‘The Sun Never Sets’ Review: Joe Swanberg Gives Mumblecore Its Groove Back
Mumblecore cinema has been in a drought this decade. We only had Cooper Raiff’s Shithouse, which put the genre in the hands of a Gen-Z voice in 2020. I think the active vacancy has gone to Joe Swanberg, one of the genre’s pioneers who made movies like Drinking Buddies, Digging for Fire, and every other indie movie with Jake Johnson in it. In his latest, The Sun Never Sets, he unleashes Jake Johnson and Dakota Fanning onto Alaska to give the genre its groove back. And he certainly succeeded in doing so with a gripping humanistic story about a woman searching for herself and her happiness that serves as a reminder of both his status as one of the genre's greatest and the exceptional talent of actress Dakota Fanning.
CREDIT: The Alaska Project LLC
MPA Rating: N/A
Runtime: 1 Hour and 42 Minutes
Language: English
Production Companies: Paper Street Pictures
Distributor: N/A
Director: Joe Swanberg
Screenwriter: Joe Swanberg
Cast: Dakota Fanning, Jake Johnson, Cory Michael Smith, Debby Ryan, Anna Konkle, Lamorne Morris, Karley Sciortino
U.S Release Date: N/A
33-year-old enthusiastic Wendy seems to be the only one in her friend group with freedom. Everyone else is stuck working or has their lives figured out, and her best friend (Debby Ryan) is pregnant. Wendy’s been seeing Jack (Jake Johnson), a dorky school coach with two kids, for two years. He is assured of his provincial routine and comfortable with where he's at in life. He doesn't like doing as many activities as Wendy, nor does he want to have kids with her. He seems to pick up on her slight discontent. So he tells Wendy to be free for six months to find the spirit she once had. If she wants to be with him when she returns, so be it, assuring her he isn't going anywhere or trying to be with anyone in the meantime.
Those efforts backfire as Wendy’s ex-boyfriend, Chuck (Cory Michael Smith), moves back to Alaska indefinitely, and they restart their relationship. Jack is incensed by this news and is immediately motivated to end his challenge. However, Wendy comes to terms with the fact that she doesn't want to just yet, leading to a complicated in-and-out with each other.
Chemistry and craft carry The Sun Never Set's’ weight.
Joe Swanberg’s return to the mumblecore game is like seeing your favorite boxer come out of retirement with an updated skillset. This is the pinnacle of his direction. Fanning and Johnson camouflage with the Alaskan mountainside. Additionally, Eon Mora's 35mm cinematography gives it a warm VHS vibe and a classic capital-I indie movie feel, beautifully capturing the pristine winter landscape. Their innate acting prowess blurs the boundaries between script and improvisation, creating incredible on-screen chemistry that textures the duration of their relationship and character development, highlighting their relationship's struggle with the banality of their small Alaskan town.
Wendy's lifestyle consists of being a daytime blue-collar worker, playing trivia or pool with her friends at her local go-to bar, and staying in and kissing one of her boys in these stunning cabin houses while wearing cozy, woodsy flannels and plaids. Half of the film is really her doing the latter.
With The Sun Never Sets, Swanberg explores the gray area of those tricky relationship dynamics where both parties are at an impasse. Nobody knows what they want from each other, but the love remains. It gets exhausting, if not repetitious, pretty fast. It’s the equivalent of hearing how your friend, who you thought broke up with their ex, keeps hooking up or going back to them, and you're on the brink of throwing your hands in the air and going, "Make up your fucking mind already!" But you can't because that's your friend and you like them, and you also like their partner, despite how much they don't deserve that friend. Yet Swanberg’s signature ability to shape his characters in richness, along with his performers' passionate portrayals, kept me enthralled.
Dakota-issance is in full effect while Johnson embraces the mess.
The Sun Never Sets is not necessarily about a love triangle, which it initially sets up upon the suave Chuck’s arrival. It pivots from that dull, clichéd area into a more engaging study of Wendy and her uncertainties. It dissects her and Jack's relationship and the discrepancy in their power dynamic. Though I do feel it's at the sacrifice of a wasted Cory Michael Smith, who, despite being very hot and charming, is barely given much to work with, coming across more like a pixie plot device for Wendy's arc than given the same weight as her or Jack.
Given that this is Swanberg's fourth or fifth collaboration with Johnson, it's refreshing to see him, usually a heartthrob, as a dorky and sometimes pathetic schlub. Johnson is very convincing as an uncertain, fragile man-child; those cartoonishly large eyeglasses, big gestures, and string of loser choices all sell it. But somehow he's not insanely annoying. He walks the line perfectly, just slightly irritating but always likable.
I've been holding it in, but holy shit, Dakota Fanning is nothing short of exceptional. We are in a Dakota-issance, and while she's been in the horror realm lately with Vicious and The Watchers, The Sun Never Sets is a reminder of her dramatic talent. In what may be one of her best central performances in her adult career, Fanning expertly textures the age bracket her character occupies – fierce when she knows what she wants, yet heated, tender, and vulnerable in her natural state of ease and joy. She brings a natural, down-to-earth radiance and charm that feels achingly relatable to viewers in her age set.
As the anchor of the film, working loosely with little script and leaning into vibes, Fanning proves how attuned she is to the character. She portrays her with such sheer passion that it's hard to tell how much of her dialogue was improvised.
FINAL STATEMENT
Joe Swanberg’s The Sun Never Sets is a brilliant return to form. A passionately detailed and humanistic rom-com anchored by a charismatic Jake Johnson and a career-best Dakota Fanning performance, it proves there’s some sun to shine in the mumblecore genre.
