[yasr_overall_rating]
Devastated by his daughter’s suicide, an immigrant entrepreneur working in high-tech seeks answers to his lingering questions.
In Saila Kariat’s “The Valley,” the director makes an admirable effort to cover a considerable amount of ground, in the guise of a wealthy immigrant family in Silicon Valley who struggle to recover after the unexpected suicide of their youngest daughter. Where Kariat attempts to tackle many prevalent facets of contemporary America, from the incessantly cyclical technology industry to mental illness among young adults, the results, unfortunately, yield little originality, and at times, are executed with poor taste.
The film opens with a glimpse of multiple devices sitting on a nightstand, already setting the tone of this being a modern technology-minded film. We are then introduced to Neal (Alyy Khan), as he mechanically works through a morning routine while audio from an interview reveals him to be a leading figure in the Silicon Valley industry boom, ready to unveil his newest project Augur, a platform which would be able to predict individual’s future actions based on accumulated data. Things seem to be pretty straightforward for Neal, until Maya’s (Agneeta Thacker) suicide is revealed, and the film traces the events of the past year as Neal attempts to understand what pushed her daughter to such a decision (involving visits to her college roommates, reading her diary, and numerous trips through his own memories), chronicling Maya’s own experiences as well.
Kariat seems to be working with an unintentional asceticism, where the lives of the characters seem to end outside the perimeters of the film; at times, this can succeed in uniquely portraying the coldness of the family’s home and professional life, as a series of one-take shots at a Christmas party and at Neal’s gleam quickly over friends and co-workers who always have little to say, a product of their hollow every day. However, this is also the film’s most glaring detriment, a series of thin character sketches who only seem to exist for the purpose of mere platitudes. None of the acting is bad, per se, and Khan and Thacker can even be wonderfully expressive occasionally, yet with such a by the numbers script, the worst is brought out in everyone.
Kariat chooses a fractured style that, if employed right, leaves the audience just as lost as the characters, yet with its predictable narrative arc, the action is laid out rather neatly and obvious, perhaps more than Kariat would have liked. By opting for such fractured mystery in “The Valley,” the gravity of this family’s situation, whether it be matters of infidelity or parental expectations, is trivialized. As Neal begins to unravel in the film’s middle (his stature and masculinity began to show wear throughout his journey), the film takes on the misguided tone of a thriller, and Maya’s suicide is suddenly and unjustly reduced to nothing more as a storytelling tool (which seems to call for the inclusion of a fumbling Jake T. Austin). With such rich subject matter at hand, “The Valley” scans as so disappointing for how little faith it puts in the viewer for being able to comprehend and identify with such a film, opting for a stifling obviousness.
In limited theatrical release June 8th and on VOD, Blu-ray & DVD June 16th
