(Joe Swanberg, USA, 2026, 104 mins)
The Sun Never Sets isn't really about Alaska, but Joe Swanberg set his latest feature, his first in six years, in my home state.
I'm not sure why, because it isn't the easiest place to shoot a feature, independent or otherwise. The summer days are so long, the winter days are so short--and cold and icy--and everything is more expensive.
A film's budget will only balloon the more a director flies in actors, crew members, and equipment. I'm sure he used as many local resources as possible, but those are limited, so I would imagine it was still a challenge. Then again, maybe that's just what he needed to shake up his routine.
For these and other reasons, most films and TV shows set in Alaska, like Northern Exposure or Christopher Nolan's Insomnia, are filmed elsewhere, usually Canada or Washington, and I can always tell, since I grew up there.
Maybe most people can't tell, but it's always bothered me, so John Sayles' Limbo, a low-key 1999 thriller, and Sean Penn's 2007 Jon Krakauer adaptation Into the Wild felt like outliers. Granted, I wasn't completely surprised that Sayles and Penn would film on location, but Swanberg, the one-time Chicago King of Mumblecore? No, I did not see that coming.
I've long had a fraught relationship with the director’s work. Granted, I haven't seen all 20 features, plus streaming projects, but I've seen enough. Drinking Buddies (2013), however, marked a shift from the solipsistic, navel-gazey films that had come before.
In it, Olivia Wilde and Swanberg muse Jake Johnson play straight people who forge a Platonic friendship, and that's the gist of it. It isn't as common as you might think, since most on-screen friendships comprise women with women and men with men, not counting the gay best friend, since there's no possibility of romance–unless one of the straight people realizes they aren't so straight after all.
The Sun Never Sets is a return to the loose-limbed relationship dramas with which Swanberg made his name, albeit on a slightly bigger scale and with a more experienced director at the helm.
Dakota Fanning, most recently of Netflix's Ripley, plays Wendy, a 31-year-old heavy-machine operator whose married friends are starting to have kids. She can't relate, because it isn't where she's at, at least not yet. (Swanberg had two kids with filmmaker Kris Rey, from whom he is now divorced.)
Wendy isn't single, though. For the past two years, she's been seeing Jack (Johnson, recently of Apple TV's Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed), a middle-aged hedge fund manager and part-time girls basketball coach with two kids of his own. His ex-wife (Anna Konkle) has moved on to a new partner (played by Swanberg) and new kid, but the director avoids soap operatics, since Jack doesn't resent his ex and the kids don't resent his girlfriend.
Wendy believes she's ready to settle down with a guy who doesn't want to remarry or have more kids, but Jack is skeptical, since she has interests, like camping and houseboats, that don't jibe with his. He's not wrong that she isn't ready, but his demand that they separate for six months, so that she can explore life as an unencumbered individual--a sort of Rumspringa for non-Amish adults--feels controlling, since he doesn't give her a choice, though he swears he'll be waiting for her if she decides to return.
If I were in her shoes, I wouldn't, because one-sided ultimatums don't bode well for lasting relationships, not least when her friends take his side. She also has the option of not seeing anyone and biding her time for six months, but she reenters the dating pool instead, both awkwardly and reluctantly.
Fanning is very good, and this is mostly her film, as much as Apple TV's Margo's Got Money Troubles was mostly sister Elle's show, but Swanberg treats her like a yo-yo. That's the point, but as the men increase the pressure, and she bounces between the two, both look like bad bets.
Alaska may offer its share of "sweaty guys who smell like salmon," but that's no reason to settle. The way Jack tells her he loves her over and over again comes to feel aggressive, especially since she rarely says she loves him back. I don't doubt that she does, but not quite as passionately.
Though reviews have been all over the map, I liked the film more than not, and would recommend Richard Brody's unusual review, in which he explains how what might play like weaknesses in another film become strengths in this one. The Sun Never Sets can be repetitive, some actors handle the improvised dialogue better than others, and there's more mid-tempo singer-songwriter material on the soundtrack than any one film can use, some performed by Joe's brother James. None of it is bad, necessarily, and I'm always happy to hear former Seattleities La Luz, but it lends the film an adult contemporary sheen that works against the prickliness of the scenario.
I wouldn't want to overpraise The Sun Never Sets, but it deserves better than it's gotten, and may well serve as the most accurate cinematic depiction of my hometown to date.
I mean, the sky really is pearlescent white, not blue or grey, more often than not. It's the damnest thing, and probably has a lot to do with Cook Inlet, the body of water bordering the city, but when you see a film set in and around Anchorage featuring the bluest of blue skies, you can bet it was probably shot somewhere else.
The Sun Never Sets only played in Seattle on Sept 10, but it's playing IFC Center in New York through Sept 17. It's also playing Anchorage's Cinemark Century and Beartooth Theatre Pub, among other venues. Images: The Independent Film Company via Mark Reviews Movies (Dakota Fanning), Far Out Magazine (Fanning and Cory Michael Smith), 1A (Fanning and Jake Johnson), and the IMDb (David Strathairn and Fanning and Flynn).
