There are two types of gifted actors.
First, there is the calculating kind of actor, the person who knows, unfailingly, how to express turmoil, anguish, contemplation, but who does so in a way that is very analytical. You can see them thinking about how to tilt the chin just so, to grow teary-eyed but restrained. They know, of course, that holding back tears is often more powerful than uninhibited weeping. These are talented actors. These are actors I admire, actors who powerfully take control of their characters. But, despite their masterful acting, I can always see the intellectual approach in their eyes—I can always, always see the wheels turning. This is not necessarily a negative thing. For one, I believe Bette Davis fits this category to a T. I would also put Anya Taylor-Joy in this camp and she is currently one of my favorite actresses.
But then, there is the unguarded actor. This actor does not act the part—they become the part. Think about Viola Davis. You watch her onscreen and she is no longer Actor, but Character. There’s something incredibly affecting, fearless about her performances. Immediately, you believe her. She fits into her character’s skins so snugly, so accurately, that you can no longer see the seams.
Haley Lu Richardson is also this type of actor.
In Columbus (2017), I believed Richardson every step of the way. I believed that she was a sensitive, struggling nineteen-year-old living in a small town in Indiana, quietly stalwart in her decision to stay behind and look after her mother. It is in her face: the subtle shifts in her expression as she stacks books in the library, conversing with a colleague, soft amusement in her eyes; the grief that remains, always, behind the reliable façade she has constructed—you see this character, you see Casey, and it is as if you have always known her.
At first, you don’t know why she carries sorrow with her, but you still see it, even as she tries to convince you it isn’t there. She doesn’t say much, and when she does, it is about architecture. But her every move is rife with unfulfilled expectations. You see her walking down an alley, a plastic bag of groceries wrapped around her wrist, and there’s a small hunch in her shoulders. She’s tired, but she won’t let herself feel it. You see her stop in front of her house, watching children play across the fence, and she lifts her hand, waving at a little girl in the grass. And you wonder about her own childhood, the youth you sense she had to give up too soon.
And then, suddenly, she meets another lost soul. A reluctant translator, Jin (John Cho), has traveled all the way from Korea to Indiana to check up on his hospitalized father, a prominent architect and academic. He has been estranged from his father for years and openly displays both resentment and apathy when pressured to care for him. These characters, Casey and Jin, exist on separate ends of the same spectrum. Despite their disagreements, they find themselves drawn to each other as friends and, even, begrudging allies. Here, the emotional catharsis of the film lives and dies with Richardson and Cho.
Although a small town, Columbus possesses a number of modern architectural landmarks. I.M. Pei, Eliel and Eero Saarinen, Harry Weese, and John Carl Warnecke are just a few of the world-renowned architects who have shaped the community’s physical landscape. Casey and Jin, two characters from significantly different backgrounds with different experiences, slowly get to know each other through their shared language of art. It is by talking about space and light and design that Casey comes alive, her expression thoughtful and vibrant. It is by pushing and questioning these same buildings, by drawing out their philosophical aims, that Jin, too, reveals more of himself and who he really is behind his pragmatic demeanor. They walk and they talk and they unearth the parts of each other that make them human.
The director, Kogonada, films the changing environment with an artful, structured hand. Every frame is composed like a painting. The air is gray-hued, blue. Sometimes, it almost feels like a dream. Many times, the camera does not follow the characters, but instead remains locked, its lens positioned on the fixed backs of Casey and Jin as they stand in front of the Miller House Garden or study the “asymmetrical, but balanced” crucifix of First Christian Church. We watch them in profile, noses lit by the sun, as they contemplate the aesthetic goals of Polshek’s Regional Mental Health Center. Kogonada films at a slight distance, keeping viewers apart, which can make it feel as if we are imposing ourselves on private, secret conversations.
While standing in front of Irwin Union Bank, Casey launches into a tour-guide spiel about its historical origins. Jin interrupts and asks not for facts, but for reasons—he wants to know why this is one of her favorite buildings. As viewers, we don’t get to hear the answer. Instead, Kogonada shifts perspective, shooting Casey and Jin from inside the building, a window separating us from the characters. We see Casey speak, but it is silent. Yet, as the film demonstrates, it is not about what Casey says, but how she says it. We watch as she lifts her arms, her hands mimicking the shape of the building, and her expression is one of passionate deliberation, of aliveness. And we don’t have to hear Casey’s explanation to know that this is why she loves the architecture of Irwin Union Bank—it brings her back to life. Kogonada is not interested in exposition, or heavy-handed imagery. Rather than talk down to the audience, he collaborates with us. His technical structure, one full of elisions and half-hidden angles, mirrors that of the narrative—his characters, too, hold back, pause, their words full of breaks and silences. They embody the architecture of the film.
When Casey shares her past with Jin, it is a moment that understands its characters. Tentatively, she reveals that this spot—the fluorescent windows in the dark—is a place she gravitated to during a hard period in her life. At first, Jin does not pay attention to what she is trying to say in the unsaid parts of that story. Instead, as we watch his face, closed-off and moody, it is clear that he has returned to his own pain; he is thinking of his father, the architect, and he is looking at architecture his father certainly studied and admired—and knowing that makes him angry. So he becomes dismissive, questioning the idea that architecture possesses “healing” properties. And Casey, who was carefully testing out the waters for a greater disclosure, hears his condescension. She closes off.
She says, “I never said it healed me.”
And Casey gets out of the car, resting her arms on the roof. When Jin apologizes, she shakes her head, a nonchalance derived from a quiet, intense effort to seem unaffected, and mentions that Columbus is famous for its “meth and modernism.”
There, she has dropped something hard.
Eventually, Jin asks, “Did your mother do meth?”
And Casey laughs quietly.
She laughs and Jin looks confused. He doesn’t know why she’s laughing. Casey asks, “Can’t you hear it? ‘Does your mother do meth?’ It sounds funny.” And she laughs again, softly, shaking her head. It is a defense mechanism, her laughter, but it is a defense mechanism mingled with an intellectual self-awareness. It is as if she knows that drugs and meth and addiction are unfairly tied to the expectations of soap opera theatrics. It is as if she knows that Jin expects her to “play the part” of “earnest, teary-eyed daughter,” the girl who reveals the hidden ugliness of drug addiction, the girl who sobs and beats her fists and has problems. And she doesn’t want to do it. She doesn’t want to play a part. So she laughs. She laughs because Jin’s voice has grown quiet and caring and to her it sounds like pity and curiosity and she hates it.
So she laughs. Casey laughs.
And then Jin keeps asking and finally she says yes, her mother did meth, and the façade drops. She rubs her face and says, “It got really bad.” That’s all she has to say—we see the pain and it hurts.
This is a scene that understands trauma. It is a scene that understands why and how people react to personal grievances in unexpected, disarming ways. It is a scene that knows Casey.
Later, Casey and Jin argue. Both of them think they understand more—more about familial loyalty and grace and hurt and forgiveness. In a sense, Jin is a version of Casey that has been hardened by years and years of betrayals and growing resentments. The more Jin speaks negatively of his father, the more it becomes clear that he used to—and, maybe, still does—care deeply about what his father thought, but has built up his own walls to protect himself. Perhaps, as a young boy, he also sought his father’s approval. Perhaps, like Casey, he wanted to sustain the love of a parent who was absent. But now, Jin is older and thinks himself wiser and he wants to “save” Casey from sacrificing too much of her own future for her mother. This, of course, is his own fear manifesting itself: his father is sick, bed-ridden for an indeterminate amount of time in Columbus, and Jin does not want to have to wait in this small town, waiting and waiting, for his father to get better. He wants to return to Korea. He wants to return to his life.
And then, Jin tells Casey, “You could do so much better.”
She looks at him, disappointed and angry, and says, “Than what? Taking care of my mom?”
The question lingers in the air. Here, at this moment, they are both right. They are both right in different ways.
In the end, Casey does, indeed, say goodbye to her mother. Once she enters her car, sitting in the passenger seat, she no longer has to maintain any semblance of self-assuredness. She breaks into tears, covering her face with her hands. Again, Kogonada shoots at a distance. The camera captures this moment outside of the car, through the windshield, and we do not hear Casey sob, we do not know what Jin says when he puts his hand on her shoulder—but, again, none of that really matters. Casey, someone who has worked so hard to stay composed, has now broken apart. And it is the very fact that we cannot hear her that the scene becomes even more evocative. We cannot hear her, but we also, in a way, can hear her. We hear her pain by the very act of bearing witness.
By the end of the film, we have come to know Casey and we understand the magnitude of her decision to leave. And as we watch her, perhaps we also find ourselves filling in the blanks with our own personal experiences of loss and grief and a hungry, painful kind of hope.
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