The below is an advance review out of the Sundance Film Festival, where When You Finish Saving the World made its world premiere.
When You Finish Saving the World feels born from the rib of its writer-director Jesse Eisenberg, an extension of the lingering awkwardness and hidden depths he brings to his on-screen roles. The Social Network and Zombieland star makes his feature debut behind the camera with a sweet, funny, and often moving film that follows a strained relationship between teenage musician Ziggy (Finn Wolfhard) and his social worker mother Evelyn (Julianne Moore), whose diverging paths and outlooks keep them at odds. Adapted from Eisenberg’s audio drama of the same name — in which Wolfhard also appears — it bears several hallmarks of an unpolished visual storyteller, but one who is clearly in the process of fine-tuning his approach, and one who also has no trouble drawing great performances from his outstanding cast.
Ziggy livestreams what he calls “classic folk rock with alternative influences” to his audience of 20,000 — a number he boasts about ad nauseam — but despite using his screen as a window to the globe, he exists in his own world. We’re first introduced to him through his webcam footage, in which he greets his viewers in a multitude of dialects, before the film quickly takes a step back to paint his relationship to his household. His worldwide platform is really a tiny recording studio in his bedroom, with a makeshift wooden window separating him from his parents, Evelyn and Roger (Jay O. Sanders). He exists, simultaneously, as part of a larger community, and completely isolated from his surroundings.
His mother, though she exists offline, faces a similar dichotomy. A well-meaning social worker who runs a shelter for abused women, she weaves in and out of crowded scenes with her employees, and though she has a polite demeanor, she expects each of them to take the job as seriously and somberly as she does, every single minute, even behind the scenes. They occupy the same physical space, but they’re at a complete emotional disconnect — a problem that extends to Evelyn’s relationship with Ziggy. The first time the mother-son duo appears in the same scene, they don’t even share the screen. Evelyn ignores Ziggy’s livestream and tries to unlock his door. Soon after, Ziggy tries to reprimand her, and nearly walks in on her in the shower. They’re separated by wooden frames once again, even as they try, and fail, to have some semblance of a conversation.
They’re also separated by wildly different soundscapes. Composer Emile Mosseri draws from Ziggy’s electronic instruments to create a springy, head-in-the-clouds atmosphere, while Evelyn’s themes take after the heavier classical music she prefers. They eventually appear together on-screen — plenty of times — though their scenes usually end in mutual accusations of limited perspective and escalating arguments about how little they understand each other, before one of them storms off. Ziggy’s one-tracked approach to making money from digital tips and building his online rapport is at odds with the real-world work that Evelyn does (and wants Ziggy to do as well, if only so they can spend time together).
Ziggy and Evelyn are poised for an eventual blow-up, but Eisenberg takes a roundabout approach to making them reflect on one another, and on themselves. At school, Ziggy tries to get the attention of his crush, Lila (Alisha Boe), an outspoken activist whose worldliness far eclipses his own, and spurs him into a search for shortcuts to political awareness. His interest in Lila may be romantic, but what he really wants is to learn from her, so he can better navigate conversations and debates that make him feel outsmarted. Meanwhile, at the shelter, Evelyn is introduced to Mark (Billy Bryk), the teenage son of one of her new residents, Angie (Eleonore Hendricks). Mark, it turns out, is as polite, straightforward, and helpful as Evelyn wishes her own son could be.
Impressing Lila becomes Ziggy’s new obsession, though even his attempts at flirting always bring the conversation back around to his online presence, resulting in amusing discomfort. He’s hilariously oblivious at times. He even has his own slang terms, like “Lift” and “Terra,” which no one else at his school appears to use, and the guitar he carries on his back always seems to take up just a little too much headroom in his closeups — a little too much space in the conversation. It’s certainly too big for his mother’s tiny, environmentally conscious electric car. Perhaps he has outgrown her. Perhaps this is what Evelyn fears, and so while Ziggy is off chasing attention, Evelyn does the same (though neither one knows what the other is up to). Mark quickly becomes Evelyn’s new project. She tries to guide and mold him, even if her well-meaning (if overbearing) attempts are more for her own good than his. Though what’s especially peculiar about this dynamic — and especially dispiriting, given the way Moore skillfully navigates it — is that Evelyn is acutely aware that she’s using Mark as an emotional replacement for her own son.
When Ziggy and Evelyn are together, their arguments turn the atmosphere of any room into a thick and toxic smog (which Roger carefully avoids), but in the presence of others, their respective conversational poisons are slow-acting. They may have wildly different approaches to life, but they’re cut from the exact same narcissistic cloth, and Wolfhard and Moore both find incredible balance in each part. They tip the scale dangerously close to grating and detestable each time they speak, but Eisenberg and editor Sara Shaw make sure to capture the silent considerations between each line — which are as reflective as they are amusing, given the words they eventually choose — and the quiet, personal moments where they look inward and find only disappointment.
Eisenberg does, however, struggle on occasion as he attempts to connect these moments with a visual through line. He’s far from a one-trick pony, but his favorite trick is zooming and pushing the camera inward or outward, depending on whether he’s trying to build tension or relieve it, or trying to portray literal isolation (with characters growing smaller in an empty frame) or emotional isolation, as a room grows more crowded while the camera creeps on his subject. Sometimes the frame moves without reason at all; other times, it remains still when it ought to transform in some way, in order to punctuate the drama. However, despite this inconsistency, the moments where form and story align most certainly stand out as emotional highlights (though it’s hard not to wonder if they would’ve stood out further, or landed with more weight, had the approach not been so indiscriminate).
That said, the visual palette that Eisenberg otherwise creates, in tandem with cinematographer Benjamin Loeb, production designer Meredith Lippincott, and costumer Joshua Marsh, does just as much to enhance his story. The film’s colors, while warm, feel subdued. The frame consistently retains the appearance of a film photograph exposed to a little too much sun. It’s ever-so-slightly faded — a melancholy memory that has only recently been forgotten or brushed aside. This feels perfectly in-step with Ziggy and Evelyn’s relationship; while we only ever see it in its frayed form, both mother and son make constant reference to a time when things were better between them. It’s something they long for, even if their behavior towards each other is now erratic. Their respective plots, though they rarely overlap, speak to the emotional holes they’re each trying to fill — holes that are shaped precisely like each other, though they’re both too stubborn and stuck-up to notice it.
Cinematic drama so often depends on momentum — on characters navigating conflict through clashing wants and needs. When You Finish Saving the World, however, strips away that common artifice, and explores what happens when those desires and insecurities are projected elsewhere. Instead of following familiar dramatic instincts, it forces its characters to stew in their resigned acceptance whenever they share the room, rather than communicating with each other. The result is a depressingly true-to-life portrait of emotional inertia, and a parent-child relationship so strained that it feels like it may never recover. It’s Lady Bird for young boys, led by a pair of fine-tuned performances that are as volatile as they are delicate, and that ultimately guide the story down a moving path, where mother and son find themselves with nowhere else to turn but to each other.
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