The
Apple TV+ film by Josephine Decker, adapted from the 2010 YA novel, deftly explores the confusing tangle of emotions in the aftermath of loss
The Sky Is Everywhere, Apple TV+ and A24’s adaptation of Jandy Nelson’s 2010 young adult novel, often gives what could be a rote exploration of grief the sheen of a fairy tale. Seventeen-year-old Lennie Walker (Grace Kaufman) lives in a colorful house in a northern
California redwood forest surrounded by ancient trees and her Gram’s (Cherry Jones) sweet-smelling roses. A talented clarinetist, her forays into the woods are soundtracked by classical jazz; the wind carries off her poems and letters, written on leaves or looseleaf paper. There once were two sisters who explored together, she narrates, and minutes into the film, there remains only one, after the death of Lennie’s beloved older sister Bailey (Havana Rose Liu) from a heart arrhythmia – the same condition that killed their mother when they were children – at the age of 19.
In less capable hands, this catastrophic loss could become the single dominant element of the film, the sap that overwhelms everywhere else. But through the eyes of Josephine Decker, the film-maker behind the experimental theater trip Madeline’s Madeline and the perversely surprising, deeply under-appreciated psychodrama Shirley, adolescent grief becomes something more confounding, sensual, spiky. Decker infuses Nelson’s screenplay with a potent dose of whimsical fantasy, morphing Lennie’s tortuous bereavement into a lonely house, a romantic musical journey and a garden where other complicated, confusing emotions grow.