What Everyone Got Wrong About Vox Lux
Corbet’s 2018 film is about more than just the rise and fall of celebrity
Vox Lux, a film directed by Brady Corbet starring Natalie Portman (Celeste), creates an uneasy feeling of deja-vu.
The film starts with a horrific mass school shooting, touches on the terror of 9/11, and concludes in the aftermath of a terrorist attack on a tourist beach.
By situating the action of the film around these events, Corbet has chosen to represent some of the key moments that make up the collective-movie reel of the last twenty years in America.
A Tableau of Life in the 21st Century
Labelled as a commentary on the pitfalls of celebrity, with a rating of 61% on rotten tomatoes, it seems as though the film was initially sold as a cautionary tale where despite the many tragedies in Celeste’s life, “her biggest trauma turns out to be fame itself.”
While many critics make excellent commentaries on its various cinematographic elements, they don’t have much to say about the range of historical aspects of the film.
Critics tend to interpret the real-world episodes documented in the film merely as plot devices used to develop, in the words of one critic, “the traumatic childhood that formed a formidable pop diva.”
However, the film is not just about the ways that Celeste’s experiences of violence and celebrity shape her, it is about the ways that terrorism and individualism have come to shape some of the darkest parts of life in the 21st century.
In light of recent events, now is a good time to look back on a film that calls itself “a twenty-first-century portrait.”
School Shootings
Act I opens in the year 2000 and we watch as Celeste survives a violent school massacre that will leave her with physical and emotional scars for the rest of her life.
In the final spoken words of the film, we learn in a secret confession that Celeste believes that she only survived the shooting in her youth because she sold her soul to the devil in return for life and a musical gift that she could share with the world.
The United States saw a dramatic increase in gun violence in schools throughout the 1990s which culminated with the death of 13 people at Columbine High School in 1999. The year 2018, when the movie was released, was called “the worst year for US school shootings,” with over 113 people killed.
In light of the history of violence in American schools, it’s not hard to see how Celeste’s “deal with the devil” mimics the collective guilt and inaction that have become all too common in the aftermath of countless school massacres in the US.
Loss of Innocence
Another key moment from the film occurs on the morning of September 11 2001, whereupon hearing the news Celeste rushes into her sister’s hotel room only to find her in the arms of the older manager.
Undoubtedly, something fundamentally shifted in the shared consciousness of the American people after the events of 9/11. Many commentators have gone on to label this event the moment where America “lost its innocence,” and although an over-simplification, the forthcoming “War on Terror” contributed to the narrative of a nation fighting for what was perceived as a loss of freedom at the hands of terrorism.
Vox Lux continues the myth-building around America’s loss of innocence by situating the conflict between Celeste and her sister in the aftermath of September 11.
Although the two girls had already embarked upon shared adventures into the world of sex and drugs, Celeste’s comes to see this moment as a breach of trust and echoes the sentiment of resentment and fear that emerged from the United States in the aftermath of 9/11.
Alienation from the Natural World
Almost every scene in Vox Lux unfurls within the shadows of dark buildings and grey concrete. The film alternates between the drab and sombre tones of the city and the luminous and intoxicating lights of concert stages.
Vox Lux tells the story of a world absent of nature and intimacy, where surface-level connections and miscommunication are the only forms of interaction.
In a scene where a drug-addled Celeste orders her tour bus to a standstill so that she can lament the loss of life in the most recent terror attack, we watch as she hurls her emotion out over the glazed water of an impersonal and alienated natural landscape. Encased by an artificial skyline, even the dead trees in the background loom like man-made sculptures.
The scene precedes Celeste’s forthcoming nervous breakdown and can be seen as a warning against the unrelenting pace of climate change and humanity’s inability to halt its destruction.
A New Era
Vox Lux paints a picture of the dangerous world of celebrity, but more truthfully, the film documents some of the greatest challenges faced by humanity in the 21st century.
As recent events confirm, Celeste’s downfall is a mirror for our own collective descent into paranoia, superficiality, and miscommunication.
