A surreal allegory about feeling not at home in the world, with beautiful and playful cinematography.
- Entertainment factor: ★★★★★
- Originality factor: ★★★★★
- Surreal factor: ★★★★★
- Symbolism factor: ★★★★★
- Coming-of-age factor: ★★★★★
I Saw the TV Glow is a dreamlike surreal allegory about escapism, nostalgia, growing up in a place you don’t feel at home. While it isn’t a straightforward film, it’s full of symbolism and a symbolic film all by itself. The cinematography is beautiful and playful and will reel you in like a hypnotic tale of coming-of-age. Stars Justice Smith, Jack Haven, Ian Foreman. Directed & written by Jane Schoenbrun.
Duration 1h 40m
Plot
In 1996 approximately 13-year-old Owen meets 15-year-old Maddy, while she is reading a book about all the episodes of a kid’s tv show called The Pink Opaque. It airs at 10:30 pm every Saturday when Owen is supposed to be in bed. They connect and Maddy offers that he can watch it at her place. Owen makes an excuse to his parents and sneaks off to Maddy’s place where they watch The Pink Opaque together.
It’s a show about two girls Isabel and Tara who met at a summer camp and now fight paranormal evil brought upon them by Mr. Melancholy, the man in the moon. The show connects them and two years later Maddy makes him video tapes of all the episodes so he can watch the whole show. Then she announces that she is planning to walk away and wants Owen to come with her. He gets scared and wants to stay, but Maddy still leaves and disappears.
Eight years later she shows up again and has to tell him something. Something about The Pink Opaque. It was all real, she says. She asks him to watch the final episode again and to make a decision.
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Short Review
The story is about two children who don’t feel at home in this world. They are outsiders. Maddy likes girls and Owen doesn’t know what he likes. Whether that puts him on “the spectrum” or not, is not important. He even says that he is afraid to look inside himself, afraid that he is empty. He likes tv shows and can relate to them. Just like Maddy. She even feels that The Pink Opaque is more real than actual life.
It’s about two young people who feel out of place. The tv show acts like an anchor. It gives them meaning, solace and something to relate to. I certainly can relate to that feeling. If you, when you were young, didn’t feel like you belonged, tv shows with characters you can relate to who are maybe outsiders, but strong and find their own people can be very helpful. I think many of us can relate, I did.
We get to see some scenes of The Pink Opaque and the show feels weird and surreal. In real life the show shines through, by means of cinematography with lots of pink coloring and glows and blends the vibe of the tv show with reality. The whole film is laced with a surreal vibe. The conversations they have, the monologues, Owen is even breaking the fourth wall talking to us about what happened or explaining something, this all gives it a meta-story feel.
Owen and Maddy find support with each other while The Pink Opaque is what connects them. When Maddy comes back after eight years she tells him the show was all real. She asks him how he remembers the show. When he watches it now as an adult it feels very childish and it indeed doesn’t look like the show we got to see earlier, at all. Even Isabel and Tara are different children and much younger. Maddy speaks of time acting strangely an reality feels off. She even claims that she has been in the tv show.
SPOILERS + EXPLAINED
Maddy says she has been in the tv show these past eight years. She also claims she is Tara and that Owen is Isabel. She asks him to watch the final episode again. In that episode Tara is captured by Mr. Melancholy and buried alive. Then Isabel is captured as well and her heart is taken out. Mr. Melancholy makes her drink luna juice which will take her to the Midnight Realm. He shows her that realm in a snow globe and she sees Owen as a child, watching tv and growing up. Indicating the Midnight Realm in is fact the world Owen and Maddy live in. The episode abruptly ends. Owen now also remembers he dressed like Isabel and he and Maddy looked up at the moon and saw Mr. Melancholy.
Maddy tells him she let herself being buried alive and that’s what brought her back to their own home, the tv show. Luna juice brought her back to the Midnight Realm to save Owen. And that’s what she wants them to do now, bury themselves alive to get home. But Owen refuses. Since that day Maddy disappeared again and he never saw her again. But he kept wondering if she was right.
When a birthday party is celebrated at the Fun Center where he works he gets a meltdown which results in a surreal scene where everybody is frozen and he is screaming. In the bathroom he cuts himself open and sees his inside glow like the glow of a tv. Then the movie abruptly ends, just like The Pink Opaque did. It offers no answers, no conclusion. Were they really Isabel and Tara trapped in the Midnight Realm, a place where they never did find themselves at home, where they didn’t belong?
Whether this was true or not, this story is a big allegory about feeling out of place. Of never finding your place in the world. Most kids and teenagers feel like outsiders, like they don’t belong, like there is something wrong with them. Escapism through tv shows, people that keep showing up for you, don’t judge you but whom you can relate to is quite normal. However Maddy and Owen couldn’t escape this fantasy. While Maddy gave herself completely to it, Owen wanted desperately to fit in, even if we get to see he didn’t.
I Saw the TV Glow is a tragic story, with beautiful cinematography. It is playful, and serious at the same time. It has a surreal dreamlike vibe which feels like a meta-story.
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