By now, we have seen many stories where two long-lost lovers meet and revisit their pasts. ‘Blue Jay ‘ is one of them, but there is something that distinguishes the movie from its contemporaries, the monochromatic palette, the cinematography, the stillness of some frames, and the way the characters have been built. Blue Jay, the first movie produced under the Duplass brothers’ Netflix deal, has been marketed as the Pacific Northwest version of Richard Linklater’s ‘Before Sunset’.
Jesse and Celline were strangers who struck up a connection, Amanda (Sarah Paulson) and Jim (Mark Duplass) are high school sweethearts, a little less fairy tale bound, who cross paths at a grocery store and though initially hesitant, they eventually take a little tour of the myriad of memories they have left behind them right from the purple and pink jelly beans to the books they had shared.
Through the one night they have with each other they walk through the rusted silver memory lanes that still have a tinge of shine in them, through old tape records, through letters never sent, grudges never spoken of. Mark Duplass and Sarah Paulson shine through every scene and emotion, the one where they dance as muses lost in time and counting the stars behind a car to the scene where Jim breaks down making a final confession of how things have been and how it could have been much better. The film in its final scenes looks back upon how we are all human beings, and we all commit mistakes that cannot be rectified and so all we are left with is accepting ourselves, and moving on.
Blue Jay has a stillness cremated to it, that gives a sense of stopping the time at certain times, pausing certain moments, and living there forever. The beauty of ‘Blue Jay’ lies in the fact that it never overdoes, it keeps the conversations real and never goes over the top. This is a monochromatic world full of colors, colors of what could have been. There are no flashback scenes and no other characters are shown except the beer store owner. Alex Lehhman wanted to give us an insight into the world of Jim and Amanda, the world that breaks our hearts mends it back and leaves us with a longing, a longing to fill in the spaces between the lines.
Text by: Sreyoshi Sil, IBTN9
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