“You’re very pretty but you’re shallow beyond belief.” – Dell, Comet (2014)

Comet (2014)

Rated R Sci-fi/drama

Writer and Director:  Sam Esmail

Cast: Justin Long, Emmy Rossum

Cinematographer: Eric Koretz

Music: Daniel Hart

We only get to watch a movie for the first time once. Comet is, for me, now one of those movies that, while I’m grateful for the experience of this “time-based art”, it’s an experience I wish I could recreate as a new experience every time I watch it.

Although characters not uniquely driven by their fears and desires, sometimes catching fleeting glimpses of happiness possibilities, Kimberly and Dell are honestly and refreshingly flawed – even equally so. So often we see the story and growth of just one primary character while Comet affords us the satisfaction of experiencing the growth of both primary characters.

We experience this growth against a, usually, subtly surreal backdrop that allows us to remove the constraints that we would normally impose on these two, and on our own perspective, as they move throughout their world. Their world is familiar but different enough to allow for freedom from assumptions. The landscape is breathtaking and even brought tears to my eyes in moments when it was suddenly thrust into the foreground as an integral part of our characters’ stories.

Many of the dialogue scenes were shot in such a way that made me feel like I was watching a stage play – as if I were sitting right on stage with the actors, intimately observing both their joy and their turmoil and even feeling as if, like the landscape, I were participating in it. It reminded me of a monologue; even though you are aware that there are many beside you, you feel as if that character were speaking directly to you, beckoning you to see yourself in them.

And that’s really the point, right? Art beckons to us the same way that love does; to see ourselves in the other and to love and accept the other the way that we love and accept ourselves or, for many, to love and accept ourselves the way we love and accept the other.

We see ourselves in the highs and lows of Dell and Kimberly’s struggle to find the balance within so that balance can also be felt without, with the other. We seek out and hold on to tiny moments of true connection with another and, hopefully, like in the case of Dell and Kimberly, observe  growth spurts within ourselves through that connection. Complacency and criticism come so easily and expectation, negative or positive, distorts the beauty of reality, displacing the peace that exists in the here and now. Choose now, not five minutes from now.

For my Netflix friends, Comet is streaming as of today.

 

 

Advertisement