The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Tuesday, December 10, 2019 — 5

I don’t quite remember what I expected out of 
“Waves,” director Trey Edward Shults’s (“It Comes 
at Night”) latest A24 film. Its promotional material 
is frustratingly vague, describing the plot of the 
movie as nothing more than an African-American 
family in Florida coping with a “loss.” I realize now, 
though, the reason 
for this. To reveal 
anything 
more 
about what happens 
in “Waves” would 
spoil the movie and 
dampen the sheer 
force of its impact. 
I wasn’t prepared 
for this movie. I 
wasn’t ready. I was 
crushed by it, but 
I 
wouldn’t 
trade 
the experience for 
anything. So I won’t 
say 
much 
more 
about the plot either, to ensure that you may watch 
the film unfold in the same way I did. But I can 
write about just how incredible this film is and how 
alive it made me feel. 
“Waves” is a film consisting of two acts, the 
first taking place before the big “loss,” the second 
occurring afterward. The 
first act centers around 
Tyler 
(Kelvin 
Harrison 
Jr., “It Comes at Night”), 
a 
more-or-less 
typical 
high school senior dealing 
with more-or-less typical 
high school problems. He 
is supported by a loving 
step-mother (Renee Elise 
Goldsberry, “One Life to 
Live”), a devoted, though 
admittedly over-aggressive, 
father (Sterling K. Brown, 
“This Is Us”) and a shy 
but loving younger sister 
(Taylor 
Russell, 
“Escape 
Room”). He loves wrestling 
and his girlfriend (Alexa 
Demie, 
“Euphoria”), 
and 
though these perfect parts 
of his life are tainted by a 
severe sports injury and a 
pregnancy scare, his life 
is still, for the most part, 
normal, at least by American 
standards of teenhood. 
It’s 
still 
riveting 
to 
watch. 
Tyler’s 
world, 
gorgeously filmed and set 
to a wonderful soundtrack, 
including songs by Kendrick 
Lamar 
and 
Animal 
Collective, is endearing — 
it pulls you right into its 
atmosphere. Shults does a 
rare, extraordinary thing: 
He films the contemporary 

American teenage experience with warmth and 
honesty and a complete lack of judgement. 
Yet, just when you think Tyler’s arc is about to 
be resolved, the very worst happens. The “loss” I 
keep hinting at finally occurs, and it’s worse than 
you could ever have possibly imagined. A character 
we’ve come to know and trust does something so 
horrifying, so devastating, you ask yourself, how 
will this family ever recover? How can they possibly 
go on? How can they ever smile again? How can we 
ever smile again? 
All of a sudden, this 
family is broken, the 
aspect ratio shifts 
and the world is 
changed 
forever, 
transformed 
into 
something 
scary 
and 
cold 
and 
impossibly lonely. 
But then Luke, 
played 
by 
Lucas 
Hedges 
(“Boy 
Erased”) 
comes 
along 
and 
makes 
everything 
better. 
Not perfect, not back to the way it was before, but 
better. He makes us smile again. He gives Tyler’s 
sister Emily, the star of the movie’s second act, a 
new lease on life. He provides her with an escape 
from the oppressive grief that now holds dominion 
over her parents and home life. By being with him, 
by being held by him, she 
finds a way to heal, or at 
least a way to begin to work 
toward healing. 
Emily and Tyler’s parents 
find a similar solace in one 
another, though it takes 
time, 
and 
they 
actually 
come to resent each other 
and place their anger onto 
each 
other 
immediately 
following the loss. But once 
they are finally ready to 
confront each other’s guilt 
and pain, they readily fall 
into each other’s arms, just 
like Emily and Luke did.
Maybe 
“Waves” 
is 
too 
sentimental, 
too 
melodramatic for some. But 
is that such a bad thing? 
I’m reminded of a quote 
by 
the 
writer 
Jeanette 
Winterson, who wrote that 
“to tell someone not to be 
emotional is to tell them to 
be dead.” Watching “Waves” 
and second-handedly taking 
on this family’s pain was 
painful. But I also felt these 
characters’ joy and their 
incomparable 
love 
and 
devotion for one another. 
Watching 
“Waves” 
feels 
like anything but being 
dead, and I’ve never felt 
more alive while watching 
a movie.

‘Waves’ moves between love,
family and grief in America 

ELISE GODFRYD
Daily Arts Writer

W.W. NORTON

“I’ve never seen snow coming from the sky 
before!” 
With a face full of wonder, my freshman 
friend from California spun around outside 
without a coat, giggling at the first snowfall of 
the year. Childlike glee took over my six-foot 
tall assistant director in the middle of musical 
rehearsal. The half of the cast that came from 
warm states either ran outside to join him or 
smiled through the window. But the rest of us 
just sat back and laughed thinking, You’re going 
to hate it in a week!
I was born and raised in Michigan. Michigan 
winters mean pure white snow turns to gray 
slush in a matter of hours, cars get trapped in the 
driveway from overzealous snowplows, freezing 
walks to the bus stop and highways jams from 
blinding sleet. I, of course, still feel a twinge of 
excitement when I wake up to dusted rooftops 
and iced trees. But that only lasts for about 30 
seconds, or until I remember I have to walk to 
class or clear off my car, and I begrudgingly leave 
my warm bed and embark into the cold.
For most of us jaded Michiganders and 
northern state residents, the snow lost its magic 
long ago. Of course we want a white Christmas 
and maybe even a snow day, if we’re lucky, but 
for the most part, it’s a nuisance.
But in the huge out-of-state population that 
the University of Michigan becomes home to, 
some students have never seen snow before. 
Freshmen are often in awe of their first snowfall, 

and even upperclassmen still get a thrill from 
the first of the season. Snow to them doesn’t 
necessarily mean slush-covered jeans and traffic 
jams. They just see a beautiful scene that rivals a 
Hallmark Christmas movie. For those who see 
snow as a standard occurrence, we haven’t felt 
that way in a long time. But seeing our friends’ 
faces light up at the first sign of winter, we start 
to remember the magic we once felt.
Another one of my California freshman 
friends FaceTimed her mom the day of the first 
snowfall. Countless Instagram stories showed 
the snow-covered campus, window views and 
friends in fluffy scarves. I told one of my best 
friends to look out her window, and she texted 
me back “IT’S CHRISTMAS.” Snowmen 
appear in the diag, a block M crop circle covers 
Palmer field, snow angels grace the North 
Quad courtyard.
My friends from California remind me how 
I felt when snow excited me. When a new 
coating of snow meant snowball fights with my 
dad and igloo building with my sister. When 
we would peel off our sopping wet snow pants 
and seven other layers to drink hot chocolate 
so hot that the marshmallows melted. My 
California friends remind me of the look on my 
sister’s face when we thought we were going 
to have a green Christmas, but instead woke 
up Christmas morning to a snowy scene: a 
Christmas miracle.
My heart has been frozen to snow for a 
while, but seeing my friends’ joy at their first or 
just a fresh snowfall is enough for me to start 
to thaw. So thank you, California friends, for 
making snow magical again.

Snow from the blue sky

COMMUNITY CULTURE NOTEBOOK

DANA PIERANGELI
Daily Arts Writer

Waves

State Theatre

A24

Toward the end of a life, the accumulation of 
regret seems an inevitability, with a minefield 
of mistakes laid out throughout the decades. 
Stephen Dunn’s poetry collection “Pagan 
Virtues” enables Dunn to walk himself and the 
reader through these mistakes as he endeavors 
to change the tone of each misstep from regret 
to acceptance. Dunn has mixed and, at times, 
unclear results in attempting to do so, with his 
cynical style of humor sometimes obscuring his 
feelings despite creating a more enjoyable read. 
His humor often strengthens the collection, 
though, reflecting his divided thoughts rather 
than being a deliberate 
ploy to mislead or confuse 
his audience. But each 
mistake is not equal in 
magnitude, and Dunn 
could 
have 
benefitted 
from greater clarity when 
discussing this in certain 
passages.
Dunn’s 
sentiments 
are transported to the 
reader through one of 
two 
approaches. 
His 
more anecdotal poems 
are shielded by a layer of 
emotional ambiguity: the 
perspective of his former 
self blends together with 
his reflective opinion on 
the event, sometimes to 
the point that the two 
become indistinguishable. While the execution 
of these stories seems lackluster in isolation, 
they usually succeed in giving context to the 
second approach — poems that provide a more 
direct analysis of Dunn’s hindsight, offering 
specific feelings in a general sense. The settings 
from the former allow one to connect the dots 
and understand the broader picture of Dunn’s 
life. On an initial reading, these connections 
mimic those of a scatterbrained detective’s 
bulletin board, but generally are clarified when 
revisited.
“The Errors” is one of the more telling 
poems from the second category, giving clear 
insight to Dunn’s manner of reflection. The 
catch? This poem is placed beyond the halfway 
point in Dunn’s collection. Up until then, the 
reader is unsure of Dunn’s methods, which is 
particularly dangerous for certain poems. In 
“The Errors,” he projects his own interactions 
with past mistakes onto the second person. 
He writes, “The errors you’ve made and keep 
making / linger and indict you long after / 
they’ve become instructive.” Dunn reveals that 
his relationship with past faults is on neither 
extreme of the regret-acceptance spectrum. He 
doesn’t just wallow 
in self-pity; he heeds 
the advice that his 
mistakes 
provide 
to 
prevent 
their 
duplication, but part 
of him still wishes 
the mistakes never 
happened to begin 
with. While Dunn 
acts in the present, 
he still cannot help but think in the past, often 
the distant past, from time to time. This comes 
to define “Pagan Virtues.”
Dunn’s anecdotes are not always fully 
forgivable even as they are explained. They 

often refer to botched romantic efforts, 
which unfortunately come off as creepy or 
misogynistic. He recalls watching a topless 
woman on a beach as she read one of his 
books. He further explains his desire to ask 
her “What is pleasing (her)” every time she 
smiles during her reading. Another time, he 
describes one man’s feeling that flirting has 
been negatively impacted by the introduction 
of media encouraging the use of statements like 
“May I?” shortly before that man wishes that a 
particular woman would wear a more revealing 
dress. In this case, it is unclear whether 
Dunn is projecting his own ideals onto this 
unnamed man or discussing a sort of person he 
experienced in the past. The extent to which 
both these events reflect his present beliefs 
is unclear. These segments 
are wildly distasteful, but it 
is important to consider the 
passage of time after these 
errors later in the reading 
when deciding whether or 
not the displayed sentiments 
apply to Dunn’s current self. 
Also worth considering is the 
fact that, at the time of writing 
this collection, Dunn was 
happily married to his wife of 
many years, so it is likely that 
he is putting himself into the 
shoes of his former self when 
discussing 
other 
women, 
rather than truly wishing he 
had not ended up with his wife. 
Even so, the inclusion of such 
segments is so jarring and off-
putting that it feels as though 
Dunn could not have written them without the 
intention of being remorseful for his past gross 
misconceptions. Dunn may not even be the 
man depicted by the unnamed man at all. 
But unfortunately, this cannot be clearly 
ascertained. 
While 
other 
poems 
depict 
profound regrets for past mistakes, the language 
of the problematic poems themselves is not 
remorseful enough to keep the reader from 
 
feeling great discomfort with Dunn. Many 
great poems leave plenty of work for the reader 
when it comes to extracting the intricacies of 
the author’s meaning, but Dunn simply cannot 
afford to take these liberties when dealing 
with such sensitive and problematic subject 
matter. If people have changed after and felt 
remorse for a dark time in their lives where 
they were unequivocally wrong, coming clean 
and apologizing does not merit admonishment. 
Without the certainty of where Dunn stands, 
the anecdotes cannot serve their (hopefully) 
intended purpose. 
Dunn’s overall acceptance and prolonged 
regret of past faults allows his readers to 
relate to him, although not completely to 
darker times in his life. His brutal honesty 
in spite of what’s 
best for his image 
reinforces 
his 
narrative of regret, 
but 
sometimes 
the reader yearns 
that this honesty 
be 
accompanied 
by a more explicit 
portrayal 
of 
current 
feelings. 
One shouldn’t read “Pagan Virtues” with the 
intention of reprimanding Dunn’s past self, 
Rather, it is about using Dunn’s flawed years 
to reconsider his own history and, from it, 
pave a better future.

Gritty personal growth 
in ‘Pagan Virtues’ poems 

BOOK REVIEW

ANDREW PLUTA
Daily Arts Writer

A24

Shults does 
a rare, 
extraordinary 
thing: He 
films the 
contemporary 
American 
teenaged 
experience 
with warmth 
and honesty 
and a complete 
lack of 
judgment 

A24

FILM REVIEW

Pagan Virtues

Stephen Dunn

W.W. Norton

Nov. 19, 2019

