Sent to Britain to live with her cousins for the summer, Elizabeth – who insists on being called Daisy – is stuck in a trap very familiar to American teenage girls. Living rigidly according to societally imposed rules, she is miserable, lashing out at her three cousins, Piper, Isaac, and Edmond.
The spell of her summer home – and her eldest cousin, Eddie – begins to work on Daisy, and just as she begins to step out of her comfort zone, everything changes. An unnaturally strong gust of wind followed by a snow of ash heralds the bombing of London. An idyllic life of bonfires, campouts, and swimming is abruptly ended by the arrival of the army as the children are separated. As Eddie and Isaac are conscripted into action and Daisy and Piper are sent to a farm to work, the four make a pact to return home by any means – and Daisy stops at nothing to find her family again.
Director Kevin MacDonald – whose amazing body of work includes ‘One Day In September’ (Oscar – Best Documentary), and ‘The Last King of Scotland’ (Oscar – Best Actor, Forest Whitaker) – presents us with a war movie that has less to do with war and more to do with survival. While we see hints of the bigger pictures – the soldiers, the farms, contaminated water supplies – they are all a backdrop to the struggles of the children, especially Daisy and Piper as they walk the miles cross country to return home.
Based on a Young Adult novel, this seems appropriate – as myopic as the perspective of many teenagers. Take this same movie and film it from the perspective of an adult character and we might have learned who the enemy was, why they attacked, and what they were doing throughout the course of the film. Daisy and her cousins care only about their family, surviving, and returning home. MacDonald captures this perspective beautifully, and while some might find this lack of detail a drawback, it is artful and clever.
Actress Saoirse Ronan, as Daisy, handles the transition from troubled teenager to hardened survivor with great skill, given how little she speaks. Her horror when confronted with various atrocities or her helplessness in the face of someone else’s agony, are conveyed without a single word. George MacKay (Edmond), Tom Holland (Isaac), and Harley Bird (Piper) as Daisy’s cousins – who bear a striking, adorable resemblance to Harry Potter and the Weasley’s at the Burrow – are equally as talented. Piper is precocious, but not cloyingly so. Isaac is sweet and earnest, Edmond a strong, yet sensitive type.
Even with its portrayal of a dystopian future (a point they subtly make evident with images of advance airport technology and heightened security procedures), thematically, we are not covering new ground. ‘How I Live Now’ is a coming-of-age story. Growing up under any circumstances is difficult, but in wartime, it’s brutal. Overnight, we see Daisy transform, from restrained and resentful to strong and protective of her adopted family unit.
With unusual camera angles, wildly filtered dream sequences, and jarringly sharp scene cuts, ‘How I Live Now’ is as cinematically turbulent as its story. The pastoral greens of the Hobbiton-esque family home give way to the grimmer reds and greys of a war-torn countryside the children knew nothing of in their seclusion.
If the script has a fault, it’s that it occasionally lags, taking slightly too long to establish the pre-Orwellian peace, then again as Daisy and Piper travel home. One also begins to wonder, with a predicted seven-day journey, a mistakenly forgotten pack of water purification tablets, and only one bottle of water to share between the two girls, how they managed without finding another water source during their journey? If Daisy seems just a tad too focused on Edmond, it might be attributed to her age. The subject of incest is also glossed over with a hastily mentioned “step-cousins” modifier, but it probably contributes to the ‘R’ rating, along with violence, implied rape, and mild sexual situations.
Even with an ‘R’ rating, ‘How I Live Now’ portrays heavy subject for the YA audience the book was written for, but MacDonald’s compelling depiction of the horrors of war from a uniquely teenage perspective will keep viewers entertained, and eagerly anticipating the outcome.
