Blackbird

Directed by Roger Michell, Blackbird follows Susan Sarandon‘s Lily as she gathers her immediate family for a weekend of relaxation and catching up – with the caveat being that Lily, suffering from a progressively debilitating disease, is planning to end her life in a few days. There’s never really a point at which Blackbird becomes the engrossing, emotional drama one might’ve anticipated, as filmmaker Michell, working from Christian Torpe’s screenplay, delivers an often unreasonably conventional endeavor that contains exceedingly little in the way of authenticity – which does, in turn, prevent the viewer from working up the emotional involvement or investment that Michell has clearly intended. And although the director has elicited solid work from an impressive roster of performers, including Kate Winslet, Mia Wasikowska, and Sam Neill, Blackbird‘s proliferation of cookie-cutter character types (eg the uptight one, the flighty one, etc) certainly dulls the impact of certain revelations and ensures that the movie is perpetually unable to make the emotional impact it’s so desperately striving for (ie the viewer should be a total wreck by the time the end credits roll) – with the final result an ineffective drama that ultimately does waste the efforts of a very talented cast.

** out of ****