[Editor’s note: This review was originally published on January 26 at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival and has been lightly updated for the series’ streaming release on MUBI. The series’ first two episodes are available now, and new ones will roll out weekly until November 30.]
Throughout one in all many flashback scenes scattered intermittently all through “Hal & Harper,” a 9-year-old Harper (performed by 28-year-old Lili Reinhart) sits within the bed room she shares together with her 7-year-old brother Hal (performed by 27-year-old Cooper Raiff).
Hal, already a hyperactive people-pleaser earlier than he may spell both a type of phrases, fills the transient silence earlier than falling asleep with questions. “Did you end that e book you had been studying? Did you prefer it?” “‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’?,” Harper says. “No, not but. It’s about this household the place everybody’s tremendous lonely however then it will get even worse as a result of they withdraw and so they simply turn into egocentric and so depressing.” Then, her wide-eyed, impressionable little brother, she provides, “However possibly it will get higher.”
The parallels between Harper’s e book report and what her family goes by means of are unmistakable, even for a first-grader like Hal. Their father (Mark Ruffalo) is trapped within the throes of despair, introduced on by their mom’s very public suicide. Her premature passing paired together with his incapability to guardian them forces Hal and Harper to develop up too quickly and, in doing so, cling to 1 one other in methods each supportive and codependent. How the previous survival mechanism manifests is heartbreaking, whether or not it’s Harper secretly smoking (similar to her dad does), Hal struggling to make associates (similar to his dad does), or the easy undeniable fact that each adolescent characters are performed by grownup actors, one with tattoos and the opposite a beard. (Raiff has loads of enjoyable channeling Hal’s awkward childlike vitality, however Reinhart actually nails each observant, figuring out beat of her eerily mature third-grader.)
Their codependency is equally pronounced, although seeing it expressed 15 years later, when Hal is a senior in school and Harper is working an entry-level assistant job, is the place the collection predominantly lives. Now not sharing a room however nonetheless commonly falling asleep in the identical mattress, Hal and Harper have solely realized easy methods to transfer by means of the world collectively, as a duo, which strains different relationships that they instinctively don’t belief to start with and makes it all of the extra taxing to simply accept the extra distance that comes with rising up.
Harper has been with Jesse (Alyah Chanelle Scott) since their freshman 12 months in school, however now she’s feeling the pull of the unknown (introduced on by a flirtatious co-worker). Hal latches on too rapidly with romantic pursuits (he claims a one-night stand “broke my coronary heart,” regardless of not figuring out her final identify) and retains a cool take away together with his bro associates, anticipating help when he wants it however hardly ever reciprocating until it’s his thought. Collectively, Hal and Harper settle into a cushty dynamic, nevertheless it’s one the place she’s carrying the heaviest burden. Neither thinks of themself as an excellent individual, they each see the opposite as a fantastic individual, however solely Harper can see how their mutual help system can be a limiting loop of arrested improvement — one which doesn’t actually make room for different folks.
Their loneliness is inherited from (and exacerbated by) their dad, who at one level tells his pregnant, live-in girlfriend, Kate (Betty Gilpin), that he feels damage every time he seems at different individuals who aren’t his youngsters. Raiff devotes admirable hours to Mr. Williams’ vicious cycle of grief and the way it’s absorbed by his youngsters, whereas Ruffalo — an actor who is aware of a factor or two about tragic sibling sagas — embraces his dad’s harshest hardships with assured readability. Prior to now and the current, they’re an excellent lonely household, and it’s no spoiler to say it’s going to worsen earlier than it could possibly, possibly, get higher — particularly when dad broadcasts he’s promoting their childhood dwelling.
“Hal & Harper,” at its core, is about folks in mourning, even because it jumps backwards and forwards throughout a long time of disparate, intimate moments. When the collection bottles its massive emotions in profoundly relatable scenes, it shines, partly as a result of Reinhart, Ruffalo, and Gilpin carry compelling tenderness to their characters’ ongoing torment. (Reinhart, particularly, is stellar.) Raiff’s impetuous outbursts serve his babyish school child nicely, and the author/director’s sincere dialogue and empathetic perspective are much more priceless. However over eight half-hour episodes (together with a finale that’s twice that size), these momentary bursts of magic really feel all too fleeting. Too many redundancies lavatory down any sense of narrative momentum and too little construction is given to help our funding within the household’s sprawling, troubled lives.
“Hal & Harper” isn’t a lot of a TV present (a far stronger film lurks someplace inside, even perhaps as a pair of flicks informed from the mother and father’ and children’ views, like a familial “Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby”), nevertheless it does use its size to place forth an affecting household portrait as unafraid to embrace lasting anguish as it’s to put on its coronary heart on its sleeve.
Grade: B-
“Hal and Harper” premiered Sunday, January 26 on the Sundance Movie Competition.
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