Columbus **** / *****
Directed by: Kogonada.
Written by: Kogonada.
Starring: John Cho (Jin), Haley Lu Richardson (Casey), Parker Posey (Eleanor), Erin Allegretti (Emma), Rory Culkin (Gabriel), Jim Dougherty (Aaron), Michelle Forbes (Maria), Rosalyn R. Ross (Christine), Lindsey Shope (Sarah), Shani Salyers Stiles (Vanessa).
Columbus is an odd film – a quiet film – that is a romance in the same way that a film like Lost in Translation or Before Sunrise (the first one) is a romance – more about lost souls, stuck in a place, and connecting for a brief period of time, than anything truly romantic or sexual. The film takes place in Columbus, Indiana – a kind of Mecca of modern architecture in an unlikely place, where two people with not much in common, and no one else around, connect briefly. They are hometown girl Casey (Haley Lu Richardson) – who unlike most of her classmates didn’t go off to University this year, deciding to stay at home and work some dead end jobs, so she can help her troubled mother instead, and outsider Jin (John Cho), a Korean American, who has flown in because his architect father was supposed to give a talk in the town, and had a stroke instead – living him close to death in the hospital. The two talk and connect because, well, what else are they going to do?
This is one of those films that sneaks up on you a little bit. The early scenes involving Richardson’s Casey are so kind of quiet, yet specific, as the writer/director Kogonada (making his first film – and already exuding the confidence of a more experienced filmmaker) and actress build this character from the inside out. Richardson, who was quite good in last year’s teen comedy The Edge of Seventeen and this year’s M. Night Shyamalan film Split, shows here just why she’s destined to be a star. Like everything else in the movie, her performance is quiet – but it’s confident. John Cho is also quite good as Jin – he doesn’t much want to talk about his father – who he hadn’t spoken to in a year, and didn’t even know he was taking this trip, and doesn’t really know what else to say. He knows architecture because of his father – but says he hates it – and yet, it was what initially bonds him with Casey, who is a self-described architecture nerd. He forces her to think harder about why she likes what she likes – but not quite in that condescending way that many guys do when talking to women. He’s not mansplaining – because he is genuinely curious.
We see these characters apart from each other as well – Casey with her mother, Michelle Forbes – who has had a troubled life, and who she worries will go back to what didn’t work for her before if she’s not there to parent her parent. And Jin with Eleanor (Parker Posey), his father’s assistant, who Jin clearly has some sort of past with – there is something hanging in the air between them that goes uncommented upon. It’s nice to see both Forbes and Posey in good roles again, just as it’s nice to see Cho get a chance in a real lead that genuinely explores his Asian American roots. Yes, Richardson is the real star of the film – alongside the beautiful architecture, but there’s a lot going on here.
Columbus is probably a little too quiet for its own good, and perhaps deciding to premiere at Sundance wasn’t the best choice (that film festival is known for a certain kind of indie film – and this isn’t it). It’s quietly found an audience though – becoming a modest box office hit, and I think it’s the type of film that will continue to find that audience for years. It’s the type of film that seems perhaps a little too quiet, a little too sleight as you watch it – but you find yourself thinking about days, weeks, months, later. With any luck, everyone involved will go on to even better things.
