"How I Learned to Fly" - Film Review
There’s a languid beauty to How I Learned to Fly. Much like the standout All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt from 2023, How I Learned to Fly is not bound by a strict narrative progression. The film exists on the edge of magical realism and pure fact, driven more by emotions than linear events. How I Learned to Fly is centered on Daniel (Marcus Scribner) and Eli (Lonnie Chavis), two brothers who are on their own. They have been mysteriously abandoned by their parents and are now left to their own devices. The brothers are physically without their parents, but very quickly, it’s clear that there are scars left behind by their father (Cliff “Method Man” Smith) that will not leave them.
courtesy of film movement
“You ever think about it?” asks the brothers’ neighbor (Cedric the Entertainer), “How there’s nothing in this world that’s not loved by something or someone? Everything you see. It’s here to be loved.” In a word, How I Learned to Fly is gentle. The audience sees the brothers go about their daily routines. Eli goes to school while Daniel works as a dishwasher in earnest to keep the roof over their heads. They are trying their best to be a partner to one another, a reliable force in this turbulent time. Of course, they aren’t always good at being that for each other. Their parents didn’t model the best problem-solving tools and with emotions heightened by the brothers’ isolation, they can fall back on harmful learned behavior. It’s so obvious, though, that they don’t want to. That they want to right some wrongs even though they don’t fully know how.
The camerawork feels intrusive at times. At various points throughout, the camera appears to be tucked around a corner. It’s a little shaky as though the audience is spying on something that the brothers don’t want us to see. When Daniel receives notice about his college application, the view is partially hidden. Whether or not he got accepted is something Daniel doesn’t want his brother to see, let alone give the voyeuristic camera a glimpse of.
One of the most beautiful qualities a film can have is warmth and understanding of this shared human condition we are all destined and doomed to endure together. How I Learned to Fly has that in spades, but its execution is not always perfect. There’s a jazz score selection that always pops up when Eli is going through a hard time that never quite feels like it fits with the scene. The narration is fairly nonexistent, but when it pops up, the film veers from neorealism to melodrama. The dialogue of the narration doesn’t add anything extra that the film’s visuals do not already convey.
courtesy of film movement
Those detractions are not enough to dampen the heart of How I Learned to Fly. It’s a simple, quiet meditation on surviving. The film is a testament to love and the power it has over our lives. Daniel and Eli see how love keeps them together, but also how it drives people apart. There is a way to twist something as pure as love into a weapon far more painful than one could imagine. How I Learned to Fly is anchored by a breakout performance from Scribner and Cedric the Entertainer steals the few scenes he’s in. The two of them ground the sometimes-fantastical film and allow for the warm, beating heart to take center stage. How I Learned to Fly reminds us that humans aren’t meant to go it alone. That the easiest thing a person can do is to offer help and the bravest thing a person can do is accept that help.
Follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Letterboxd, and YouTube.