The film Vox Lux can claim the year’s most confronting opening so far. A music class, run by a popular teacher, is interrupted by a former pupil who then hauls out a gun and kills everyone in the class – all but one.
The survivor, Celeste, translates her experience in an unexpected way.
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With the help of her sister Ellie, she writes a song about her feelings, it goes viral and becomes the start of Celeste’s career as a pop superstar.
When the pointed, rather sarcastic narration of Willem Dafoe kicks in, we get our first inkling as to where Vox Lux may be heading.
The film - written and directed by former actor Brady Corbett - is not so much a snapshot of pop stardom as one of the whole pop culture of the last 20 years.
Celeste is given a manager – a great performance by Jude Law – and a career path on the back of her name recognition.
She’s the kid who survived, the girl with the songs – even if the songs are often provided by other people. Vox Lux clearly knows this territory very well.
Celeste may owe something to pop divas of the era – from Madonna and Britney Spears, to Katy Perry and Lady Gaga – but there’s more to her than a simple “type”.
Celeste’s failings, according to the film, are also the failings of the times. It’s the age of instant gratification, of self-centred attention-seeking and the millennial whine.
So far, so facile of course. Putting the boot into millennials and what passes for popular culture in the age of the Internet and social media is like shooting fish in a barrel these days.
But the team that director Corbett has assembled to explore this message is pretty dazzling.
Natalie Portman as Celeste 16 years on is startlingly good – as sharp and convincing a pop star as she was a prima ballerina in Black Swan.
Here she’s a monster, but we still find ourselves sympathising with her predicament.
The younger Celeste – and later Celeste’s daughter – are both played by the talented Raffey Cassidy, while sister Ellie is played by another actor to watch, Stacey Martin.
But in fact much of the fire-power of Vox Lux isn’t up on the screen.
The songs – crucial to convincing us Celeste could actually be a pop sensation – are written by genuine pop sensation Sia.
And the music score and arrangements are by the even more legendary Scott Walker, no less.
Walker’s overpowering strings combine with Sia’s songs and Natalie Portman’s performance to create something genuinely disturbing – particularly when they combine with random acts of 21st century violence – some real, some fictitious – and unquestioning support from Celeste’s fans.
Tying it all together is the sardonic narration of Willem Dafoe, watching Celeste’s career play out in front of us.
Is this all we deserve, he seems to ask? Can’t anyone else see what’s going on here?
Vox Lux is not the sort of film that will pick up easy awards, even if it is better than so many that do. But it’s a hard film to forget, partly because the story is repeated every five years or so in the real pop world.
