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Trey Edward Shults on his visceral and traumatic family-film, ‘Waves’ – Metro US

Trey Edward Shults on his visceral and traumatic family-film, ‘Waves’

Trey Edward Shults on his visceral and traumatic family-film, ‘Waves’
A24

Families work in mysterious ways. While some provide comfort, others provide tough love in order to motivate. While the ladder can create a complicated dynamic between parents and their children, it’s a risk that can pay off with their children weathering the storm and finding success once they leave the nest. The new film “Waves” by writer-director Trey Edward Shults mines this subject until it goes beyond the breaking point. Although it may not be the best Thanksgiving film for those of you out there who can be triggered by overbearing helicopter parenting methods, it’s a vital meditation and one that needs to be experienced on the big screen.  

The film takes place in a vibrantly shot South Florida town and follows the Williams family. The primary focus of the first half of the film follows the family’s prodigal son, Tyler, played by Kelvin Harrison Jr. Tyler is a star wrestler at his high school and is being groomed by his ex-athlete father, Ronald, played with blistering intensity by Sterling K. Brown. Ronald will not accept any signs of slack or failure from Tyler and pushes him to only focus on his training, working out with him on an unrelenting basis. Once Tyler finds out that he has a serious shoulder injury that requires him to quit his athletic pursuits, the thought of disappointing his father becomes too much to bear and he chooses to wrestle anyways. The unfortunate and inevitable happens to Tyler and his life begins to spiral under the scorn of his father until it all becomes too much to bear. 

“The parents are very much inspired by my parents,” says Shults, whose two previous films, “Krisha” and “It Comes At Night,” both deal with toxic and demanding family dynamics in their own different ways. “The movie on the whole is probably the most personal and autobiographical or semi-autobiographical thing that I’ve done. Clearly, there’s a lot of fictional narrative stuff in there as well. But the movie kind of spins around on a loop like that, where it’s real stuff from my life or my loved ones’ lives and it’s fictional, but it’s real. Tyler’s high school experience was like mine and his parents were also very inspired by mine. I gained a collaboration with Kel. Especially for the relationships with the dad and elements of the mother were inspired by his parents as well. We were talking for a while as I was writing  and when he got a first draft he talked about his dad. He had the nuances of a black father and a black son and a black family, that really came out with that collaboration. It became this really beautiful thing where it was deeply singular and personal to me and then it evolved into something a bit bigger, which was a big commonality between us.” 

Without spoiling the turn of the film, Shults eventually pivots the narrative focus onto Tyler’s quiet sister Emily, who has been left alone in many ways by Ronald and their stepmother, Catharine. By shining the spotlight on the child of the family who gets neglected in the shadow of the child who the family hangs its hopes on, Shults was able to create a moving and complete portrait of this kind of family dynamic.  

“Tyler is kind of the ‘star child’ of the family. He gets showered with all of the attention and Emily gets left in the shadows a bit. I thought it was really exciting to let this girl in the shadows come out and be the heartbeat of the film and really bring this family back together a bit,” explains Shults.   

If there is one thing Shults wanted to convey with this film, it’s that, whether we like it or not, your family will always remain the closest thing to you no matter how fraught they can be.    

“I remember from my stepfather, he was pretty hard on me and pushed me pretty hard,” says Shults. “We had different personalities and he would drive me crazy a lot of the time. I didn’t always understand where he was coming from. I remember getting older and away from him for a bit as you get older. I remember one time he got vulnerable with me and incredibly honest, and that one moment  changed my whole perspective on this man and how he was raising me. You can be so subjective in these relationships and you can only see your own point of view. You don’t see their point of view … we’re all just trying to do our best, and our parents are trying to do their best. It’s hard.” 

Getting Sterling K. Brown to sign on for the role of Ronald exceeded all of Shults’ expectations and his performance should be talked about this awards season. His portrayal of a terrifying authority figure that is doing the best he can to give his children a better life the only way he knows how is simply undeniable and a battering ram of a performance. 

“He was definitely the dream, but you don’t know if you’ll get the dream,” says Shults of working with Brown.  “We had sent him the script and luckily he dug it. We had a conversation and he wanted to talk to Kelvin and then we were there. For Sterling, the hardest thing was practicality. He was shooting his show at the time. That summer when we were shooting ‘Waves,’ we had to shift our whole work week to a Sunday to Thursday work week. He would do ‘This Is Us’ from Monday to Friday and fly in on a red-eye. He would get off the plane and go right into lifting weights with his son into having an emotional scene with his daughter … I thought that between being a fan of his work, especially on the O.J. show [‘American Crime Story’], and following him as a human being in interviews and his energy, I thought he’d be a dream come true for Ronald for a variety of reasons. It really worked out. I love that man.”      

Watch the trailer for ‘Waves’ by Trey Edward Shults…