TURBULENCE – Review by Sarah Ward
The personal and universal are one and the same in Turbulence, although that’s far from an unexpected or new revelation: the personal and universal are always one and the same, no matter where and how they pop up. Anne Aghion knows that. An Emmy winner for 2004’s In Rwanda We Say… The Family That Does Not Speak Dies and a Gotham Award nominee for 2009’s Cannes-selected My Neighbor, My Killer from her four-film Gacaca Series, alongside earning acclaim for 2008’s Antarctic-set Ice People, the writer/director now shares and unpacks her own story while also telling tales that all watching will recognise and relate to.
Not everyone lost their mother at the age of ten, grew up with a father forever changed by the Holocaust but rarely speaking of it, endeavoured to cope with grief by banishing childhood memories and rebelling, then began jumping around the planet from Rwanda to the South Pole and India to explore life’s hardships, horrors and hopes from behind a camera. There isn’t a person who hasn’t weathered the sting of mourning and absence, though, or dwelt in the space created by past tragedies or deeds, be it their own or those of others. Similarly, no one can say that they haven’t escaped into work, fled as far away from home as possible or both to try desperately to avoid heartbreak and woe.
Here’s another similarity between each viewer in Turbulence’s audience and Aghion: undoubtedly, the former have also addressed reflections about their life, questions and regrets among them, to someone no longer capable of answering, even if they’ve only done so in their own head. Aghion not only voices such thoughts to her mum Nancy aloud as narration, but uses them to form the movie’s structure. This cine-memoir is shaped as letters from the filmmaker to the woman who brought her into the world, all unfalteringly candid, every word striving to articulate feelings that’ve been left unspoken for decades and actively, purposefully pushed away. Paired with them: footage new and old, including home movies, photos, artwork brought alive via animation, sprawling landscapes, Aghion herself and unused snippets that didn’t make the cut in her prior films.
Hypnosis sessions conjure up visions from the womb, then, and join beach trips in Brittany as a kid, legal troubles, broken extremities, her dad’s recollections, tender goodbyes, family resting places, claiming love and plenty more in the picture’s array of sights. Clearly, hopping around the globe, to France and New York as well, is just one of Turbulence’s journeys. As the movie also travels from before Aghion’s birth to now, it rides a lurching and weaving emotional rollercoaster. Each voyage overlaps, because we’re all constantly moving physically, through the years and internally — and this is the type of film that yearns to plunge its viewers into that very sensation, rather than merely offering an impassioned description of it.
Immersion is among cinema’s greatest functions, after all, ranking up there with empathy. That’s where cine-memoirs can either stall or soar. If a feature with such expressive and subjective aims misses the mark, it risks playing as indulgent navel-gazing or insular nostalgia. When this kind of picture hits its target, a rewarding pool of insights beckons via a window into its maker’s soul and a mirror held outwards. To Aghion’s success, sitting down to Turbulence does indeed mimic standing in her shoes or slipping inside her heart and mind, experiencing her sorrows and struggles, then gleaning her realisations and relishing her wins. Fashioning the film as a collage of so many different audio and visual materials helps. In splicing the movie together, editor Nadia Ben Rachid gives it the rhythm and flow of memories ebbing and flowing in and out, another key touch.
As the outpouring that results when someone lays themselves bare, confronts all that lurks within and entrusts it to a film’s frames for the world to see, Turbulence works. There’s no doubting Aghion’s commitment to her introspective task at any turn, the awareness that her path to it was always going to take time — a dozen years, in fact — or her understanding that everyone peering on will also see themselves in her ordeals. As an attempt to examine how life goes on when living is so frequently a constant cycle of sorrow and worse, Turbulence makes a savvy choice, too, letting wrestling with that notion guide not only its missives from Aghion to her mother, as well as its chats and clips, but also its texture, tone, mood and overall feeling.
