E-Paper
The Heart review: Barack Obama's daughter Malia Ann makes a promising directorial debut
HT at Sundance | Malia Ann Obama's short film The Heart revolves around a guilt-stricken man who grieves the unexpected death of his mother.
Malia Obama's short film The Heart is a strange little creation. The Sundance Film Festival, now in its 40th edition, is rather an apt platform for first time filmmakers, providing space for many actors-turned-directors. Jesse Eisenberg and Lucy Lawless this year are a few names to begin that conversation. In that league, Obama is a non-starter. Obama is the 25-year-old daughter of the former U.S. President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama. She previously worked with the writing team of Swarm, and also gathered internship experiences on the HBO series Girls and at the Weinstein Company. Her short film The Heart still finds that meditative place in the festival here. (Also read: Girls Will Be Girls review: Richa Chadha, Ali Fazal’s maiden production portraits a complex mother-daughter relationship)
In the short films section, The Heart stands out immediately, extracting in its approach but quite understated in its thematic concern. Credited here by her middle name Malia Ann, her film revolves around a lonely man named Joshua (Tunde Adebimpe), who lives a lonesome life with his mother (LaTonya Borsay). Not much is revealed about their dynamic but they share an eerily silent dinner in front of the TV one fine evening. After he's done, he moves upstairs to get a shower. In the next few minutes, his mother will suffer a fatal heart attack.
Joshua becomes a knot of unsaid things and stooped with guilt, while he is informed of his mother's wish to carry her preserved heart as part of the will. He will also meet a stranger on the street who resembles his mother, and say what he hasn't been able to, all this while. It is a little scene shot in close-up, which gradually gives way to the first time he gives any access to his underlying melancholy. Where will Joshua return? Did he abandon the jar containing the heart? Will he find a new place? These are some questions smartly left hanging in the air, as Obama lets the curtain down.
Perhaps the director herself can tell best about the place from where her film originates. In the Meet the Artist video shared by the Sundance Film Festival page, Obama gave insight into her film, and said that it is "about lost objects and lonely people and forgiveness and regret, but I also think it works hard to uncover where tenderness and closeness can exist in these things."
The Heart is a confident and assured directorial voice, one that circles around this specific close-knit dynamic of parental love and neglect. Yet, in more ways than one, The Heart is also emblematic of larger, more urgent questions on belonging and expression. Joshua might be speak freely now, but he might also realize why he could not do so when he wanted to. That choice, has now become his own.
Santanu Das is covering the Sundance Film Festival 2024 as part of the accredited press.
