Causeway is a drama directed by Lila Neugebauer in her feature directorial debut and written by Ottessa Moshfegh, Luke Goebel, and Elizabeth Sanders. Jennifer Lawrence also produced Causeway. The film follows a soldier struggling to adjust to her life after returning home to New Orleans. This is another film that was nominated for an Oscar that I had not heard of. I watched Causeway on Apple TV+ and found it to be a pretty decent film with a reality most soldiers can relate to.
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Lynsey (Jennifer Lawrance), a U.S. soldier, experiences a traumatic brain injury after an IED explosion during her tour in Afghanistan. The injury forces her to return home to New Orleans. She struggles to return to her daily life as she waits for her doctor to sign off on her redeployment to Afghanistan. Her doctor is reluctant to sign her waiver to return as he feels Lynsey’s trauma is a strong link to her depression. As Lynsey improves with rehabilitation, she becomes unlikely friends with James Aucoin (Brian Tyree Henry), an auto mechanic, who also has physical and mental trauma after a horrific car accident on the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway.
Causeway is not an action story and is slow-moving but brings home a profound issue known all too well to soldiers. When we say “Thank you for your service” we should keep in mind that this person has given their life for their country. Soldiers are exposed to so many different kinds of dangers that go unnoticed by the masses. Some, even though escaped physical death, haven’t found a way to escape mental death. War is a terrible thing! Causeway saddened me because there is no real answer to this problem, still, I think this film did a good job of telling Lynsey’s story. Causeway is streaming on Apple TV+, Check It Out!
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 85% based on 155 reviews, with an average rating of 7.1/10. The website’s critic’s consensus reads “Causeway takes a powerfully subdued look at the lingering effects of trauma, led by gripping performances from Jennifer Lawrence and Brian Tyree Henry.”
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