Vox Lux (4 Stars)

Celeste Montgomery grew up in a poor family on Staten Island, New York. When she was 13 she was involved in a school shooting. One of her classmates shot the whole class, including Celeste. She was the only survivor, but she had a bullet lodged in her spinal cord that could never be removed. After months of recovery she performed a song in her local church expressing her feelings about the attack. This caught the attention of the nation, and she was invited to record the song professionally. It became a massive hit, and it launched her career as a pop star. Despite the efforts of her manager to protect her, she got involved with sex and alcohol at the age of 14.

The film jumps forward to 2017, when she's 31 years old. She's going to perform her first concert in three years on Staten Island to promote her sixth studio album, "Vox Lux". On the morning of the concert there's a mass shooting on a beach in Croatia. The shooters are wearing masks based on Celeste's first music video. There are demands for her to cancel the concert, but she insists on going ahead. She only just makes it, because she drinks massive amounts of alcohol in the afternoon.

The film is at the same time powerful and depressing, but when I walked out I was still struggling to find the film's message. Is it a film about the destructive power of show business? That's a subject in the film, but I don't think it's intended to be the primary message. The film doesn't linger on Celeste's gradual decay, it skips over most of it in the 16 year jump between 2001 and 2017. In this time she's changed so much that she's hardly recognisable as the same person. She's nervous and neurotic, but she's also filled with delusions of self grandeur. When she was young she believed in God, now she says that people should believe in her.

I can't help feeling that Celeste is based on a real life superstar who came to fame as a child. There's nobody who became a star after a school shooting, but I'm sure that there are other singers who started young and were destroyed by the temptations of star business.

I didn't enjoy the music. It's the shallow sort of pop that's commonplace nowadays. I've tried to judge the film on its own qualities, not the music, which takes up large chunks of the film.

I would have enjoyed the film more without the 16 year gap. I would have liked to see an extra half hour about Celeste's life in her troublesome years. The narrator tells us a little of what happened, but I would have liked to see it played out. The first part of the film, Celeste's early years, was excellent. I had problems relating to the latter part because I couldn't join the dots and trace what had happened to the timid little girl. How did she progress from believing in God to wanting to be a God?

The more I think about the film, the more I want to see it again. I'd also like to discuss it. If you like the film, please tell me your thoughts in the comments box.