Chemical hearts
Managing director – Richard Tanne
Cast – Lili Reinhart, Austin Abrams
Chemical Hearts is a film about ruthlessness, about the complexity of human emotion and the equally sloppy desire to make sense of it. When it comes to high school melodramas, it’s one of the most beautiful in many years – a movie that does not seem to mock the teenage experience, and Spike Lee dares to call it quits.
There was a time, not so long ago, when Hollywood Twilight saw millions of coins and decided that its success signaled a new day for young adult films. And so it threw everything around the wall, in the hope that something – it doesn’t really matter what – sticks. You’d be surprised how many potential YA franchises were abandoned after the initial installments, mostly because the audience – a mildly obsessive teen audience, remember – thought the cheat on his first love was not something he wanted to do.
Watch the Chemical Hearts trailer here
And so, while some franchises like Twilight and The Hunger Games have survived, the most memorable films of this Golden Age of YA – a movement in American filmmaking that I am happy to witness at just the right time – are standalone dramas based on books. Like The Fault in Our Stars, Paper Towns, The Spectacular Now, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl and The Perks of Being a Wallflower – all personal favorites – Chemical Hearts, the new teen movie released on Amazon Prime Video, also offers a wise take the volatility of youth. And like each of those movies, it has enormous potential for its characters.
How often do we see filmmakers, who are probably in their 40s, trying to reach younger audiences in the most superficial way? There has been no greater culprit for this crime in recent months than Imtiaz Ali, who with Love Aaj Kal reduced an emotional truth of an entire generation to hashtags and a preponderance of mobile apps. Director Richard Tanne, who made the great Barack Obama film Southside with You, does not appear at any point in Chemical Hearts as a teenager himself. He considers his characters not with judgment – like most children, they tend to do stupid things – but with empathy and seriousness.
Austin Abrams and Lili Reinhart in a still from Chemical Hearts.
So much of what happens in the movie with both Henry Page and Grace Town – named as only characters in movies can be – happens in essence with them for the first time. You see as they struggle to understand their feelings, the hollowness of heartbeat and the euphoria of first love. You see when they learn to appreciate the roles they live in each other – when to offer support, but more importantly, when the other person has to leave alone.
And both Henry (Austin Abrams, who makes his best Timothee Chalamet impression) and Grace (an absolute knockout Lili Reinhart) are unsure of what they feel for each other. He is crippled unexpectedly in matters of the heart; so it is not surprising that he falls head over heels in love with Grace, who, in an elegantly directed scene, is survived by trauma. Much of the film is dedicated to her personal growth.
As she surrenders herself to him, she is consumed by an overwhelming sense of guilt, an emotion she acknowledges all too well, but this not entirely. She did not know that guilt – a very primary feeling – could take on such drastically different but equally intense forms. By comparison, Henry’s puppy love feels positively puerile. Many moments after meeting her for the first time, he takes Grace’s favorite poems and songs as his own. And soon after, he starts stalking her – both on the internet and IRL.
Lili Reinhart in a still from Chemical Hearts.
But these scenes are designed to mark the hefty clauses of emotional maturity that Henry must jump over to understand Grace’s delightfully darker, and noticeably more developed mind. It is a spirit consumed by the idea of death – not in a morbid way, but more out of curiosity. She has come close, and it has changed her perspective on life. Henry’s understanding of the world, after being born into a happy household, is based on what he has read, not on what he has experienced.
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I was also pleased to note that the film has no time for technology. It’s a very old-fashioned way. If Grace does not respond to Henry’s texts all day, he does not immediately start an online investigation into her whereabouts – like any true romantic hero, he sprints to her house.
Chemical Hearts is a wonderful throwback to a very specific era in filmmaking – the late 2000s – an era in which romantic movies were defined by navel-gazing soundtracks and dreamy visuals; too many dramatic kids at the opposite ends of the economic spectrum and quirky best friends. It is the cheapest form of on time available at the moment.
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The author tweets @RohanNaahar
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