Let's talk about...Causeway (Spoilers)

[priyanka969]

LET'S TALK ABOUT

[priyanka969]

I thought both Jen and Brian were wonderful! The acting across the board was A+. Loved the actor who played Lynsey's brother. Loved Linda Emond. Loved the sweet nurse in the beginning! However, after reading all the reviews singling out Brian for being phenomenal (I completely agree that he was!) and saying that Jen's performance was more subtle than his and less noticeable...I was surprised to find that Brian was just as subtle as Jen! His breakdown scene was so much quieter than what I expected it to be! I thought it was going to be this big explosive scene and it...wasn't really. Yeah, they fight but it's a pretty mild fight imo.

Why didn't the mom visit the brother? Why don't we know how the conversation between Lynsey and her brother ended? Why did the subtitles end? Tbh that scene was my fave in the whole movie! Not the pool scene but the prison scene. I LOVED Jen's acting in that scene omg she broke my heart. I am surprised that scene wasn't mentioned more in the reviews!

I wish there was one final scene that sort of resolved Lynsey's relationship with her mother. Maybe one where she says "Yeah, I'll take the job to be closer to you". That was the one thing really missing from the movie. Also, more reviews should have praised Linda Emond who I really loved as the mother! I was expecting that the reason her and Lynsey may not have the best relationship was because the mother was cold and standoffish. But she seemed so warm and sweet. From the beginning when she says I wanted to pick you up and throw you a party and buy you a cake and make it a real homecoming I was like awww 

The ending was abrupt but fitting.

I really liked the movie! But if it had one scene sort of resolving Lynsey and her mother's relationship, I think reviews would have been much better. I don't know why there wasn't a resolution to that...

[AB2]

I liked that there was no resolution with the mom (though I would have wanted even more Emond, she deserves more praise for what she did with very little), i think the way the film is written and directed and the way it choses to end, if you resolves everything, it doesn't leave it as open and full of possibilities. I'm not sure that resolving the relationship with her mom would have fit the movie, basically.

The scene where she tells the doctor about the incident and the ASL scene are 2 of Jen's best acting scenes ever. Similarly, BTH's scene where he tells her about the accident is the kind of acting that should make anyone an instant Oscar frontrunner!

[sunworshipper]

I think that this film might contain the finest acting that Jen has ever produced.  It certainly demonstrated perfectly clear what an enormous acting range that Jen has.  She's is known for powerful scenes of rage, desperation, or despair. (McKay specifically picked this as the main reason to cast her for Don't Look Up.)  But she's great in a film lead with no explosions of emotion at all.

Why didn't the mom visit the brother? Why don't we know how the conversation between Lynsey and her brother ended? Why did the subtitles end? Tbh that scene was my fave in the whole movie! Not the pool scene but the prison scene. I LOVED Jen's acting in that scene omg she broke my heart. I am surprised that scene wasn't mentioned more in the reviews!

I had read more than one interview that singled out the prison scene for praise but it didn't work for me.  It is supposed to be so awesome that we can pick up the emotions without knowing what they are saying.  But that wasn't true for me.  Once the subtitles stopped, I was just left guessing at what was being communicated.  I'd like to read a transcript of the conversation from someone who understands ASL.

Overall, this is not the kind of film that I love.  I can see why some reviewers called it boring or incomplete.  I appreciated it but I never laughed or cried or felt any suspense or tension.  But that's a choice that I can appreciate.

I liked the ambiguity at the end.  It's not clear that James will renew his invitation to move in or even that he will still be her friend.

The moment that looked like a climax of the film in the trailer: Lynsey hugging James in the pool, turned out to be the trigger for a nasty fight.  (Actually the kiss but it followed right after.)

My take on her changing her mind on redeploying is that her work on healing herself to get her doctor's approval ironically ended up putting her in a state where she didn't need it anymore.

Going to see her brother seemed like it was a goodbye but she apparently changed her mind right after.  Did her brother convince to stay?  Again, I need to understand that prison conversation and I don't.

My take on the mother was not that she was cold but rather too self-involved and wouldn't truly listen to what Lynsey had to say.  She wanted to get Lynsey a job working near her but wouldn't try to understand why Lynsey didn't want a desk job.  (I even thought maybe that the TBI would cause problems with a computer screen--I don't know.)  I was amused when the mother said, "Don't be like my relatives or your dad's", because Lynsey was thinking, "You are the one I don't want to be like."  She was warm but shallow.

[priyanka969]

Yes, I need to know how that conversation with the brother ended!

Also, I kind of understood what that one review was saying when they said Jen doesn't look like she actually served. Like when she gets in the pool and you see her perfect body it's like really? You got blown up or were near a bomb and there are no physical marks? 

[AB2]

At a Q&A, they said that the brother telling her he felt more safe in prison because he doesn't trust himself out there was what made her realize that she was doing the same, wanting to go back to Afghanistan was her trying to go back to what she knows, and therefore what she sees as safe.

[sunworshipper]

At a Q&A, they said that the brother telling her he felt more safe in prison because he doesn't trust himself out there was what made her realize that she was doing the same, wanting to go back to Afghanistan was her trying to go back to what she knows, and therefore what she sees as safe.

Thanks.

Of course, she could realize that and still embrace it like her brother did.  She had the awareness but also needed the courage to try something different.

[lawrencepedia]

I just saw and it and....yeah, I have a new favourite performance from Jen. Despite movies and roles that are much louder, with more drama and actual plots, this one hit differently. Probably because it just felt SO realistic. She's never looked more like Jen in a movie, but she's also never vanished into a role as much as she did here imo. Which made it all that much more impressive. 

And for a decade now, Cooper has been the one co-start Jen's had most on screen chemistry with imo. And that reign just ended. Such a perfect duo. Only downside to a movie that is on the shorter end is that I didn't get to see more of them. But I also love how it ended. It didn't need to be wrapped up in a perfect little bow. All we needed to know is that these two people were going to be ok.

Oh and as for the subtitles in the ASL scene, when did they go missing? Unless I totally blanked (and yet I went back and checked now), they were there for the entire scene, until they put their hands against the windows, and then I guess you can see Jen sign something in the reflection of the glass for like a second, but that was about it and you can't even see what she's signing, and then it cuts to her brother smiling and them looking at each other.

[Eith007]

I actually like this movie. It's nice and wholesome. It would be great if it had been released in 2020. But knowing the fact that it took three years of work for this movie to come out, I expect more from the movie. The relationship among Lynsey and her family members isn't explored very well. At least two scenes are missing from the movie in my opinion. There should have been a argument between Lynsey and her mother to flesh out their relationship. We would have known more about their past. And another scene with her mother in the end is needed as well. The ending is abrupt. The scene that she jumps into the swimming pool would have made a better ending scene.

[sunworshipper]

I watched again and reading subtitles during the prison visit made a world of difference to that scene.

For some reason, the subtitles turned off the first viewing right after her brother says their mother hasn't visited.  I was going to explicitly turn them on this time but now they appear even when subtitles are turned off.  Must have been a first day technical glitch with Apple.

[cokebanana]

Hello! 
Nice to be back on the board.

Jennifer and Brian did an amazing job here and I loved that it focused on the human experience rather than the story. 
They have crazy good chemistry that sometimes I thought they had improv in some scenes. 
However, I have to mention her chemistry with Russell Harvard (brother) I did not expect to get emotional in the scene. He was only mentioned here and there throughout the movie but when their very short scene came toward the end, it felt like a real reunion. The way the brother was not portrayed as a typical junkie in prison, I was surprised by the warm energy from both of them. If there was a more important relationship in the movie aside from Lynsey and James, it has to be Lynsey and her brother because I think it is her brother who shares the same trauma with her and the one she really needed to reconnect with herself,... and they captured that feeling in a  less than 7 min dead silent scene. So good.