Capsule Review, minimal spoilers (in green):

Mayday is a movie that’s rather hard to pin down. It’s several themes, which are all over the place. It’s almost an idyllic dream, but it’s comingled with some harsh realities. In the end, it’s satisfying and quite an enjoyable movie experience.

Ana (Grace Van Patten) is a downtrodden young woman. Through a series of worse and worse events, she disappears. Somehow, Ana wakes up on the shores of a faraway island, and is rescued by Marsha (Mia Goth). She is brought to Marsha’s home, a relic of the war. She lives with two other girls, Gert (Soko) and Bea (Havana Rose Liu). They live an almost idyllic life, but it’s marred by the war, which intrudes upon the island. What war, you say? Doesn’t matter. They do have to defend themselves. The island is obscured by horrible weather, and they have chosen to use that to their advantage, luring ships and planes in to their doom.

Ana is rather confused by it all, and Marsha tells her she shouldn’t worry, it’s all good. Marsha declares Ana will be a good fit to their team. Ana slowly starts to integrate herself, and gets to know the others, but she isn’t really satisfied with her role.

Review, continued

Mayday is a trippy film. As host of the Arthouse Film Festival, Chuck Rose, described it (and I’m paraphrasing), it’s “Wizard of Oz meets Greek Mythology meets the Hollywood Musical meets Hunger Games meets Lord of the Flies, meets ….” Many genres collide to make this movie work.

The movie’s about Ana’s growth. She’s extremely withdrawn and timid in the beginning of the film, and when Marsha takes her in, she encourages Ana to be more than she is, because she’s got the potential to become a force to be reckoned with. Slowly, but surely, Ana becomes aware of her power, but it becomes a problem when she begins to assert herself and her beliefs.

Making a film is challenging, making one with many themes is hard, and being able to integrate all of the themes well is nigh impossible, but this movie succeeds. There is violence. Almost all of it is never shown directly, but clearly implied. There is fear and confusion aplenty, and yet, it does make sense when you look at the bigger picture. It has an interesting soundtrack, invcluding such diverse musical artists as Laurie Anderson and Liberace. Mayday leaves a lot of questions unanswered, but when you think about them, some of them are answered, but others are not. You’ll find that the unanswered ones are not as important to the story line as you thought they’d be. You can just let them go, and appreciate the movie for what it was, a fine fantasy that relates to reality, quite well.

I do recommend the film.