Causeway Parent Guide

While on deployment in Afghanistan as a U.S. Army Combat Engineer, Lynsey (Jennifer Lawrence) suffered a traumatic brain injury requiring stateside rehabilitation. She has a lot to contend with: The brain injury has led to a loss of muscular control, and she needs the help of a dedicated caregiver to do everything from using the toilet to brushing her teeth. Lynsey is determined and she works hard to regain the functionality she lost.

Recovery is a challenge, but Lynsey’s bigger problem is re-adapting to life with her mother (Linda Emond) in their home in New Orleans. Lynsey plans to redeploy with the Army as soon as she can get her doctor, Dr. Lucas (Stephen McKinley Henderson) to certify that she’s back to normal. While she waits for his go-ahead, Lynsey meets James (Brian Tyree Henry), an auto mechanic with his own traumas, and the two become friends, filling a void in each other’s lives. Whether or not they’ll be able to help one another, though, is another question entirely.

Movies about veterans struggling to re-adapt to life at home aren’t uncommon, and they usually feel pretty similar. There’s a big dramatic combat scene, an injury or a trauma, and then major PTSD breakdowns throughout the rest of the film. Causeway takes a much different approach. Although Lynsey talks about what happened to her, we don’t see anything on screen. The only military uniform in the film is on an out-of-focus character in the first two minutes. That’s because this isn’t a movie about the US military, or the war in Afghanistan – it’s about Lynsey and her life beyond the armed forces.

Jennifer Lawrence and Brian Tyree Henry both give solid, naturalistic performances, generating a feeling of realism and sympathy for their respective characters. The drawback to playing it subtle, however, is that the film can feel underwhelming at times. Audiences looking for excitement should look elsewhere – this just isn’t that kind of movie. It’s slow, deliberate, and nuanced. My primary issue is that Causeway feels vague at times. I don’t expect to get a full biography of all the characters, annotated and cross-referenced, but there are some questions about their lives and motivations that I think the film could have developed more deeply.

This movie’s slow-pace and limited focus will be the primary deterrents for younger audiences, but parents might also have issues with the profanity and recreational cannabis use. As this genre goes, though, this is about the mildest one I’ve seen – in temperament as well as content. It’s not going to grab you and force you to pay attention, but it does reward you for doing so.