Wow. Just wow.

This might be the best film of the year so far. I don’t even know if I’m kidding. I just finished Blue Heron, and it’s hard to believe that this is director Sophy Romvari’s debut feature. You know how awesome that is? You don’t see the uncertainty that comes with being behind a feature film for years after doing shorts. This is the confidence you assume with directors that have been doing this for years.

And what’s even better is that the film’s content cut straight into the core of my heart and made me cry, which is not an easy thing to do. Blue Heron is about memory, or more about how memories from childhood bubble up into the present day and linger in every corner. Although there’s artifacts in the film that clearly anchor the setting in the 1990s, the emotions felt by the characters seem to transcend time itself. At some point, you don’t even feel like you’re watching something fictional. You’re watching something that’s actually happened.

When we first meet Sasha, she and her Hungarian immigrant family are moving into their new house in the suburbs. Everyone seems to be settling in well, except one person: the older brother Jeremy. He seems okay at first–a bit of a loner, but every family has one. Until he is caught shoplifting. He throws tantrums. He hangs out with bad influences. No matter what his parents do, the question of what is wrong doesn’t seem to reveal an answer.

As we gaze through Sasha’s eyes, we see her new house turn into a dollhouse, where every noise is heard yet nothing is fully seen. We see Jeremy bouncing the ball off the exterior walls of the house, yet a slow zoom in could either mean menace or tranquility. We hear glass breaking and Jeremy’s bleeding hand, but that’s all we get. We hear the audio of nature TV channels, but the dialogue of the show only gives us a glimpse into the parents’ worst nightmare.

For me, Blue Heron hit the hardest in how it perfectly nails down how our memories work when we’re kids. I can’t remember much of my childhood, but I hear bits and pieces of what happened from my parents. And what I do remember is quite sparse, from which music I listened to (a lot of Black Eyed Peas, LMFAO, I’m not proud of that) to which events I remember (the Great Recession, Steve Jobs dying, the 10th anniversary of 9/11), to what particular moments stood out to remain in my head almost twenty years later.

But what I do remember is the mundane moments. Like playing with my dollhouse, waiting for the Eggos to come out of the toaster, being terrified to do a flip-turn underwater at the swimming pool, and trying my hand at tennis even though my arms were too skinny and my confidence or skill level at nigh-zero. Those didn’t seem very big at the time, but every now and then the deja vu will hit me and I’m back to a place I haven’t visited in decades. It’s kind of crazy.

Blue Heron understands that those mundane memories are what will stick with you forever. Your mom isn’t just making dinner, she’s giving important advice on how to act around the neighbors. You’re not just attending a natural history museum, you’re in the calm before the storm. You’re not just visiting the beach, you’re finding a keychain your older brother stole. You’re not attending a pool party, you’re meeting your first fairweather friends.

It’s heartbreaking to admit sometimes that foreshadowing doesn’t just happen in movies, but in real life. When you’re older, you’ll look back and realize there were signs of an incoming crisis that you were either unaware of or unwilling to confront. And it hurts to realize there’s nothing you can do about it. At times, Blue Heron feels like a true-crime documentary that changed direction. You start looking at clues for where the story is going to go, but then the perspective changes. Instead of offering easy answers, Blue Heron provides hard non-answers. Sometimes the most satisfying ending is the one that ends in a question mark.

FURTHER POINTS

• The casting for this film was so on point.
• Jeremy’s cartography was legitimately impressive. I wish I had the ability to create a coherent map legend without losing my mind.
• Computers in the 1990s look so awesome from a 2020s perspective. I think we’ve all become so used to how advanced laptops rae that we don’t understand how recently they’ve been invented.