Jennifer Connelly and Cillian Murphy Explore the Meaning of Life in ‘Aloft’

Sandra Miska

If you’ve already seen “The Avengers” and “Mad Max” and are looking for something a little more natural, look no further than “Aloft.”  This drama about mysticism and healing opens May 22.

“Aloft” contains two narratives. The first tells the story of Nana (Jennifer Connelly) a single mother of two sons living in an unspecified small town, most likely in Alaska. The younger of her sons, Gully (Winta McGarth), suffers from terminal cancer. Desperate, she joins a group of other families with ill and disabled children and follows a new age healer called Newman (William Shimell).  After a falcon belonging to her older son Ivan (Zen McGarth) disrupts Newman while he attempts to heal a boy with a bad eye, Nana runs in and grabs the boy, but the damage to Newman’s hut is done. Angered by the destruction, one of the fathers takes it out on poor Ivan’s bird in a particularly heart-wrenching moment, the first of several.

Nana is at her wits’ end when Newman comes to her at work and informs her that it was her touch that healed the young boy’s eye.  Initially skeptical, she decides to explore this talent, and it is when she is healing a young disabled girl that a major tragedy strikes Nana’s family.  Devastated, she makes a decision the changes the lives of her and Ivan forever.

The parallel narrative takes place 20 years later. Adult Ivan (Cillian Murphy) is now married to Alice (Oona Chaplin) and the father of a baby boy.  He not surprisingly works as a falconer.  French journalist Jannia Ressmore (Mélanie Laurent) tracks him down, at first leading him to believe that she is involved with a documentary about falconry, but eventually comes clean that she needs his help in tracking down Nana, who now is a full-time healer and artist.  Needing closure himself, having not seen his mother in some time, he agrees to go with Jannia.  All this leads to an emotional climax.

There isn’t a lot of exposition and explanations given in “Aloft.” Viewers are left with many questions. This is a cerebral film that gives viewers a lot to think about regarding healing, mysticism and the meaning of life.

“Aloft” opens May 22 in Los Angeles and New York.