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Saints Rest
Nov. 1st, 2018 07:37 amI’ve never been to Saints Rest, the coffee shop that stars in Noga Ashkenazi’s movie of the same name, but I’ve sat and read and written letters and drunk hot chocolate and chatted with friends and gazed out the windows at the streetlights gleaming on the dark pavement in the night in dozens of coffee shops just like it. The giant chalkboard menu, the low platform that is a stage on open mic night and a seating area otherwise, the scones and croissants in glass cake bells - even the molded tin ceiling that must have been uncovered in a restoration are all classic Midwestern college town coffee shop.
Ashkenazi is Israeli, but she went to college at Grinnell and the movie is a love lyric - not so much to her alma mater but to the town of Grinnell, the coffee shop and the city streets and the bench down back of campus where you can sit and watch the trains go by. (Here’s an article about the Grinnell connection: Saints Rest Movie.)
And yet there’s an ambivalence here, too. The main conflict of the story arises between Joni, who has run Saints Rest ever since her mother died three years ago (the coffee shop is real, but this backstory is fictional), and her much younger sister Allie who has finally returned home - but only for the summer: in the fall she’s heading for New York City, where she’s won a bit part in a Broadway show. She doesn’t understand why Joni, a talented singer-songwriter herself, won’t go too.
“Does it never occur to anyone that I like it here?” Joni demands, during one late-night argument. And certainly there’s a lot to like: Allie clearly feels a pull toward staying, and Joni’s friend and roommate Danny, a nurse from Tel Aviv, has stayed in Iowa far longer than she planned. (One of the most affecting scenes in the film is the moment when Danny receives a care package of snacks from home.)
And yet Joni’s question is unconvincing: it has never occurred to anyone that she likes it here because, well, she doesn’t seem to like it here. She has a tense, edgy energy, like Jae from Wonderfalls, another young woman stuck in a place she intended to escape. And yet at the same time she’s a part of this place: she directs the local bell choir; she sings with the local chorus; she runs a coffee shop that is a town hub.
I think part of Joni’s conundrum is that she knows she’s supposed to want to leave: talented people from the Midwest are supposed to be champing at the bit for the opportunity to move to the coast. If she stays - if she not only stays but is happy staying - well, that’s practically the same as admitting she’s a talented hack, isn’t it?
Which she isn’t in the least. Joni is a singer-songwriter, or was before her mother died; soon after her sister arrives home, she finds some of Joni’s old sheet music in the piano bench at Saints Rest, and plays one of her sister’s old songs.
The movie often pauses for minutes at a time for the songs: Joni’s songs, or Allie’s, or Allie and Danny playing one of Joni’s old songs as a piano duet. (The songs are beautiful. I wish they were selling a soundtrack.) They’re so well-integrated into the narrative that it didn’t occur to me to think of the movie as a musical until I saw it described that way in the article linked above, and it certainly isn’t a musical in the classic sense. The songs do reflect the characters’ emotions, but only obliquely. If they’re a window on the soul, it’s a small window high up in the wall. Even when you stand on tiptoe, it’s hard to see anything through it except the sky.
Ashkenazi is Israeli, but she went to college at Grinnell and the movie is a love lyric - not so much to her alma mater but to the town of Grinnell, the coffee shop and the city streets and the bench down back of campus where you can sit and watch the trains go by. (Here’s an article about the Grinnell connection: Saints Rest Movie.)
And yet there’s an ambivalence here, too. The main conflict of the story arises between Joni, who has run Saints Rest ever since her mother died three years ago (the coffee shop is real, but this backstory is fictional), and her much younger sister Allie who has finally returned home - but only for the summer: in the fall she’s heading for New York City, where she’s won a bit part in a Broadway show. She doesn’t understand why Joni, a talented singer-songwriter herself, won’t go too.
“Does it never occur to anyone that I like it here?” Joni demands, during one late-night argument. And certainly there’s a lot to like: Allie clearly feels a pull toward staying, and Joni’s friend and roommate Danny, a nurse from Tel Aviv, has stayed in Iowa far longer than she planned. (One of the most affecting scenes in the film is the moment when Danny receives a care package of snacks from home.)
And yet Joni’s question is unconvincing: it has never occurred to anyone that she likes it here because, well, she doesn’t seem to like it here. She has a tense, edgy energy, like Jae from Wonderfalls, another young woman stuck in a place she intended to escape. And yet at the same time she’s a part of this place: she directs the local bell choir; she sings with the local chorus; she runs a coffee shop that is a town hub.
I think part of Joni’s conundrum is that she knows she’s supposed to want to leave: talented people from the Midwest are supposed to be champing at the bit for the opportunity to move to the coast. If she stays - if she not only stays but is happy staying - well, that’s practically the same as admitting she’s a talented hack, isn’t it?
Which she isn’t in the least. Joni is a singer-songwriter, or was before her mother died; soon after her sister arrives home, she finds some of Joni’s old sheet music in the piano bench at Saints Rest, and plays one of her sister’s old songs.
The movie often pauses for minutes at a time for the songs: Joni’s songs, or Allie’s, or Allie and Danny playing one of Joni’s old songs as a piano duet. (The songs are beautiful. I wish they were selling a soundtrack.) They’re so well-integrated into the narrative that it didn’t occur to me to think of the movie as a musical until I saw it described that way in the article linked above, and it certainly isn’t a musical in the classic sense. The songs do reflect the characters’ emotions, but only obliquely. If they’re a window on the soul, it’s a small window high up in the wall. Even when you stand on tiptoe, it’s hard to see anything through it except the sky.
