SERENITY (2019)

A Film One Must See To Believe

This is a film that, on paper, should work like a dream. And yet...

Writer/director Steven Knight’s follow-up to 2013’s LOCKE—arguably the filmmaker’s best work (and possibly Tom Hardy’s, too)—SERENITY is led by a pair of likable movie stars in Anne Hathaway, and Matthew McConaughey and a supporting cast littered with what any film fan might call ringers: Jeremy Strong, Diane Lane, Djimon Hounsou, and Jason Clarke. All of whom are having a ball in a steamy and sweat-soaked southern hamlet. Along with this crackerjack lineup, SERENITY also has some old school noir trappings that wouldn’t be out of place in a Carl Hiaasen novel. The genre trappings and the marquee names are simply lures to get you to buy a ticket because, as anyone who’s seen it can attest, my summary doesn’t even scratch this movie’s surface—for better and worse.

Before we go any further I should confess that I have a soft spot for films I’ve seen theatrically. They don’t necessarily have to be any good; if I see a movie in a theatre there is a better than average chance I will like it. Not necessarily love it, of course, but certainly enjoy it a whole lot more than in other settings. SERENITY falls firmly into this category.

Where Knight’s film differentiates itself from other sleazy southern noir (like the under seen PALMETTO) is in its execution. What unfolds is more akin to a Nolan mindfuck than something Chandler or Hammett might have dreamt up.

McConaughey plays Baker Dill, a fishing boat captain living a tranquil life on Plymouth Island. Or maybe his real name is John, as that’s what Hathaway’s Karen Zariakis calls him.

Hathaway oozes sex appeal in a way that she never has before as the damaged wife of the story’s apparent villain, Frank Zariakis. Frank is played in scenery chewing glory by stalwart character actor Jason Clarke who breathes life into this stock antagonist, a stereotypical loud American who comes to Plymouth Island with visions of enormous fish dancing in his head, offering no apologies for his patently boorish behaviour.

Any more summarizing would be doing an injustice because, again, this cast and intriguing story are merely hooks to ensnare viewers. SERENITY is as much about what we believe vs. what is actually true as it is the film soleil settings in which it is draped. It is the subversion of the genre where the movie loses the plot (for many) and has the potential to go completely off the rails.

It subverts more than just the genre trappings to become something else entirely, going so far as to overthrow the confines of the on-screen reality of its story entirely. The character of Baker Dill has one of those long dark nights of the soul everyone has had from time to time. But instead of pondering a nagging question about the dramatic events unfolding around him, Dill is left to question the very notion of his own existence.

Is he even real? Is any of what he is experiencing actually happening or, like the character McConaughey played in True Detective, is Dill instead trapped inside the locked room of his mind? The insertion of this angle changes the story unfolding before the viewers’ eyes into as much a dissection of its noir tropes as it is a dissection of the trappings of cinema itself. Forcing the viewer to grapple with a series of questions.

Is what they are watching actually occurring for the characters or…is the story just in the heads of each of those characters?

Is the movie itself playing out as we are witnessing it or solely playing out in our own minds?

What of our own stories? How much is true and how much of it is simply what we tell ourselves to help us get through our existences?

Is Dill on the brink of madness?

Or is he in his right mind and it’s everyone else who is out to lunch?

SERENITY has answers I won’t spoil but the questioning challenges the audience in a way I had not expected when I purchased a ticket. Acting and setting aside, I feel it’s the ability to keep the audience engaged and guessing that is the film’s greatest strength.

Knight clearly borrowed elements of movies that, from the surface of the marketing campaign, you would never guess as influences. At any moment the filmmaker could have Dill hit the fabricated wall of an ocean created by a false god like in the THE TRUMAN SHOW and then walk out into the ‘real’ world. Or perhaps Baker Dill is closer to Quaid in Verhoeven’s TOTAL RECALL, where the film’s ending finds the protagonist hoping he doesn’t wake up from a dream. The conclusion also calls back to Nolan’s INTERSTELLAR (oddly enough, also pairing McConaughey and Hathaway). Mixing genres while never committing to one should be infuriating. But instead it feels true to the gestalt of the story that Knight intended to tell.  

SERENITY doesn’t work as effortlessly in practice as it does in theory, it is flawed and overly ambitious, a misfire by most metrics. But it’s a film I am glad I saw and whose hooks were firmly lodged into my brain. I hope it’s a movie you will enjoy as well—if nothing else, it is a truly unique experience.

SERENITY is not currently streaming anywhere but is available for rent or purchase on most digital platforms.