Hearts Beat Loud

Hearts Beat Loud is, in a word, delightful.  I have a soft spot for smaller, intimate stories and watching Hearts Beat Loud was a pleasant reminder that there are still filmmakers out there, mostly independent, telling these kinds of stories despite the ubiquity of big budget, franchise driven, blockbuster movies.  A little bit family drama, a little bit understated comedy, a little bit coming of age story, Hearts Beat Loud defies genre to an extent, yet it weaves all its emotional beats together well enough that, for me at least, the movie just works.

The central story is of a musically talented daughter and her record store owning father dealing with the realities of her growing up and leaving home for college.  Reminiscent of Mirrormask, another excellent film, it is the daughter who wants to be responsible, in this case preparing for her future at a good college, and it is the father that wants to pursue flights of fancy, in this case dropping everything to chase a wildly improbable career in music.

One of the things Hearts Beat Loud does exceptionally well is how each piece of story action is tied to a deeper emotional concern of the characters.  Nick Offerman plays the part of the single dad and, while not necessarily the protagonist, definitely feels like the movie’s emotional core. Through him, we experience the movie’s themes of family and loss.  When Offerman’s character gets excited about forming a band, it is as much a way to delay his own solitude once his daughter leaves as it is a genuine desire for a recording career. Similarly, Offerman coming to terms with the failure of his record store shares parallels with his own acceptance of both his daughters departure, his late wife’s passing, and even how he had to give up on his dream of being a professional musician as a younger man.

That isn’t to say that the daughter doesn’t get her moments too.  One of the things I liked a great deal about this movie was the way it handles Kiersey Clemons’ character’s lesbian relationship.  While there is a time and a place for movies like Milk or Philadelphia to make LGBT issues the driving force of the film, it is also nice to have a movie like this where a character’s homosexuality isn’t made out to be anything special.  It is more important to her story that she is leaving Brooklyn for college and, like so many late high school romances, this separation will almost certainly end her budding relationship than that her relationship is with a girl. I like my characters to be people not cliches, and not leaning into the obvious ways to create drama around the daughter being a lesbian was another facet of this movie’s subtlety and grounded realism that I appreciated so much.

The only thing I didn’t really fall in love with was the music.  When a movie is about the creation of music, it can be challenging to write songs that live up to the hype the characters within the story are creating for them.  I’m reminded of one of the criticisms of Aaron Sorkin’s Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip: that the skits performed during the show within the show were never as funny as the character dialogue about writing those skits.  While I had hoped for something more like Once, which had absolutely stellar music, in Hearts Beat Loud only one, maybe two, of the three songs resonated with me, despite being written in a genre I normally enjoy. On the other hand, they are probably all better than the original songs from Music and Lyrics, so your mileage may very.

A sweet, subtle family comedy drama that deals with love, loss, growing up, growing old, and so much more, this indie flick is a great reminder that movies can be more than giant robot cars crashing into each other or caped ubermen punching villains into the stratosphere.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Would Recommend: If you like heartfelt indie movies like Little Miss Sunshine or Lady Bird.

Would Not Recommend: If you think feeling feelings threatens your manhood.