After the Russo Brothers’ Avengers: Endgame comes Cherry, a 180-turn for the two directors as they tackle the hard-hitting realities of PTSD, drug addiction and crime. Adapted from Nico Walker’s auto-fictional novel, Cherry is an American crime drama with screenplay by Angela Russo-Otstot and Jessica Goldberg. The film follows the life of Cherry (Tom Holland) going from being a college student falling in love to an army veteran struggling to finance a drug addiction.
The film is literally split into chapters. Divided into seven distinct parts, each section of the film is introduced by inter-title images that are doused in a bleeding cherry red. The illustration and delivery of the parts are matched by bold strokes of style. However, the constant shifts can be slightly disorientating and jumbled, for example: the changing aspect ratio, drifting colour palette, and stilted employment of visual effects.
However, the Russo Brothers place these styles into individual boxes. Each part in itself could be its own short film. Yet, the thread which attempts to bind the visual experimentation together is Cherry’s voiceover which keeps the story rooted. The unique chapters and their vivid style make the film exciting and unexpected in a way that the somewhat predictable plot does not.
The different aesthetics reflect Cherry’s different psychological states throughout the film. There is the pre-war, rose-tinted innocence of Cherry finding love in a dream-like glassy aesthetic. There are the epic visuals of Cherry as a war soldier navigating the expansive scales of the outdoors, versus the claustrophobic confinement of four walls. Finally, there is the post-war part, packed full of asymmetrical framing, placing abnormality in the background of Cherry’s turbulent addiction and descent into crime.
Holland’s performance as Cherry is brutally honest. His emotional range is consistently impressive and unflinching, from portraying the innocence of a college-dropout unsure on what next step in life is right, to capturing the nuanced psychological turmoil of a veteran suffering with PTSD. Ciara Bravo’s performance as Emily, Cherry’s partner, is equally as hard-hitting and uncomfortable at times. Emily’s journey is just as poignant as Cherry’s, and Bravo creates a voice to the struggle of Emily as both a partner and an individual with her own circumstances.
Overall, Cherry is a tough watch that commands attention. The Russo Brothers film leans more towards style over substance. However, Cherry is a brave attempt to push the boundaries of traditional viewership. Cherry is a striking self-aware film, combining many aesthetics and cinematic techniques together in one body of work to represent the changing psyche of a man’s life, taking risks over conventional comfort.
3 stars