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| Damn! I forgot the illusion where I make conflict appear!!! |
She Sings to the Stars
offers a bit of a conundrum. It’s not an
exciting movie, it’s not a funny movie, it didn’t elicit any strong emotions of
any kind in this viewer, and its vague and slow-moving plot offered little in
the way of overall storytelling. The
dialogue was oftentimes awkward or casually racist (although that appears to be
something of an intentional theme, more on that later) and the delivery of
these awkward lines was equally unimpressive and uninspired. And yet, it wasn’t a bad movie. It hardly held my interest, and yet I somehow
enjoyed the experience. She Sings to the Stars is like a walk in
a reasonably nice park on a perfectly average day. Slow, meandering, and ultimately, without a
real point, but somehow worth doing, when there’s nothing better around.
The film follows a scant three-person cast in a story set in
a tiny desert home and the surrounding area.
Our characters, a marooned magician, and an aged woman of presumably
Mexican Indian descent, and her grandson, an aspiring dancer, struggle with the
challenges of the time spent in isolation in a desert during a dry season, and
the interpersonal disputes that are certain to follow. Despite these very real difficulties, no real
tension ever develops. Early on a
harrowing event appears to set into motion the movie’s primary crisis, but that
danger is more or less resolved by the natural progression of the film. The result is an almost bizarre experience
for the watcher. With the exception of a
dream sequence, the film is hardly surreal – perhaps it’s even uncommonly
realistic. The movie just happens.
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| Don't ask me how I washed these. When you've got no water, you have to make do. |
The film touches tangentially on a few themes – the
impossibility of success in the entertainment industry, the supernatural
mysteries of native cultures, and the casual racism of the ignorant. Our magician is often racially insensitive
when dealing with the other characters.
It never seems malicious, and is largely congruent with American media
and the American “everyman’s” attitude, especially towards Mexican Americans. Perhaps the filmmakers wished to subtly draw
attention to the issue by the inclusion of these moments, or perhaps the
magician is just kind of a racist.
Either way, it didn’t come across as tasteless, which is oddly
refreshing.
On a technical scale, She
Sings to the Stars is passable. Its
minimal budget is apparent throughout, but there are a few interesting shots
and the cinematography is limited, but never obtrusive. The streaming version that was provided for
this review did suffer from some audio balance issues, making it occasionally
difficult to understand the dialogue, but as referenced earlier, that may not
have been a bad thing.
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Score
-Patrick B. McDonald