Vox Lux
"A pop career grown straight out of a wound, staged like grand opera and lit like a stadium."
Curator's Note
The opening ten minutes are the thing everyone argues about — a long, held sequence that refuses the coverage most films would cut it into, shot by Lol Crawley alongside Super 8 bursts and slow drifting takes. Scott Walker's last score gives ordinary city blocks a wintry, oversized dread, and Sia's original songs are convincing enough to pass as chart pop rather than movie pop. Watch Raffey Cassidy across both halves, and notice how Portman's enormous, mannered adult Celeste sits against the quiet girl she used to be — the friction is the argument, not a mistake.
Synopsis
In 2000, thirteen-year-old Celeste survives an act of violence at her Staten Island school and performs a hymn she wrote with her sister at the memorial. The recording makes her famous. Seventeen years later she is a hardened arena headliner, mid-comeback and mid-scandal, preparing a hometown show while the news cycle ties her imagery to another atrocity. Told in two chapters with a narrator who keeps score, it follows one career built entirely out of catastrophe.
Genre
Drama
Member
Guest