[yasr_overall_rating]
The film follows a young writer who finds himself catapulted to unexpected fame after publishing a novel based on the death of one of his high school classmates. Spiraling out of control, he disappears without a trace.
“The Vanishing of Sidney Hall” is filled with top-notch performances and deft direction. It is a movie that slowly reels you in so that by the time you reach the final act, you wait, almost impatiently, for the big reveals that have been teased throughout its two-hour runtime, and they are divulged convincingly and satisfactorily, albeit tragically. It is not a particularly upbeat film, rather, it centers on one man and his neverending pursuit to try to understand the reasoning and rationale behind mankind and life itself.
Sidney Hall (Logan Lerman) is your typical high school nerd, good at most of his academic studies, terrible at sports, and even worse when it comes to social interactions, especially with the opposite sex. When the school jock, Brett Newport (Blake Jenner), who has picked on Sidney for years, comes to him in a moment of weakness and asks for his help, Sidney is somewhat apprehensive, unwilling to help the person who has picked on him throughout high school. Brett reminds him of a time when they were kids and the two headed out into the woods, where Brett buried a lunch box and told Sidney never to tell anybody about it. Sidney has done just that, actually forgetting about it over the years until Brett tells him he needs it dug up. He eventually agrees to help him and because Brett can’t remember exactly where they buried the lunch box, he relies on Sidney’s photographic memory. When they get back to Sidney’s house, Brett’s dad, a high-profile judge, pulls up behind them and grabs Brett out of his car, forcing him into his. Brett manages to tell Sidney to hold onto the box and Sidney does just that.
Over the next few days, curiosity gets the better of Sidney and he opens it. When Brett turns up at school a week later, bruised and knocked up, and puts it down to an accident, he straight up asks Sidney if he looked inside the box. Sidney acknowledges that he did and a day later, Brett commits suicide. During this time, Sidney receives a mysterious letter from a girl who calls herself Melody (Elle Fanning), stating that she loves Sidney’s writings as he writes for the school newspaper. He spends what seems like forever, trying to track her down at school, to no avail, until she reveals herself as his next-door neighbor. He loves that she sees him as a writer and what he is capable of achieving and shortly thereafter, he decides to start writing a book that has been on his mind since Brett’s death. It becomes a huge success and lands on the New York Times bestseller list for the best part of a year and in the ensuing chaos, Sidney’s life begins to fall apart.
A young man who read his book took words from it, literally, and killed himself. Sidney’s relationship with Melody becomes strained as he finds himself in a constant state of depression, even though he is a huge best-selling author but everywhere he goes, he keeps seeing Brett, staring at him from the shadows. After Sidney visits a neurologist, he is informed that there is some scarring on his brain, the possible outcome of a childhood trauma or head injury from long ago and that could be the reason for the hallucinations he is experiencing. After Melody leaves him, he struggles to get on with his life and when he finally begs her to take him back, and she reveals she is pregnant, things begin to improve, ever so slightly, but then tragedy strikes and Sidney completely disappears, without a trace.
The film moves back and forth in time, one minute we ‘re in the present, the next we’re in the future, and then suddenly we’re in the past. I typically dislike movies that utilize this gimmick but by the end, it all comes into focus and you realize that the story wouldn’t have worked otherwise. A mysterious man who claims to be a cop (Kyle Chandler), begins tracking Sidney down and the clues are pretty easy to follow. Sidney, now disheveled and unkempt, is broke, by choice, and moves around the country by hopping trains with his dog and entering libraries and burning every copy of his book that he can locate. Eventually, the man catches up with him and says he wants to write his autobiography but Sidney refuses point blank. When he collapses and is admitted to the hospital, the man is informed by the doctors that Sidney’s liver is failing him and he hasn’t got long to live. Sidney offers the man everything he ever wrote down over the years, ideas, anecdotes, stories, and tells him to take whatever he needs in order to write his autobiography but he states that he must include specific experiences that Sidney went through, especially what was in Brett’s mysterious lunch box and the real reason as to why he killed himself.
A movie like this is not easy to summarize because there are so many moving parts, and a lot of them are plot twists that I do not want to give away here. Although slow-moving at times, it never loses your attention and the central actors, Logan Lerman, Elle Fanning, Kyle Chandler, and Blake Jenner, are all exceptional. The ending of this film is all hinged upon you believing and accepting the events which unfold within and without the performances of all involved, it would not work. The movie is about the innocence of youth and the promises we make when the road ahead of us is wide open and anything and everything is possible, and then how the older versions of us, when we realize that anything and everything isn’t possible, and that we have responsibilities to take care of, and families to look after, walk away from the very things that inspired us to grow up. It is possible to achieve both, to follow your dreams while being a responsible adult, but I guess most people lose their inner child as they mature, and, as a result, the dreams they once dared to dream.
Now available on Blu-ray (plus Digital) and DVD from Lionsgate
