Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Isabel Hagen
Starring: Isabel Hagen, Dylan Baker, Ling Ling Huang, Frederick Weller, Jamie Lee, Eric Bogosian
Millennials were the first generation to grow up in a culture where music no longer matters. Since a caveman banged two stones together, those with the ability to create music have been revered through the ages. Medieval kings would surround themselves with lute players. Marching armies were accompanied by drummers. In the 20th century a teenager would build their entire identity around the music they listened to. Then the internet came along and music became devalued. For most kids today music is just something you get free online. In the past, parents encouraged their kids to learn an instrument; now they live in fear of their children choosing a life as a musician rather than getting a "real job." After centuries of music being in the foreground of western culture, it's now just background noise.
On a String is the remarkable debut of the multi-talented Isabel Hagen, who writes, directs, plays the lead role and performs the music here. Hagen has channelled her experiences of being a jobbing musician in a world that no longer values music into a bittersweet comedy that will resonate with anyone trying to eke out a career in the arts.
Hagen plays Isabel, a Millennial violist who makes a living taking whatever gig comes along. Her bread and butter comes from performing as part of a string quartet that performs at weddings, funerals and other functions where they're requested to play the same handful of clichéd pieces over and over. Clad in black, the players of the quartet are literally expected to disappear into the background. Other freelance jobs see Isabel play solo for a disastrously awkward marriage proposal, as part of a movie score ensemble (Eric Bogosian cameoing as a boorish director) and accompanying a singer-songwriter. She also finds herself giving viola lessons to a precocious young girl when her attempt to hit on the child's father, Carl (Fred Weller), backfires.
Along with her professional struggles, Isabel navigates an uncertain personal life. Like so many of her generation, she's stuck living with her parents (Dylan Baker, Karen Blood). She has terrible taste in men, torn between married man-child Carl and an absolute douchebag cellist (John Kroner). And she's constantly arguing with her best friend, violinist Christina (Ling Ling Huang, who also plays her own instrument).
Isabel has spent so much time performing for uninterested audiences that she's begun to devalue music herself. She has no particular ambitions of composing her own work, and she can't even get excited for an upcoming audition for the New York Philharmonic. Playing the viola has simply become a job like any other. But this isn't a movie about an artist learning to love their chosen craft again, but rather one that asks why the rest of us have lost our enthusiasm for music, how we allowed ourselves to create a society where being a Julliard graduated violist is on a par with working in Starbucks.
Much of the cringe comedy comes from how uncomfortable Isabel makes others feel when they become aware of her talent, how awkwardly they behave in the presence of someone whose talent they neither understand nor appreciate, but of which they're nonetheless envious. The movie's most skin-crawling scene sees Carl attempt to seduce Isabel by performing a guitar-accompanied song he wrote, the lyrics of which are laughably terrible. Isabel is an expert violist, but she lives in a participation trophy culture where everyone else thinks they're also an expert.
While the implications of On a String's indictment of late capitalism are depressing, the film is anything but. I haven't laughed this much at an American movie in quite a while. Along with being a working musician, Hagen is also a stand-up comic and her experience of being centre stage sees her deliver a star-making turn. I was shocked to discover this is Hagen's first role, so convinced was I that I had seen her before. But that's just testament to how accomplished and confident her debut performance is.
As a writer and director, Hagen is even more impressive. Too many modern American comedies follow the Judd Apatow template of letting the cameras roll and hoping some funny people will be funny, which leads to rambling scenes that take an age to make their point (not to mention two hour-plus run times, the graveyard of comedy). Hagen's writing is exact and economic, with every scene expertly crafted to deliver a knockout punchline. Over its rapidly paced 79 minutes, On a String is broken down into a series of episodic vignettes, each one resembling a three-panel comic strip in the funnies section in its machine-tooled precision. Perhaps what's most impressive is how well directed On a String is for a debut. Hagen's camera is always in the right place to enhance a gag, always cutting o a new angle at just the right moment to make a punchline land.
On a String is an acerbic tale of a young woman who finds herself adrift, unsure of what she really wants from life and her career. But the same can't be said for Hagen, who clearly knows exactly what she wants and how to deliver it. This is a filmmaker who deserves to have the eyes and ears of the world on her. Let's not allow her to disappear into the background like Isabel's music.
