Yelling to the Sky is a drama about a teen, played by Zoe Kravitz, from a dysfunctional world struggling to find a different path from the beleaguered road that the film introduces us to at the beginning of the film. Will she unwittingly continue the unintended legacy that her surroundings bestowed on her or will she find a healthier way to discover her identity?
I think that Yelling to the Sky ended up in my queue because a black woman directed it, Victoria Mahoney, but the film is so unrelentingly bleak in the beginning that I initially thought that I hated it. Usually when a character throws away food, regardless of the context, I cannot empathize with and usually despise the character, but when the tone of Yelling to the Sky completely shifted, I realized that I did not hate the movie, but the main character’s situation and her demeanor in the face of her difficulties. Even though the shift is objectively not a wise one for that character to make, it is completely understandable why someone would make certain decisions in that context.
Yelling to the Sky is a film that makes you feel. Mahoney is not a high definition director with Dolby surround sound. She is an impressionist. A character is not burdened with an exposition heavy speech to help us understand what is happening. We enter in the middle of people’s lives. They simply exist and are unfortunately all too aware of what has happened before so randomly explaining everything would make no sense. Yelling to the Sky is a confounding and disorienting experience: who is this person, why are they doing that, what is happening. Yelling to the Sky replicates life-there are no easy answers.
Yelling to the Sky has two major themes: missed connections and cycles of dysfunction. One character will apologize to another character once he or she has an (off screen if not main character) epiphany and changes, but the one being apologized to may not be ready to receive it, believe it or understand how that injury has transformed the injured into the abuser or the user. The strongest example of this dynamic is between the father, played by Jason Clarke, and Kravitz’s character, who is his daughter. In an early scene, he is drinking with his friends outside, is proud to introduce them, but hides his shame at them seeing him in that context that he runs them off. Later Kravitz’s character unconsciously recreates this scenario, but now he is sober and engaged.
Special kudos for Yelling to the Sky goes to the set decorator, Matthew W. Herschel, and costume designer, Nia Hooper. Herschel accurately depicts how signs of internal dysfunction are reflected externally in the state of a house, which is practically a separate character that also transforms as the film unfolds. The characters’ wardrobe choices are silent autobiographies, particularly for one of two characters played by Sonequa Martin-Green, who is best known for playing Sasha in The Walking Dead and will soon be at the helm of Star Trek: Discovery (squee!!!!!).
Yelling to the Sky may not be an enjoyable film, but it is a solid, empathetic work of art that you should watch if you are not super depressed and are in a patient, open state of mind.