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For weeks I’ve wanted to write a Current Preoccupation, and it just… oh, I want to tell you so badly why you must go and see the movie Blue Heron(2025), but I should not tell you what happens in it!
It’s the big predicament of film-writing. Writing about books is easier. Maybe it is because a movie forces its time on you and a book does not: reading a book you can easily pause to create meaning, both as a reader or as a writer, while not having to involve the whole story. The images that come with it, you make yourself. And for the reviewer, the book is made of the same stuff a review is. You can lift a single sentence and turn it over and over, philosophizing over what it does to the whole book, what it brings in thematically. Even a totally recounted plot doesn’t exhaust the writing; the conjuring is still for the reader to do. A film resists that. In a film the images are given, finished. The reviewer can’t quote a shot, but only describe it, and to describe it, is to spoil it.
Sorry, long pondering because I cannot get over it: Sophy Romvari’s Blue Heron is so worth watching! Can’t you just take my word for it? Just go, or else stream it.
Let me try: it seems to be set in the 1990s, mostly outside the city, beautiful nature, long and careful shots, a Hungarian father and mother move to Canada, the four children are already thoroughly Canadian-American, the perspective is resting with the youngest child, a girl with a set of twins above her and, above them, an older brother (brilliantly played) who comes to claim more and more attention. Things happen, and then the film flips on its head and seems to change genre, but not quite, when some scenes come that fly at your throat.
At stake is society’s incapability of treating a boy, and his family that suffers under his severe mental problems. Plus: what is trauma, how might one deal with it, are also on the table. (So many current films, books and articles deal with trauma! Is that because the balance of power in society is shifting and victims have more of a voice? I think so, right?)
Blue Heron is like Joachim Trier’s beautiful, layered Sentimental Value, a pearl that comes from a rich poetica and a deep need.
Where to watch? In cinemas across Europe, and (source: Instagram) from June 23 streaming on AppleTV, Amazon Prime a.o.
Picture: © Conic Films Limited 2025
