The Crawdads Sing Movie Review: Dreamy, Gorgeous, Yet So Boring | Hollywood

One thing you should know about dreams is that they are not real. So when things look a little too beautiful, too surreal, or too dreamy, the human mind naturally pushes it away from reality. Now, I love seeing stunning visuals, clean frocks, and gorgeous movie stars on screen, but it comes at the cost of authenticity. All of her pretty outfits, her perfect hair, and idyllic homes trying to sell me on extreme poverty, abandonment, trauma, and childhood abuse. (Please also read: Beast movie review: Idris Elba battles lions and common sense in Hollywood’s newest survival drama)

Shot in perhaps the most beautiful wetlands you can imagine, Where Crowdad Sings is an adaptation of Delia Owen’s best-selling book and is set in 1950s and ’60s North Carolina. It follows the childhood of Kaia (Daisy Edgar Jones), a woman who was abandoned by her abusive mother, abusive father, and her terrified siblings, from her childhood to her death. It’s a story. She had to grow herself, selling mussels fresh from the swamp she called home. She doesn’t have the skirt, the shoes, or the strength to fight the bullies at school. But she has a knack for drawing pretty pictures of everything she finds in the swamp.

The scenes are bursting with shades of wetland green, blue water, white sand, and the colorful creatures she loves to paint. Nearly every scene was picture-perfect, including the shade of her dress, and was too beautiful to be found in the church’s pile of donations. With no grain food or even electricity, it’s a cottagecore lover’s dream. Amidst all these beautiful scenes, it’s easy to forget that the girl has gone days without food and survives through manual labor every day. You shouldn’t be jealous of the slow life you’re going for.

Of course, there is a murder plot that actually kicks off the story. It was also the trial in which her boyfriend (Harris Dickinson) was murdered in 1969. The striking parallels to Delia Owens’ own life are also very interesting (conservationist Delia is also being questioned in Zambia). murderer). She is the prime suspect in the case and is aided by a local attorney who is one of three people in the whole town who are kind to her. Veer Pratap in her Singh style, she tells her own biography Rani to her Mukerji-adjacent lawyer, all the toxic men’s attempts to ruin her life starting with her father. reminds me of

A woman is slapped, punched, and beaten black and blue at multiple junctures in her story. Kya is full of her hopes and loses all hope. sometimes at once, sometimes for months, sometimes over years. Meanwhile, Daisy is careful not to miss a single step. She can convincingly sell nature-loving reclusive artists, but it’s the supporting characters who don’t seem to be on the same page. , from boyfriends who were too sweet or too cruel without softening the transition, the supporting cast couldn’t tone down the note.

The trial brings a strange taste of To Kill A Mockingbird back in your mouth, not in a good way, but the overall film ends up being closer to The Devil All The Time than a ton of The Notebook. should be there. Some people may not understand how the movie solves the murder mystery at the end, but the lack of visual retelling worked for me. There is no one like Hercule Poirot who speaks the methodology of The tone of the reveal suited the rest of the film, but your reaction will depend on whether it was a moody piece to you before it was a whodunnit.

Overall, there was little confusion where Crawdads Sing had to return to the moodboard several times before the final product was approved. It can be Gehraiyaan, The Notebook, To Kill A Mockingbird, or The Devil All The Time, but ideally not all of the above at once.