for The Telegraph in which she brilliantly discusses these issues with this ‘tall dark and handsome’ stereotype. She pens:
The Sky is Everywhere deconstructs these clichés ruinous to the genre of romance superbly. Lennie tells Toby “It’s possible you’ve taken the whole strong silent type thing a little far” as an illustration in one scene. In addition to being emotionally advanced beyond its teenage romantic movie trappings, it also rises above these negative stereotypes seeing the inherent brokenness and mistakes in each character while trying to show how one can move forward from here.Toward this end it may be marred by dripping sentimentality common to so many others (well at least towards a new guy named Joe), but most of those would not ruin your love life according to Ellis.
Still, Lennie’s narration feels like The Notebook or Twilight among other young adult romances; but where they fail badly is where Sky succeeds in making it poetic as if it were actually taken from a novel of some sort just like that aforementioned book.The script also possesses several absolutely breathtaking lines such as; “It’s such a colossal effort not to be shattered by what was lost, but to be enchanted by what was,” or “Grief is a house where no one can protect you…where doors no longer let you in or out.”
The poetic narration also complements Josephine Decker’s direction, which retains some of the disarming experimentalism of her previous work but is much more gentle. The screen bursts with color adjustments so drastic that it seems to be an entirely different movie at one point. There are sudden dance numbers that could have been choreographed by a five-year-old and fantastical sequences filled with all sorts of nonsensical sounds, as well as artificial-looking special effects – all done whimsically. One might think Michel Gondry directed The Fault in Our Stars and even better yet would be thinking that Spike Jonze made Pushing Daisies; they are most compared to their work along with the sadly overlooked Paper Heart featuring Charlyne Yi and Michael Cera.
However derivative her direction may appear of those playful magical realist directors, it still works perfectly fine and gives it a charm and kindness that matches its journey from the toxic darkness of bad romance into the twee little light.
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