Directed By Aidan Zamiri

Starring – Charli XCX, Hailey Gates, Alexander Skarsgard

The Plot – A rising pop star (Charli XCX) navigates the complexities of fame and industry pressure while preparing for her arena tour debut.

Rated R for adult language throughout and some drug material

The Moment | Official Trailer HD | A24

POSITIVES

If the creative motivation behind “The Moment” was to offer an inescapably grim and anxious surveilling on the realities of generational fame, then I would say Zamiri passed with flying colors, particularly while feeding into the tedium of celebrity that he paints so suffocatingly tense that you would assume that he sat under the learning tree of the Safdie Brothers. Even as satirical parody inside of a mockumentary captivity, the film not only has so much to say about the sad and distorted state of responsibility within the industry, in which the studio prioritizes profit over emotional and physical well-being, but also the obsessive impulses pertaining to the creative process, in order to keep the flame of fame burning as hot and intoxicatingly glowing as possible, and while there’s certainly some liberties to be taken with the exaggerated emphasis of some secondary characters coming across as androids instead of empathizing human beings, Zamiri’s direction truly feels like it grasps the unsettling honesty of what transpires behind the scenes to so many of these helpless artists, with his single greatest strength stemming from the alluring presentation outlining a vulnerable dynamic that Charli continuously faces throughout so many tense and disconnected interactions with other characters. Like the Safdie’s before him, Zamiri utilizes tightly framed claustrophobic shots of Charli’s demeanor to convey the mounting stress that continuously burns within her like an unbridled volcano, paralleling this with typical wide angle lenses of other depicted characters, in order to convey the disconnect between them, and between it and the evocatively intoxicating essence of the onscreen flashing text used for establishing shots and underlining context to a scene’s foundation, the film conjures an exhilarating one-of-a-kind experience maximizing the live-fast lifestyle of those involved, with music video kind of expressiveness to the gritty and invasiveness of the imagery that wipes any semblance of grounded subtleties away from what we’re interpreting. If this isn’t enough, the editing techniques feel intentionally void of telegraphed intrusion, instead opting for sudden spontaneity as a way of making so many of these day-to-day and scene-to-scene instances blend seamlessly together to craft a disorienting haze to what transpires in and around Charli, helping to illustrate the agonizing duress that constantly persists within her lack of rest lifestyle. While a movie of this centralized focus could easily come across every bit as pretentious or self-wallowing as something like The Weeknd’s “Escape From Tomorrow”, it never feels like a puff or pity piece towards the singer, on account of the script’s wider scope about immersive insights about the industry and the fandom who galvanize these human beings towards feeling god-like, highlighting a message of urgency to the industrial toxicity that feels just as heavy to the audience forced to endure surmising developments as it does our Brat protagonist. Speaking of Charli, she does an impeccable job of conveying the stress and anxiousness that constantly persists in her sleepless demeanor, with boldly illustrating facial registries that play so vividly unmistakable in the unsubtle ways that she responds to characters of varying responsibility and sentiment to her. For someone who is just recently delving into acting, Charli shows an emotional dexterity and overall presence that doesn’t feel stiff or wooden in the way inexperience typically lends itself to the occasion, and while she typically plays the straight woman to the movie’s overarching madness, her authenticity factor never withers in the depths of the portrayal, conjuring an exaggerated version of character who we not only empathize with, but also understand the extensive magnitude of her societal fame. Alexander Skarsgard is also a much-needed shot of adrenaline to the movie’s appeal, brandishing much of the movie’s effective humor with these periodic intrusions that speak volumes about the ignorance and room-reading disconnect of the character.

NEGATIVES

As a confessed fan of Charli’s music, I fully expected to attain an advantage towards the appeal of the film that never every member of the audience will receive, however I still found conflicting motions to the movie’s execution that nearly condemned its bountiful efforts, particularly in the lack of effective humor that made so many of these comedic deliveries transpire with a complete lack of impact. While the script from as many as three different screenwriters chooses to focus on some darkly devastating subjects, such as depression, anxiety attacks, or even suicide, it still makes a tone-deaf approach to elicit some levity in the form of gags that lack any semblance of creativity or subtlety to how they’re enacted to a scene’s integrity, making the mockumentary brand framing feel tragically wasted alongside iconic memories of “This is Spinal Tap”. To be fair, there were a couple of instances where the movie did attain a smirk out of me, particularly in the cutesy humility of one scene involving an assistant of Skarsgard’s Johannes, in which she’s continuously caught ogling over Charli’s presence, but so many of the scenes inside of this 98-minute engagement transpire without anything that even remotely feels like an opportunity to inject humor as a form of cleverness to the movie’s appeal, and it makes so much of the emotionality of these scenes feel one-dimensional in the ways they’re stacked one above the other, leading to a tediousness that makes it difficult to remain faithfully invested to such an uncomfortable engagement. This of course creates many issues with the pacing that can easily be tied to such a lack of compelling storytelling, especially considering it feels like you grasp everything creatively that this movie will throw at you within the opening twenty minutes, but it’s just as condemning when so many of these conversations intentionally overlap one another, in order to further accentuate more of the aforementioned anxiousness that Zamiri’s direction reaches so unabashedly towards, leaving it so overwhelming to the integrity of the interpretation. This especially becomes a problem when a third act bombshell is delivered in the form of a previous product returning to bite Charli, and instead of approaching it in firm detail for the audience’s understanding, the script instead utilizes news broadcast montages to experience it from the perception of one of Charli’s limitless fandom, and by this point in the movie I found myself fighting to even remain concerned, especially considering it evokes such a divisive ending that unfortunately left me on the underwhelmed side of that equation. Without spoiling anything, I will say that Charli makes a decision that doesn’t exactly spawn inspiration, nor does it alleviate her of any of the stacking problems that persisted for her character throughout the movie, and considering it conveniently reaches for the uplifting enveloping during its closing moments, it feels a bit insincere and even illogical for what previously transpired only scenes before it, feeling far too numbing for something so evidently cynical. Finally, while the movie is made with noble intentions, I can’t help but scoff at the glaringly obvious product placement that finds its way into so many of the scenes, particularly Amazon Studio’s factually overly obsessive desire to strike while the iron is hot. While I wholeheartedly understand that nothing is off limits in a mockumentary, especially shameless exploits of commercialism, it’s something that I wish was left omitted from the movie’s finished product, especially considering it firmly establishes in the opening moments that certain names and brands were omitted from the enactment, as a licensing depiction, all the while wasting no opportunity to nearly turn this movie into a commercial for the brand, the likes of which have only been topped by last year’s “War of the Worlds”.

OVERALL
“The Moment” bruises through Brat summer with enough character and courage to its condemning convictions, seeing critically acclaimed popstar, Charli XCX, dissecting the heaviness of fame while persisting through her own helpless vulnerabilities as a pawn to the contentious game. Despite its lack of consistent humor or compelling stature to its repetitious outlining, the film is a claustrophobically chaotic capturing that merits enough entertainment value to shine on the grandest stage, in turn proving that the mega popstar is here to stay with a double threat of music and acting, the likes of which she’s equally levitating.

My Grade: 6.3 or C