Movie Review: ‘I Saw the Shine on Television’

On May 3, ‘I Saw the TV Glow’, directed by Jane Schoenbrun and starring Justice Smith, Brigette Lundy-Paine, Helena Howard, Fred Durst, Danielle Deadwyler, Lindsey Jordan and Amber Benson, opens in theaters.

Initial thoughts

Horror, reality-bending fantasy, and plenty of ’90s nostalgia come together in ‘I Saw the TV Glow,’ the second feature film written and directed by Jane Schoenbrun, who debuted in 2021 with the spooky, ‘We’re All Going to the World’s Fair.’ infused by the pandemic. This time, Schoenbrun draws inspiration from David Lynch, ‘Donnie Darko’ and weird ’90s children’s television to tell a story of suburban apathy and gender dysphoria that is both disturbing and moving, even if it may seem dark to some viewers. .

History and direction

In a drab, nameless suburb that already feels like an alternate universe where everyone is half-dead, Owen (played as a child by Ian Foreman and as a teenager by Justice Smith) teams up with an older teenager named Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine). ) for her shared interest in a children’s television show called ‘The Pink Opaque’. Owen’s fascination stems from watching advertisements for the show, as his parents say it’s too late to watch them (“Isn’t it a girls’ show?” scoffs his father, played by Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst, with a distant and icy look). threat).

Maddy, however, is hooked, lugging around an episode guide like it’s her own personal Bible, and eventually making Owen sneak off to watch it with her under the pretext that she’s going to a friend’s house for the night. (later he hands her VHS tapes of the series). the ones she misses). The show itself resembles many of the cheap, cheesy, lo-fi “young adult” shows (and later, more sophisticated ones like ‘Buffy’) that proliferated in the ’90s on Nickelodeon and other basic cable channels. , focusing on two girls, Isabel (Helena Howard) and Tara (Lindsey Jordan), who meet at summer camp and share a psychic bond that allows them to fight all kinds of monsters (and a big villain named Mr. Melancholy) without even seeing each other again.

It soon becomes clear that Isabel and Tara are embodiments of a different existence for Owen and Maddy, and that the TV characters’ acceptance of their powers and true selves is something both real-life friends long for. But only Maddy takes action and abruptly disappears from town just as ‘The Pink Opaque’ is cancelled. When she finally reappears before an older and shocked Owen, she tells him that the world of ‘The Pink Opaque’ is actually real, and that the reality they inhabit may be fictional.

Has Maddy gone crazy? What is the truth? Owen doesn’t know for sure, but he does sense that something is wrong and that there is a version of him that doesn’t want to slide down the same suburban path toward dissolution that he sees all around him. As Owen’s world begins to shift and change, Schoenbrun allows the film to mutate with him: at times Owen addresses the audience directly, while the lines between his reality and another seem to cross, merge and blur in a hallucinogenic whirlwind. of images that flicker in and out of the ‘Pink Opaque’.

Schoenbrun directs all of this as if they are in and out of Owen’s world, coolly observing his twisted journey with detachment while also allowing us to feel the rawness of his emotions and the terror he feels as he is literally pulled in two directions. The director also captures the bittersweet taste of memory, especially in a later scene in which an older, defeated Owen finds a rerun of ‘The Pink Opaque’ on late-night television and suddenly sees it for the vulgar, amateurish production it really is. , even though his childhood memory was magical.

Much of the film’s final act takes place in the arid Fun Center (which is anything but) where Owen works. It’s there that part of Schoenbrun’s theme, that the suburbs are an exhausting hellhole of alienation, comes across most strongly, but the director doesn’t seem to have much to say about it. The other part of the director’s thesis, however, is much more personal and may go unnoticed by viewers who do not live the same experience.

Self realisation

‘I Saw the TV Glow’ is an allegory about the “broken egg,” the moment when a trans person suddenly and clearly sees that what they are on the inside may no longer match what the world sees on the outside. Schoenbrun’s personal journey as a trans person is integrated into the film, while Owen and Maddy are two people going through the same thing, represented by the way they relate to the characters of Isabel and Tara in ‘The Pink Opaque’ . ‘

One of them, Maddy, feels more and more comfortable with who she already is and accepts the idea that she can enter another world and live honestly. Meanwhile, Owen, confused and desperate, sees the truth within his reach, but cannot fully distance himself from the conventional story he feels he has to live. “Do you like girls?” Maddy interrogates him at one point, after letting him know where she stands. “I don’t know,” Owen says breathily. When Maddy asks if she prefers boys, Owen replies, “I think I like TV shows…When I think about that stuff, I feel like someone took a shovel and dug out my insides.”

Smith (‘Jurassic World: Dominion’) and Lundy-Paine (‘Bill & Ted Face the Music’) bring real warmth and depth to these conflicted characters. Lundy-Paine gives Maddy an initial wariness that develops into steely determination and eventually an otherworldly aura, while Smith is achingly sad and also touchingly sweet as the tormented Owen, effectively communicating through his physicality and makeup how Owen seems to fold in on himself as the years pass, leading to a heartbreaking ending.

Final thoughts

In many ways, ‘I Saw the TV Glow’ is independent cinema in the truest sense, a film that is very much a deeply personal vision filtered through experimental narrative and dreamlike visual imagery. If some of its ideas are a little tired (many movies have told us many times how mortifying the suburbs can be), other concepts, like finding your true self, are relevant right now, as trans and LGBTQ+ people are increasingly once again under fire. for expressing precisely that. Even without that subtext, Jane Schoenbrun’s Fever Dream is a compelling and often disconcerting watch that will strike different chords with everyone who sees it.

‘I Saw the TV Glow’ receives 7.5 out of 10 stars.

What is the plot of ‘I Saw the Shining on TV’?

Lonely in their arid ’90s suburban enclave and marginalized in their tribal school system, Owen (Ian Foreman and Justice Smith) and Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine) bond over their love for a weekly “young adult” show. called ‘The Pink’. Opaque.’ But when Maddy disappears, Owen realizes that his connection to the show could be more than mere fandom and that the very nature of reality may be beginning to crumble around him.

Who is part of the cast of ‘I Saw the TV Glow’?

• Justice Smith as Owen
• Brigette Lundy-Paine as Maddy
• Helena Howard as Isabel
• Fred Durst as Frank
• Danielle Deadwyler as Brenda
• Lindsey Jordan as Tara
• Amber Benson as Johnny Link’s mother
• Ian Foreman as Young Owen

“I saw the brightness of the television.” Photo: A24.

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