In “The Same Storm,” it’s a welcome surprise to see Elaine May appear as one of the faces in writer-director Peter Hedges’ impressively diverse and starry ensemble, who take turns contributing scenes about the challenges of life during lockdown. May portrays spiky Ruth Lipsman Berg, who hops on a teleconference with a new doctor and her home health aide. Daphne Rubin-Vega is Lupe, her concerned caregiver. Raza Jaffrey is the gentle but quite-clear physician trying to ascertain if Ruth has contracted the coronavirus.
Ruth was in the scene right before this one — talking with her daughter, a webcam girl — so we’re aware she’s gotten dolled up for the doctor’s call. Like a good Jewish mother, she asked the doc if he’s single. If so, she has a daughter. Forget that in the prior scene, her call to said daughter (Mary-Louise Parker) was less than kind. Their chat quickly takes on the tone of an intervention, with Ruth getting prickly when her charm offensive doesn’t work. After Dr. Patel shows her a photo snapped by Lupe of her purple-hued toes, Irma’s mood turns ugly — and things turn sad.
A film reliving the early months of the coronavirus pandemic — the swamped hospitals, the isolation, the clumsy navigating of Zoom chats, symptoms like “Covid toe” — isn’t likely to sit atop a lot of people’s lists as a must-see. Too soon? The year-plus it took writer-director Peter Hedges’ “The Same Storm” to reach theaters (following its premiere at the 2021 Telluride Film Festival) suggests that distributors are worried.
Crafting a linked chain of well-observed portraits of duress, coping and connecting, writer-director Peter Hedges uses the familiar format of “La Ronde” to underscore the interrelatedness of his characters, most of them New Yorkers. It’s not just a familiar way to underline a kind of universal kinship. The leaps to fresh scenes are diverting and offer a satisfying guessing game of which character will be the connective tissue. (Will it be the doctor? The caregiver?)
May’s scene of cajoling the doctor and then finally disconnecting her computer is one of the many sharp-edged moments in “The Same Storm.” Becaus the film was made during lockdown, most of the footage comes by way of the actors’ laptops, iPads and smart phones. Considering all the screens involved, it must have required a monumental effort to make a film this way, and then cut it so that if flows. Tricia Holmes and Max Ethan Miller share editing credit. Maceo Bishop is the cinematographer, whose work in the final scenes is especially radiant.
Writer-director Hedges packs this heartfelt outing with actors who clearly wanted (or needed) to say and do something during that grim span. Count Sandra Oh, Alison Pill, Raúl Castillo, Rosemarie DeWitt and husband Ron Livingston, Moses Ingram, Jin Ha and Judith Light among them.
British actor Noma Dumezweni sets the stakes early. Her character, Dionne Davis, isn’t finding much balance during her online yoga class led by a solicitous instructor (Brittany Bradford). The reason for her faltering headstand becomes clear: She’s finally going to video chat with her husband, who’s in a hospital in Queens. When Nurse Joey (Castillo) rings, his face encircled with eye-shield marks, the news is not what she hoped for.
Far from seeming exploitative, “The Same Storm” taps stories that feel authentic: Oh and Ha portray parents who watch via Zoom as their son (Joel de la Fuente) spins out of control; Ingram and K. Todd Freeman play an activist daughter and her NYPD dad who spar, with love, over her attendance at a Black Lives Matter rally. You could blink and almost miss the fact that neither father nor daughter figure in the next scene, a shiva.
That seeming breach of the circle, that rupture, by the director feels pointed. The murder of George Floyd and the social justice protests that followed disrupted lockdown demands.
DeWitt and Livingston are exceptionally harried and amusing as a furloughed dad and an increasingly tense and wine-tippling mom shut in with their fifth grader. It is not going well as their deteriorating parent-teacher conferences with Alison Pill’s patient but taxed elementary school instructor prove.
Pill’s character serves as the bridge to a Zoom birthday celebration. The gathering for her mother (Judith Light) is attended by her progressive gay brother (Cory Michael Smith) and two siblings with MAGA sensibilities (Joshua Leonard and John Gallagher Jr.). No one gets a pass in this vignette about how political and life choices have been driving families apart. Jeremy’s high horse get further hobbled when he and his Black boyfriend (Ato Blankson-Wood) broach a “white privilege” conversation.
The acting is intimate throughout. The performances are about the actor’s process (as in technique), but also about actors processing the crisis like the rest of us. Hedges has an ear for believable — even aggravating — banter. Attempts at small talk — or deep confessions — sound a lot like those you may have had during the pandemic.
The title came from a tweet that went viral during the pandemic. “We are not all in the same boat, but we are in the same storm.” If that belief strikes a note of solace and camaraderie, then this film will resonate. If the movie were a person, she would be a mensch.
Far from seeming exploitative, “The Same Storm” aims for a shared catharsis. Will it be the best work of art to wrestle with the stories of Americans in the early throes of a virus that was producing death on a mass scale? Unlikely, but it’s an often-touching time capsule of a harrowing moment in which rampant death and police brutality, white privilege and surging activism answered the call of so much grief. Just one question: In a movie that makes room for seemingly every COVID moment, where’s the sourdough starter?
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