Directed by Morrisa Maltz
Executive Produced by Lily Gladstone
Starring: Jasmine Shangreaux, Syriah Fools Head Means
Everything seems so simple when we were kids. We are carefree, easily entertained, have little to worry about adult responsibilities . The world seemed so big with hopes, dreams and the future was wide open. The new film Jazzy takes us back to a time when things are more simpler.
Jazzy follows the friendship of 2 Indigenous girls in South Dakota. Jazzy and Syriah spend their days, hanging out, playing with stuffed animals, discussing their crushes and talking about how they don’t want to grow up. The film stars Jasmine Shangreaux and Syriah Fools Head Means, and is directed by Morissa Maltz. Lily Gladstone acts as an executive producer and makes a cameo of her reoccurring character as Tano, from the film The Unknown Country, also directed by Maltz. Jazzy was first introduced in that film, making Jazzy and Unknown Country a shared cinematic universe.
Like Unknown Country , Jazzy feels like a hybrid of a film narrative and documentary. Jazzy and Syriah are real people, yet the film has a creative artistic story arc. At times it feels like a video essay or blog before going deeper into the underlying dramatic weight of the characters. Everything is happening under the surface in this film. Jazzy ditches the classic formula and delivers a series of images that bond together creating a heartfelt powerful coming of age journey.
The film simply captures a time when children are totally living in the present moment. No real worries about the future and when the past no longer exists. However, when the pressures of change comes along, it challenges their status quo.
In this case, Syriah is moving away. Rather than tell Jazzy, she ignores her for days. Instead of confiding in her best friends about the pain she feels of losing her, Syriah ghosts Jazzy. It is a sad sequence, yet we cannot fault Syriah since she is still a kid, a child who has not learned how to deal with such emotions yet.
Morissa Maltz captures all these feelings through endless whimsical montages, while they may not be traditional sequential narratives, the visuals still convey the emotional weight of the characters. The camera lingers on the girl’s faces, the adults are rarely seen and their voices becomes background noise. The focus is always on the kids.
There is a profound scene where Syriah has moved back to her reservation, while visiting her older relatives, they begin to speak Lakota, a language she knows very little of. The shot of Syriah’s blank expressionless face speaks volumes. Not only does she miss her best friend Jazzy, she is also unfamiliar with her Indigenous culture, making her loneliness much more palpable. The scene is then juxtaposed with Jazzy who is also dealing with her own seclusion, as she sits in the middle of an empty street all by herself. The audience feels their heartbreak.
The film has a surreal dreamlike quality in the sense of David Lynch, yet unlike Lynch’s films which leans into dark oddities and tragedy, Moretz’s style is more hopeful and wonderous. Her films are full of the familiar comfort in simple human connections. Our longing for company and community. Friendship is important, even more so when we are children.
Jazzy makes for a poignant and emotional journey. The story of a friendship of 2 young girls and how it is tested by inevitable maturity of time. It’s not about how their friendship ends, but more about how it evolves. The pressures of growing up eventually affects their bond, and it’s how they deal with the impending crash of adulthood is what makes their friendship stronger. Ultimately, the girls must each stand on their own, another lesson of growing up. Still, change doesn’t’ come easy. Especially when we are kids, when emotions are raw and feel so much heavier. It serves as a reminder to adults how delicate feelings can be and hopefully reminds us to cultivate and validate them. Sometimes, children can be the best teachers. Jazzy is a reminder of that simple little fact.
