Heartland: The Moon & Back
"The Moon & Back" is an emotionally charged, charming tale of a daughter's love for her father and her quest to bring his unfinished epic to life.
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There have been many tales of a daughter's love for her father and to what lengths she will go to honor him. Writer and director Leah Bleich's addition is "The Moon & Back," a beautiful film I adored for its charming and emotional story.
Lydia's (Isabel May) father, Peter (Nat Faxon), is her everything. Her friend, her teacher, her hero, but most of all, the person she relates to the most. As she enters her senior year of high school, her life is turned upside down when her father is diagnosed with cancer and passes away. Now on the brink of starting her adult life, Lydia is paralyzed and can't move forward with her life.
Adding to her struggle is her mother, Diane (Missi Pyle) who has sold their home as she tries to move on with her life. Mother and daughter share a strained relationship that is more antagonistic than loving most of the time. After a neighbor gets her father's old computer up and running, Lydia finds childhood photos of herself and a folder titled "Writing." Upon opening it, she finds a screenplay titled "Space Chronicles: An Epic Saga of Life, Loss and Love in a Distant Galaxy," discovering a passion of her father's she never knew.
The only other consistent relationship she has in her life is with her school counselor Mr. Martin (P.J. Byrne), with who she has eaten lunch every day at school since her father's passing. Encouraging her to break out of her funk by applying for colleges, he tells her that NYU, the college her father attended, has a scholarship available. All she has to do is tell the story of who she is and can be in any medium.
Returning home, Lydia rediscovers her father's old video recorder and begins viewing the world around her through its lens. She also begins a video diary speaking to her father, expressing how much she misses him, his support and the fact that she needs his guidance at the moment.
With her life on pause, her mother suggests taking a job with her neighbor working on computers and other items. Lydia proclaims she cannot because she is turning her father's screenplay into a movie with her friend Simon (Miles Gutierrez-Riley). The duo has a big-budget script, no budget, no sets and no cast. It turns out that will be the least of their problems.
As they struggle to get everything to come together, their friendship is challenged, and now the film is in limbo as her father's screenplay was never finished. So, with no ending and their relationship tattered, Lydia finds solace watching old home movies of her father with her mother. As the two reminisce, Lydia realizes the conclusion the film needs to have is the happy ending her father was denied and seeks out Simon to help bring it all together.
"The Moon & Back" is a gem of a movie. Highlighted by beautiful performances from May, Byrne, Gutierrez-Riley and Faxon, the film was an unexpected emotional rollercoaster. The charming story of Lydia sucked me in from the opening scenes she shares with her father, but the emotionally charged ending caught me entirely off guard. Not the fact they crafted such a beautiful tribute to her father, but my reaction to it.
"The Moon & Back" is an emotionally charged, charming tale of a daughter's love for her father and her quest to bring his unfinished epic to life.