Review: Nocturne’s Insights Are Potent, but It Lacks for Searing Imagery

Nocturne is a reminder that the notes themselves are just as important as how you play them.

Photo: Amazon Studios

Juliet (Sydney Sweeney) is jealous of her twin sister, Vivian (Madison Iseman). Both play classical piano at an artsy boarding school, but only Viv got into Juilliard. Only Viv has a boyfriend (Jacques Colimon), and despite approaching their art with less apparent intensity than Julie, only Viv has the school’s most coveted instructor (Ivan Shaw). But Julie has the black notebook, which has a creepy sun symbol on the front and once belonged to the student who kills herself in the opening scene of writer-director Zu Quirke’s Nocturne. Between the music notes, the notebook contains six creepy drawings that metaphorically come to pass in Julie’s life: Her prospects improve, but at the expense of the people in her way.

That the sixth, torn-out page of the book involves death should come as no surprise. Nocturne proceeds exactly the way it seems like it will, letting the supernatural element remain reasonably ambiguous while Julie keeps seeing a light like the symbol on her new notebook—a light so blinding and prominent that it suggests someone flying too close to the sun. She’s isolated save for her obsession, and perhaps too well, as the film struggles to create any sense of history between its characters, especially the sisters. We enter their relationship at a time when they’re already drifting apart, and the resulting characterizations lack any real specificity or intimacy beyond how Viv calls her sister “wombie,” leaving most of their animosity to weakly fizzle rather than explode after years of palpable resentment.

Behind all that, though, is some otherwise promising subtext about the desire to succeed at a young age. Julie very much feels the strain of being part of what one character calls “the Instagram generation,” where so many spotlights are thrust upon young people for their social media presences, their displays of talent, and the general democratization of fame in an age where anybody and anything can go viral. Over the years, many have struggled to cope with that attention and pressure and died young, from various child actors to the SoundCloud rappers that the film briefly invokes during one dinner table discussion. But Nocturne again stumbles over its own insularity, seemingly reluctant to explore the view of society at large as Julie notes that she doesn’t even have social media.

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But rather than seeming like a dated point of contrast, classical music becomes a clever, unexpected companion to what, on the surface, appear to be distinctly modern anxieties. The film’s characters note the field’s many young prodigies up through the 20th century, while the piercing gaze of a painting of young Mozart figures prominently as a towering forebearer. With falling audience attendance and general fading interest, the current state of classical music comes to echo present-day existence: Young people need to succeed now because tomorrow is uncertain, and the light only grows brighter from a world that’s on fire.

But Nocturne still manages no accompanying sense of doom because it hardly lingers on these ideas, giving little more than cursory acknowledgement of how banal our personal markers of success can seem. If Quirke’s film means to mimic the tunnel vision of its protagonist, it does so perhaps too effectively, losing its thematic potency as it travels on a predictable trajectory, involving spooky drawings and sisterly spats, all the while leaving the existential miasma sitting out of frame. With no searing images or haunting displays of psychological insight, Nocturne is a reminder that the notes themselves are just as important as how you play them.

Score: 
 Cast: Sydney Sweeney, Madison Iseman, Jacques Colimon, Ivan Shaw, Julie Benz  Director: Zu Quirke  Screenwriter: Zu Quirke  Distributor: Amazon Prime Video  Running Time: 90 min  Rating: NR  Year: 2020  Buy: Video

Steven Scaife

Steven Nguyen Scaife is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in Buzzfeed News, Fanbyte, Polygon, The Awl, Rock Paper Shotgun, EGM, and others. He is reluctantly based in the Midwest.

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