Justin Chang
speaker
1,638 appearances
51 recordings
2 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard 2d ago
Justin Chang’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 28 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 6.
Appearances
In one relatively mild instance of misbehavior, Jeremy lies down on the front porch one afternoon, keeping so still that a neighbor calls the house, alarmed that he might be dead.
Sasha's parents are sensitively played by Adam Tompa and Iringo Reti, who show us a loving marriage that's come under all kinds of strain.
There's Jeremy, of course, but there are also the challenges of settling into a new home in a still fairly new country.
sasha's father spends a lot of time working on his computer and his wife is frustrated at having to do most of the housework and child-rearing but romvari doesn't exaggerate these pressure points nor does she overplay jeremy's behavior
The film is meticulous about showing the family's genuinely happy times, including those rare moments when Jeremy cracks a smile and comes out of his shell.
It's as if Ramvari wants to be fair to Jeremy, to not let his diagnosis of oppositional defiant disorder define him.
In time, though, as Jeremy keeps acting out, the situation becomes untenable.
and a social worker, one of many professionals brought in to help, recommends that Jeremy be sent away.
In its dramatic restraint and psychological insight, Blue Heron reminded me of two exceptional recent films about parents and kids, Aftersun and Janet Planet, both of which were also partly inspired by their director's childhoods.
Rumvari's film is the most carefully constructed memory piece I've seen in some time.
You get the sense that she's trying to put together what she remembers as precisely as she can, right down to the clunky 90s Windows interface on Sasha's dad's computer.
Ramvari treats the camera as an instrument of subjectivity.
For the most part, we see mainly what Sasha sees and how she sees it.
Key moments are glimpsed from odd, oblique angles.
Events that Sasha never witnessed, or perhaps forgot, are not dramatized at all.
At times, the camera pans idly from left to right, a movement that simulates the act of sifting through the past.
at roughly the halfway mark blue heron makes a daring leap suddenly we are following an older version of sasha played by amy zimmer who is now like romvari a filmmaker keen to make sense of her family history
But the way she goes about it triggers a surprising twist that gently toys with our sense of time and reality.
In asking what she or anyone could have done differently, Ramvari laments the imperfections of memory, the effects of mental illness, and the limitations of even the most loving family.
This beautiful and perceptive film feels like something summoned from deep within her consciousness and piped directly into ours.
Showing 841–860 of 1,638 · page 43 of 82
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