Review: ‘Relic,’ an artful, devastating masterpiece

(IFC Films)

When my father died, he had long been a shell of his former self. Once an active, vibrant, and husky fellow ⏤ who worked two or three jobs, hunted, fished, and camped in the woods, and always woke before dawn ⏤ he was reduced to flesh and bones. He died from ALS (also called Lou Gehrig’s disease), a devastating neurodegenerative ailment that completely destroys one’s ability to function, and it was hard to recognize who he’d become. That was six years ago. In my mind, I still have a hard time accepting the lifeless form he was in his last days. I’ve also since begun to see the parallels to such cognitive deterioration as dementia (a collection of various conditions, like memory loss) and Alzheimer’s; I often picture these diseases as the other side of the same coin. ALS takes the body, while dementia and Alzheimer’s take the mind. In either case, the victim’s very identity is peeled down to the bone until only nothingness remains.

Natalie Erika James’ directorial debut Relic is terrifying, soul-crushing, and artful in the way it handles mental decay. With a script co-written with Christian White, the 90-minute feature rearranges the emotional tendons of 2017’s Hereditary and the stylistic absurdity of mother!, cobbling the psychological shards back together into a wholly unique mosaic of humanity’s grimmest, most troubling experiences. Family matriarch Edna (Robyn Nevin) plants in the eye of the tragedy, as her own dementia seeps into every facet of her life, appearing onscreen as icky, sticky black mold. When she goes missing for three days, her daughter Kay (Emily Mortimer) and granddaughter Sam (Bella Heathcote) travel to her estate to mount a search party in the hope she returns unscathed.

Edna does finally return but appears to have no recollection of what happened or where she wondered off to. Her feet are painted thick with the same dirty growths found in splotches around the house. Kay and Sam are flabbergasted, and their dynamic ⏤ one of deep worry, the other of rapt naivety ⏤ underscores three generations of women coping with reality, their own reactions to it, and what it could all mean for their futures. Nevin, Mortimer, and Heathcote dominate every single frame of the story, switching among emotional dishevelment, aggravation, fear, and confusion. Their performances are a marvel to behold.

“I just wish I could turn around and go back,” weeps Edna. After being discovered in the nearby woods eating old photographs, she has a heart-to-heart with Kay. This one last moment of lucid thought is a beautiful reminder of life’s fragility, a poignant, tearful goodbye to what will never be. It seems Edna, like many dementia patients, have put off confronting the truth: their sense of self has been slipping through their fingertips like water for a while now but it took this moment to make it inescapable. In that scene, upon burying her photo album beneath a layer of crunchy pine needles and mud, Edna sees her fate as clear as day. “I’m losing everything, Kay,” she says. But she hasn’t lost everything. She still has the love of her family and friends. And that’s really any of us have left in the end.

What is equally as satisfying is the bait-and-switch. Relic plays around in the supernatural sandbox, but it’s all simply dementia’s manifestations, from the wheezing shape crouching underneath Edna’s bed to the mold that oozes and slurps throughout the house. James coats on layers of symbolism with careful, calculated intentions, a dreadful melancholy glossed over the screen. For example, Sam gets lost inside what appears to be greater, darker depths of the house, but this third act sequence serves to accentuate the notion of generational diseases and her fight to break free, reclaim herself, and rise triumphant.

The cinematography, courtesy of Charlie Sarroff, pairs nicely with James’ astute, emotional storytelling. Slow-burns, wide angles, and meticulous set turns are so consuming, you’re drawn into the same frightful state with no hopes of escape.

Uprooting her own personal experience, Natalie Erika James never lifts her foot off the pedal either. When you think you have a moment to breathe, as when Edna gets lost in her vinyl records and asks Sam to dance, she hits you with another grueling gut punch. Start to finish, Relic is a masterclass, an exhibit that’ll tangle you up and provoke you to question why such terrible illnesses even exist. The film’s evocative, tortured themes will haunt and swell your brain; it certainly has made me think all manner of “what if”s I could have done to save my father. I guess I’ll never know.

If Relic is any indication, James is gunning for a magnificent and impressive career.

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