JP Nunez
I have to be honest, I didn’t quite know what to expect from I Saw the TV Glow. The marketing didn’t give much away about the movie’s plot, so I only had a vague notion of what the film was about. But that was totally fine with me because in my eyes, the big draw here was writer/director Jane Schoenbrun. I really enjoyed the way Schoenbrun’s last movie, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, conveyed an almost tangible sense of existential malaise, so I was confident that the filmmaker would knock it out of the park again. And you know what? I was totally right.
I Saw the TV Glow was written and directed by Jane Schoenbrun, and it stars Justice Smith and Brigette Lundy-Paine. When the movie starts, the main character, Owen, is just a boy, and he develops a unique relationship with an older girl named Maddy. You wouldn’t exactly call them friends, but they bond over a young adult fantasy/sci-fi/horror show called The Pink Opaque.
A few years after they first meet, Maddy disappears without a trace, and as luck would have it, The Pink Opaque gets canceled. However, the girl (now a young woman) reappears out of the blue almost a decade later, and she delivers some shocking news. The Pink Opaque wasn’t just a TV show. It’s more real than she and Owen ever could’ve imagined, and that revelation has world-shattering implications for both of them.
I don’t know about you, but I think that’s a super intriguing idea for a film, and thankfully, I Saw the TV Glow executes its awesome premise just about perfectly. At its core, this movie is all about identity, but before it clues us in to its real meaning, it draws us in by creating a palpable sense of melancholy.
Most notably, aside from a few throwaway side characters, nobody in this film seems happy, and that’s especially true of the two leads, Owen and Maddy. Justice Smith and Brigette Lundy-Paine are fantastic in these roles, and they give brilliantly understated performances that perfectly capture both the awkwardness of adolescence and the unease that often accompanies the humdrum toil of everyday life. They almost make you feel depressed yourself, so you can’t help but sympathize with them and hope that they can eventually find some meaning in their lives.
And as if that wasn’t heartbreaking enough, the cinematography in I Saw the TV Glow somehow manages to make that gloomy vibe even more oppressive. In particular, there are a number of shots where Owen seems like the loneliest kid on earth, so even when he’s not physically alone, it’s clear that he simply doesn’t have a place in this world.
The whole thing is just bleak as hell, and to make sure we don’t miss the point, the primary antagonist in The Pink Opaque is a character called Mr. Melancholy. He’s the personification of everything wrong with Owen’s and Maddy’s lives, and for about the first half of I Saw the TV Glow, that depressing sense of desolation is basically all there is to the movie.
That’s admittedly a risky choice, as it could make for a very one-note experience, but it’s all executed so well that this single note feels like an entire symphony. You become completely immersed in the film’s atmosphere of misery, so you’ll be too busy feeling the characters’ dark emotions to want anything more.
Then, at about the halfway point, I Saw the TV Glow starts to pull back the curtain a bit, and we learn that there’s more to this world than meets the eye. I don’t want to spoil the film’s surprises, but suffice it to say that this is where the story begins to dip its toes into fantasy territory. To be fair, it never goes all out on the otherworldly weirdness, so no matter what happens, the film always retains a firm grounding in reality.
And for some viewers, that might be a bit frustrating. The movie hints at some intriguing mythology surrounding The Pink Opaque, and Jane Schoenbrun could probably make a whole other movie about that side of the story. But this isn’t that movie. I Saw the TV Glow only uses its supernatural elements as much as it needs to, and beyond that, the film is content to let the fantastical workings of this world remain a mystery.
Instead, this movie is primarily concerned with its message, and like I said before, it’s all about identity. More specifically, it’s about finding your true identity and boldly being yourself, no matter what the world tries to tell you, and it employs a very striking visual metaphor for the potential consequences of denying who you really are.
All that being said, I can’t quite say that I Saw the TV Glow is a perfect movie. While I don’t fault it for focusing more on its message than on the cool fantasy elements, I did have one gripe with the film. When it begins, Owen is in seventh grade, and he’s played by a kid named Ian Foreman. Then, the story jumps ahead two years, and Foreman is replaced by Justice Smith.
Now, I don’t mind different actors playing the same character at different ages, but I couldn’t bring myself to believe that Owen would change that much in a mere two years. It’s just not realistic, and it’s especially egregious because Smith continues playing the character even after the movie makes a few more jumps several years into the future.
Granted, none of that affects the story at all, but film is a visual medium, and I found that particular visual choice to be pretty distracting. It kept me from suspending disbelief as much as I wanted to, and that took me out of the movie a couple of times.
However, in the grand scheme of things, it’s little more than a minor gripe. On the whole, I Saw the TV Glow is a fantastically atmospheric and wonderfully acted exploration of identity and the melancholy that can stem from denying your true self, so if you’re looking for something good to watch, I highly recommend that you give this film a shot.
I Saw the TV Glow is playing in theaters right now.
