Reaching For the Moon

Reaching For the Moon is one of many movies that exists. I can’t think of a punchier introduction to this movie than that.

The film is a biopic of poet Elizabeth Bishop. In the early 1950’s, Elizabeth feels lonely, depressed and stuck with her writing. As such, she takes a trip to Brazil. In Brazil, Elizabeth stays with her friend, Mary and Mary’s lover Lota. Early on, Lota and Elizabeth begin blatantly flirting. After what amounts to no time at all, Lota throws over Mary for Elizabeth. But the breakup isn’t clean. As an attempt to prevent Mary from leave, Lota suggests Mary adopt a baby while Lota carries on a romance with Elizabeth. Mary ends up agreeing to this and returns to live with Elizabeth and Lota. This is not the only reason Lota and Elizabeth’s relationship struggles. Lota is domineering and Elizabeth struggles with alcoholism. Also, Lota has ties to the fraught political situation in Brazil during the 50’s and 60’s.

Reaching for the Moon struggled with its inclusion of political themes. Despite the major unrest going on in Brazil at the time, this aspect was largely minimized in the first two acts. Then, in the third act, politics is one of the driving forces of the break down of Lota and Elizabeth’s relationship. For being as much of a part of the third act as it was, the film would have done better to not ignore the political aspect so thoroughly in its first two acts.

The synopsis I saw of Reaching for the Moon described it as “sumptuous.” And while it absolutely should have been, I did not find it so. Despite being a period piece romance film with some semblance of a budget, I found the film sort of bland to look at. The colours were very muted and there was little interest in things like costume design. These are admittedly just aesthetic issues I had with the movie. But would I have enjoyed the film more if the female characters wore more elaborate hats and the movie had some more colour to it? Yes.

Beyond visual concerns, the content of Reaching for the Moon failed to impress me. The movie felt rushed. It follows about 15 years in Elizabeth’s life. Because of this, scenes and conflict feels episodic. The movie would have been more successful had it been a smaller, personal character study than trying to cram 15 years of events into two hours.

I really longed for more character depth in the film. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen lots of films with much shallower characterizations but that doesn’t excuse the fact that Reaching for the Moon did itself lack depth. Characters felt maybe two layers deep. That’s not nothing but in a movie like this, I did need more. This is a film about a romance involving an alcoholic poet. There should be layers upon layers of depth and subtext to the dialogue that are lacking.

Reaching For the Moon is not a major failure; it’s competent and all that. But I spent the whole movie wishing it was better. No parts of this film stand out as being great for me. The story and characters felt too surface level and lacked depth while the visuals of the movie were unimpressive. Reaching for the Moon didn’t miss the mark so much that I’m mad about it. Instead, it was close enough to being an actually good film that all the ways it could have improved itself are blatantly obvious but consistently just out of the film’s reach.

Overall rating: 6/10

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