Review of Blue Heron, directed by Sophy Romvari

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

I feel like a lot of my blog introductions, especially when it comes to movies, have been lamenting on the fact I don’t have a ton of time lately. I used to work as a film critic (which, in fact, was so incredibly underpaid that I now make more off of this blog’s display ads than I ever did publishing anywhere else), and then when I was in graduate school I was writing a lot about film, so I used to watch so many movies.

But now I work an 8-5, come home, and then doom scroll my evenings away instead of watching the movies I used to love so dearly. And recently I realized I want to stop doing that, so I’ve set limits on my phone and am fully prepared to sit back and watch more movies and read more books in order to feed my brain.

I elevated this game by acquiring a Criterion subscription a few months back. Before getting my job I was a lot more tight with my money, and although I could technically afford the Criterion subscription, I put it into investments instead. But now I’m investing in my brain more along with my longterm retirement, which is a great feeling.

When I saw Blue Heron was added onto the channel, I knew I wanted to watch it. I had no idea about it when it was on the film festival circuits, as I’ve kind of fallen off of keeping an eye on those, but I saw the synopsis and knew that it was something I wanted to see. So I watched it fairly quickly after its release!

Let’s get into the review. I don’t want to keep rambling in the introduction.

When a Hungarian immigrant family moves to Vancouver Island, it ruptures the cracks between their eldest son and them.

This is a movie that’s split into two different time periods. The first begins in the 1990s, when Sasha, who is eight years old, moves to Vancouver Island with her parents and two brothers. Their life seems idyllic there at first, especially for an immigrant family, but as we see them move through the motions that’s when it becomes apparent something is up with her older brother.

As her parents navigate trying to set up a new life here in Vancouver, Jeremy, their eldest son, increasingly begins acting out. Through Sasha’s perspective this manifests as him being quiet and not interacting with the family, maybe wandering off to be by himself. However, his behavior escalates.

Not only does he become destructive, but he also becomes self-destructive. He climbs the roof of the house at one point, showing how he’s resorting to dangerous behavior that not only would harm him, but his parents and siblings as well. Sasha sees this, but doesn’t understand it at first.

Then we move into the present day, where Sasha is an adult. She’s trying to sort through this period of her life and even goes to interviews with social workers to try and understand how these kinds of situations happen. She’s making a documentary film about that period of her life and how social workers became something more common for her.

It’s a way to sort through her feelings, and a mirror to the director’s own life. She’s from a Hungarian immigrant family who moved to Vancouver when she was a child, then her two older brothers died young, leaving only two siblings alive out of the original four.

As Sasha, in the film, talks to her parents and the social workers, she’s able to understand more and cope with the situation that happened. And maybe that is what this movie at the end of the day: a form of healing.

Overall Thoughts

Considering I had no idea what to expect when going into this movie, I really enjoyed it a lot. I could see how the transition from childhood to the adulthood could be something that some people find jarring, but I understand why exactly the script and movie was structured like this. It adds a lot more depth to the childhood scenes specifically and demonstrates how this was traumatizing in some ways.

That said, the cinematography is a highlight for me as well. This is one of those movies that feels beautiful to watch, and it’s like an art piece. I enjoy movies that are beautiful sometimes as a different medium of storytelling, but this is paired with a good story.

Definitely give this a chance if you come across it. I think this is one of those movies everyone should watch once, even though it can be heartbreaking.

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