Somewhat to its credit, Luce is a film that deals with a lot of complex ideas. However, this core complexity is consistently overruled by odd directorial and writing decisions. The end result is a fascinating failure that goes no further than just dipping its toes into provocative territory. Yes, the issues it is tackling (race, colonialism, the weight of expectation, the idea of ‘positive’ discrimination, morality, etc.) are staggeringly complex, but engaging with complexity demands a level of clarity and in this department Luce is seriously lacking. The lingering ambiguity that surrounds the film doesn’t stem from open ended exploration but more from artificial limitation. The lack of answers on offer is ultimately due to poor handling of characters and ineffective story telling, it is not derived from the staggering weight of thorny issues. It’s a film that should make audiences think but is one that actually only leaves viewers guessing.
The film focuses on the circumstances surrounding a black high-school senior by the name of Luce (Kelvin Harrison Jr.). On paper, Luce is a shining success story. He spent the first 10 years of his life in a ‘war zone’ in Eritrea, before being taken to America where he was adopted by two white parents (Tim Roth and Naomi Watts). Despite his numerous setbacks, Luce has achieved some semblance of the American dream. He is the most praised, and seemingly most gifted, student in his year and is the exact model of academic excellence. He is supposed proof of what one can achieve with American values and a solid upbringing, an aspirational example of overcoming adversity. The veracity of this is questioned throughout the film and this setup is full of promise. However, what could be a clear deconstruction of the American dream becomes increasingly muddy, and not to the film’s benefit. Race is a huge part of the film and the representation thereof is questionable. In its best moments, the film puts forward a fascinating anti-colonialist narrative about cultural whitewashing, putting forward the idea that to succeed in white society comes at the cost of relinquishing culture and betraying identity – and that black success is only ever on white terms and is tokenistic. This is a nuanced and interesting viewpoint that merits exploration. Unfortunately, the film doesn’t just push this idea, in fact it doesn’t push a clear thesis at all.
Inherently, a lack of thesis isn’t an issue. Some topics belie being pigeonholed into a simple intent and the worth of some ideas is in their wider exploration. However, to achieve this, a film must feel real and it must be clear. The plot machinations in Luce are so artificial, and so contrived, that the film fails as a thought experiment. It is a film in which plot drives character at every moment and the result of this is that none of the characters feel actually real, making it impossible for the film to resonate out. A lot of this is down to a basic choice: the decision to position the film as a thriller. Luce plays out like a mystery drama, a who-dunnit of sorts, in which information is routinely hidden from the viewer so as to make later moments surprising or ambiguous. The result is alienation. The viewer, if they are to consider the implications of what becomes a very provocative narrative, needs to have a strong grasp on what is going on and what the motivations are. It is a film full of moments that require interpretation and moral examination but this is an impossibility as you are never given enough information as a viewer.
Once again, Luce deals with loaded topics, that demand thought and time to breathe, but consistently puts the viewer in positions where they are guessing rather than thinking. This is especially problematic because it is a film that invites moral judgement, it wants you to engage with its characters and to – ostensibly – pick a side, or at least work out where you stand in complicated territory. But this is an impossibility. At several stages characters may or may not have done things that have severe implications but the reality of these events is always artificially mysterious. If this were a true story, this may have been interesting – an attempt to work out what actually went on here and what it meant could be satisfying – but this is purely constructed. Answers do exist, they are just withheld and this means that the film solely functions as a collection of vague hypotheticals and provides no meat to actually chew on. I was left repeatedly uncomfortable because the films positioning was so uniformly ambiguous, which is a dangerous path to tread with some of the content it deals with. There is one scene in particular, in which a black female character is humiliated in an extreme fashion. It’s hugely uncomfortable and is never clarified, it serves only as yet another enigmatic sequence designed top open up possibilities. It feels exploitative and the discomfort I felt felt at odds with what the film was trying to do. This character is then never returned to, establishing the film’s treatment of her as deeply uncomfortable. Once again, you can tackle challenging topics but you need to do so clearly and with care.
The central issue with the film is its storytelling. By favouring an enigmatic approach the film is unable to actually comment on topics and doesn’t allow for interpretation of ideas – as these ideas are obscured by narrative enigmas. Things are uniformly open ended which could be fine but this is wholly artificial. If you had all of the information you could make clear judgements and it would elicit interesting readings. Without this, Luce just doesn’t work and the result is uncomfortable. As a white man, it’s entirely possible that I am missing a lot and that the film’s exploration of race is more nuanced and interesting than I am giving it credit for. I will freely admit to my limitations in this area and am more than happy to be corrected and informed. However, I can speak to the filmmaking, and the filmmaking uniformly gets in the way of any messaging. Fundamentally, the whole narrative is deplorably artificial, with ill-established characters and plot movements that just happen for the sake of the plot moving. Subjectively, I also found a lot of the content around race troubling – as the ambiguity leaves open a lot of unchallenged readings that are deeply uncomfortable.
Admittedly, the problematic readings of the text could actually be simplistic readings of what are actually very nuanced and interesting ideas but by being so unclear in every instance there isn’t enough consistency to allow for clear interpretation. I’m sure there are fascinating points at the heart of Luce, I just wish the film would let the audience see them rather than giving them a contrived thriller instead.
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