Sundance 2021 Review: The Blazing World – “All sizzle, and no steak”

The Blazing World (2021) is a fantasy film. It was written by Pierce Brown and Carlson Young, and directed by Carlson Young.

At a palatial estate, somewhere on the Gulf Coast, two twin girls Margaret (Josie Fink) and Elizabeth Winter (Lillie Fink) frolic in their backyard. They chase after fireflies, capturing them inside of a jar. Meanwhile, inside the house, their parents Tom (Dermot Mulroney), and Alice Winter (Vanessa Shaw) are engaged in an awful argument that may or may not include domestic abuse.

As the argument escalates, the twins move back towards the house. Margaret goes over to a window and peers in. She sees her parents in the heat of their disagreement. Frightened by what she sees, Margaret turns away from the window. This is when she sees her sister afloat in the swimming pool, face down.

Margaret screams, and her parents come running. As her parents dive into the pool to try and save Elizabeth, Margaret sees Lained (Udo Kier), a strange old man, beckoning to her. Next to him is some kind of portal which Lained seems to be trying to get Margaret to enter. She does not.

Flash forward about 15 years or so. Margaret (Carlson Young) is now an adult, living on her own in a big city. She is plagued frequently by nightmares of being drowned in a bathtub by Lained. Next thing you know, she is on the phone with her mom Alicce. Turns out, her parents are moving out of their palatial estate somewhere on the Gulf Coast. Alice bemoans the fact that she does not see Margaret as much as she would like, and Margaret turns her not to worry for she is coming home for a visit.

When Margaret arrives at her childhood home, things are very weird. Things between Alice and Tom are weird, things between Alice and Margaret are weird, things between Tom and Margaret are weird, things between Margaret and everybody are weird. The weirdness continues when Margaret goes out on a date with a former hometown flame.

The two arrive at a bar which is totally empty save for the bartender and the performer on the stage. After a while a few of Margaret’s old friends show up. They throw some tarot cards, they blaze a doob, they talk about some apparently high-grade LSD, and they leave.

Out in the vehicle, Margaret and her ex-flame bang. Margaret seems unimpressed. She returns home, and shit gets weird again. Eventually, Margaret, dressed like a fairy or pixie or something crawls through a small panel in the back of her closet and enters… The Blazing World.

I can’t tell you how bummed I was when I realized that The Blazing World was not a film centered on Marijuana consumption. 🙁

This is the first feature from Carlson Young. Apparently, The Blazing World is a re-interpretation of a pre-existing literary work. In 2018, Young made a short film called The Blazing World that was sort of a proof-of-concept thing that ended up netting her the financing to make the feature length version of her short film. She not only wrote and directed the film, she also stars in it.

The Blazing World is a psychedelic freak-out for the 21^st century. Full of candy-colored vaporwave aesthetics, intentionally trippy scenes, and a bewildering narrative. It is reminiscent of films like Mandy (Panos Cosmatos, 2018), and Color Out of Space (Richard Stanley, 2019). Films in which the style supersedes the substance by a varying degree, depending on who you ask.

The film is noteworthy for its striking visual imagery and pronounced artistic sensibilities. The cinematography is the stuff of quality to be sure. If you dig films that really crank up the dial on the visual-poetry thing, you will likely spend the majority of the film trying to fight the urge to blink for fear that you might miss another quality shot. Cinematographer Shane F. Kelly has provided this film with a very impressive look. While there doesn’t seem to be anything else quite like The Blazing World in his impressive filmography, he still knocked this one out of the park. This was money well spent, regardless of the man’s pedigree. He really brought the heat on this film.

Another impressive element of the film is the lead performance from Carlson Young. I must admit, I was rolling my eyes a little bit upon seeing the number of roles Young occupied prior to my consumption of this movie. However, she shut m y mouth real quick. She does an excellent job in the lead role. There is a gamut of emotions that is run by Margaret during the course of things. Young manages to oscillate through them all with aplomb. As I will shortly turn to trashing this film, I should acknowledge now that regardless of my opinion of The Blazing World, I will look forward to future Carlson Young performances with great interest.

The supporting cast is a homerun as well. Udo Kier… Well, I don’t think I need to say much about the man. He is incapable of a bad performance. If you aren’t familiar with his work, do yourself a solid and check some of it out. He has curated quite a body of work for himself, and is honestly a bit of a legend.

Dermot Mulroney is also very good. I couldn’t help but think about Young Guns (Christopher Cain, 1988) while watching his scenes. In the original film, there were six young guns. Four of them were big deals, and almost nobody can name the other two. The funny thing was, the two that nobody could remember were the best two young guns in the movie. They were Casey Siemaszko, and Dermot Mulroney. Mulroney isn’t in this film too much, but he is solid for every second that he is.

Vanessa Shaw is probably the supporting character who gets the most screen time, and she makes the most of it. She spends a lot of her scenes in a heightened emotional state. It must have been tough to maintain that kind of stress every day she was on set. Her character Alice is fragile, but with a strong resolve, and she is never melodramatic. At least, the performance isn’t.

The Blazing World is a film that will likely inspire a cult following, and passionate devotion from its fans. Directorially speaking, Young has done an admirable job creating a film positively dripping with style. The Blazing World is a wonderfully bizarre place to set a story. It has a consistent tone, and displays a brash confidence.

But then there is the story. Look, there is a lot of stuff that I love where the style outweighs the substance; where the style is the substance. Unfortunately, The Blazing World was not one of those films that I loved. Let’s be clear, there is a story here. It just seems like it is so intensely personal a story for Young, that the audience is totally alienated.

This is another one of those times where I am going to remind people that I am nowhere near the sharpest tool in the shed. I go through life blaming myself if I didn’t “get” a film. It’s not the filmmaker’s job to make sure I “get” it. It is my job to step up to wherever it is the filmmaker is asking me to step up to, and become illuminated. If I didn’t “get” a film, it is my fault. So when I complain about how I think the story in this movie is bullshit, it’s because I am stupid.

I’m sure all of the stuff on the surface is meant to be allegorical and/or metaphorical. I’m sure all of the weirdness makes sense to hipper and more thoughtful people than I. I figure that this is a story of overcoming trauma or abuse, and having to revisit childhood to process your way through it. It’s likely about how abuse is generational and the only way to not pass it on is to acknowledge it and break the cycle. Magaret never got over the death of her sister (assuming there really was a sister, and the twin thing wasn’t some reference to two different sides of herself) and has suffered in life, held down by the enormous weight of this traumatic event that she doesn’t know how to get out from under. I know it goes deeper than what’s actually on the screen.

Trouble is, I didn’t really care about that stuff because every single scene had me like “what the fuck is going on now?!” There was very little that made any sense, something that was endlessly frustrating for me, and I couldn’t wait for the Goddamn thing to end. Thank God the film looked incredible and that Young’s performance was so strong. Otherwise I might have turned it off somewhere in the middle.

I love David Lynch. He is like the patron saint of weird movies. The first time I saw Mullholland Drive (David Lynch, 2001), I was totally lost. I loved it, but I was totally lost. Not the kind of lost where I’m angry about being lost, like I was with The Blazing World. But the kind of lost where I’m so intrigued that I want a cheat guide to help me understand what I was too obtuse to understand. I then watched the film with the commentary track on. When Lynch explained it, it made perfect sense. I couldn’t believe I was so stupid to not have known what was going on.

Later in life, I finally worked my way around to Eraserhead (David Lynch, 1977). One of filmdom’s most notoriously weird flicks. This time, for whatever reason, I was much more keyed-in to what I thought the subtext meant. The film moved me. I felt like I was watching my own life play out on the screen. I don’t know if I was right about Eraserhead. I don’t know if David Lynch meant that shit to mean what it meant to me. But I know what I know. And I know I know what was going on in Eraserhead. During most of The Blazing World, I knew I didn’t know what was going on. I tried to understand, but just found myself endlessly frustrated by how pointless and weird for weird’s sake the film came across as.

Additionally, there were way too many callbacks to other stuff. I swear, I have never seen a film more heavily referenced in the last two years worth of films, than The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980). Stanley Kubrick used to be one of my two favorite directors. Now it’s getting to the point where I want somebody to lock all of his films up in the Disney Vault for the next hundred years, just so we can have some new filmmakers that don’t reference any of them, because they’ve never fucking seen them. Especially The Shining. Fans of the work of Tarsem Singh might also have something to celebrate or bitch about, for Carlson Young clearly worships at the altar of Tarsem as well as that of Stan Kubrick.

By the time all was said and done, The Blazing World felt like all sizzle, and no steak. And an exceptionally frustrating sizzle at that. I wanted to love this film. I wanted all of this weirdness to make sense; to seem justified. There is so much talent at work here, I wanted it not to be in vain. There aren’t enough movies in this world that are both weirdly wonderful and wonderfully weird. Alas, t’was not to be. The Blazing World crashed and burned. I could only recommend this movie to budding cinematographers, and or those who want to make music videos their career. Because at best, that’s what this movie is. A one hundred and one minute music video. They just forgot to keep the music going through the entire thing.

P.S. I was only kidding about what I said. Stanley Kubrick is still one of my two favorite directors.