“Love Shouldn’t Hurt” is a poster displayed in the work office of Evelyn Katz, played by Julianne Moore, but in the case of the Katz family, tough love is just one of discomfiting foundational principles the household is built on. Jesse Eisenberg’s semi-autobiographical, directorial debut When You Finish Saving the World, with source material stemming from his audiobook of the same name, is a promising but bleak start to the writer-director’s future capabilities. When You Finish Saving the World has a dreamy yet amateur home-movie quality feel due to the shared interest of Eisenberg and his director of photography, Benjamin Loeb, to shoot on 16mm film. The lived-in, graininess to the world grounds the audience closer to the alienated, narcissistic souls in the film, who have trouble reveling domesticity due to the competing nature of their individualities despite the desideratum for unity.
The characters’ personalities are something that was practically dreamt out of a joint Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach script — insufferable and yet laced with the right amount of acerbic wit and inchoate emotions. Ziggy Katz, played by Finn Wolfhard, is a shaggy-haired loner by day and folk-rock internet sensation by night — who could be easily coined as a Gen-Z wannabe Bob Dylan with a vocabulary that only exceeds as far to filler words, like “lit” and “tera.” Ziggy spends his days on a Twitch adjacent live streaming service and he’s devoted to putting on a show to please and inspire his fans. At the end of the day, he’s only able to truly be himself when he plays his music. Eisenberg explained that the songs played within the film were lyrically taken from his personal collection of written songs when he was a teen, while the melodies were created by composer Emile Mosseri, who hones into the lo-fi and homemade aspects of Ziggy’s music. His raspy voice is often accompanied by an acoustic guitar and electronic piano chords.
Ziggy’s mother, Evelyn, is a stern, workaholic committed to her work at a domestic violence shelter and as an activist. Both are strong-willed and driven to make a difference in people’s lives — in their own sense — and yet are impeded by their opposed lifestyle paths. There’s a generational and virtue difference that lingers within their relationship. The audience senses that the two drifted apart as Ziggy hit adolescence and started maturing into his own being, essentially every parents’ worst nightmare.
Ziggy and Evelyn find themselves searching and yearning for surrogate relationships to fulfill the one they lack in and can’t express together. Since the mother and son failed to love and accept each other despite divergences in their personalities and callings, they in turn hunt for a tabula rasa that they can mold into their own liking. For Ziggy, fervent political activist Lila, played by Alisha Boe, mirrors a stand-in for his mother, while Evelyn projects onto sensitive Kyle (Billy Bryk). These ill-timed relationships only leave both characters in frustration as their inability to communicate and tendency to misinterpret situations leak through to their surrogates.
The atmosphere of the film is as abrasive and grim as the principal characters that involve them. Each frame has an element of muted warmth partly due the color-grading and since most of the scenes occur within dim-lit interiors. Eisenberg gravitates towards zooming and shaky handheld shots. While the camera movements contribute to the vintage amateur feel he strives for, Eisenberg risks the audience becoming easily distracted and further distanced from the characters. The screenplay remains the standout, as Eisenberg’s dry humor and blunt quips shine through as they land with a bitter punch. The characters are often found speaking and shouting on top of one another in good, ole’ mumblecore fashion. Eisenberg’s voice is sturdy yet nuanced but visually he lacks the language to fully assist his style which consequently creates for a hollowing and indifferent aftermath emotionally.
In an intimate monologue at the dinner table, Ziggy coyly tells his dad, “It doesn’t matter what I do in the world, I will always have this lingering pain.” Under all the arrogance and self-obsession, at the core of Ziggy, you have a self-conscious teen who yearns to be loved and accepted in one way or another. Unfortunately for his mother, his self-acceptance came in the form of 20,000 plus followers. In the time of the digital age combating against traditional ideals, this was an inevitable battle from the start for the two distanced souls. We can’t help but feel bad for both characters because what they yearn for is right in front of them the entire time. The final bittersweet, realization for the two doesn’t feel entirely earned. Ziggy and Evelyn don’t fully flesh out their relationship to get to the point that is fully rewarding and cathartic. While the emotional epiphany between the mother and son is not sincerely obtained, it is ultimately achieved.
Eisenberg, who has spent over 20 years in front of the camera with directors like Noah Baumbach, Richard Ayoade, and Kelly Reichardt to name a few, proudly portrays all the influences that he’s accumulated from working on that side of the screen. While he is still trying to find his footing behind the camera, When You Finish Saving the World is a visually gloomy but encouraging introduction into his future endeavors. Although Eisenberg lacks the necessary cinematic language for his debut to fully hit home, with more practice the path for him to strengthen and fully flesh out his skills seems attainable. Eisenberg’s debut is imbued in a raw candidness and cynical messiness, that may not be the easiest pill for everyone to swallow however it depicts a realistic perspective on the battle of how to live with loving someone who isn’t really what you expected them to be.
