Waves, 2019
There are some films you enjoy for a night and then slowly forget, and then there are films that stay tied to a certain feeling, a certain person, and a certain version of yourself. Waves is that kind of film to me. I did not love it only because it was beautifully made, but also because it touched a part of me that not many films can reach. It felt emotional in a way that was almost a little too familiar. It was nostalgic, heavy, soft, and overwhelming all at once. I think part of the reason I hold this film so close to my heart is because I watched it with someone who was very special to me, and that made it even more personal. Because of this, the film is not just something I admire, but something that holds a place in my life. When I think about it, I think of the story, the visuals, and also the specific memory of watching it with someone who meant a lot to me.
Even the title, Waves, feels so fitting because it reflects everything the film is trying to say. A wave is never still. It rises, crashes, pulls back, and returns again. That is exactly what the film feels like emotionally. Nothing is calm for too long. Love comes in waves, pressure comes in waves, grief comes in waves, and even healing comes in waves. That is how I see the title. It is not just a pretty name; it captures the rhythm of the whole film. The characters are constantly being pulled under by emotion, then brought back up again, only to be hit by something else. The film understands that life, especially when you are young, rarely feels steady. It comes in intense phases. There are highs that feel endless and lows that make everything else disappear. Waves is the perfect title because the entire film moves like emotion itself, unpredictable, powerful, and impossible to fully control.
That is probably one of the reasons it speaks to younger people and to this generation in general. So many young people live in emotional extremes. Everything feels immediate. Love feels huge, mistakes feel irreversible, pressure builds quietly until it suddenly becomes unbearable. This generation especially knows what it is like to feel too much all at once while still trying to appear normal on the outside. There is pressure to be attractive, successful, wanted, emotionally aware, and somehow still be in control. Underneath all that, a lot of people are simply overwhelmed, and Waves captures this perfectly. It shows young people not as careless or dramatic, but as people carrying emotions they do not always know how to handle. That is what makes it feel so real.
The visuals are one of the biggest reasons the film affected me so deeply. It is such a beautiful film, but the beauty never feels empty.
The colours are rich, warm, and at times almost dizzying. The camera moves in a way that makes scenes feel intimate and unstable at the same time. Some moments feel soft and glowing, like a dream, while others feel crowded, loud, and claustrophobic. To me, the visual style connects back to the idea of waves as well. The film keeps shifting. It swells with feeling and then collapses into silence. It gives you moments of warmth and freedom and then suddenly replaces them with panic or grief. It looks the way memory feels when you are remembering something beautiful that also hurt you.
The music plays a similar role. The soundtrack in Waves is one of the reasons it stays with you long after it ends. It is not just background sound. It carries the mood of the film and deepens everything. Certain scenes would not feel the same without the music underneath them, because the songs seem to hold all the emotions the characters are unable to say directly. For younger people especially, music is so tied to memory and emotion. One song can bring back an entire relationship, a certain month of your life, or a version of yourself you thought you had moved on from. It is almost as if the film understands that. Its soundtrack makes the film even more personal, almost like it is building a memory for you while you are still watching it.
That is part of why this film means so much to me. I watched it with someone I cared about deeply, and because of that, it now carries that memory too. It is impossible for me to think about the film in a detached way. It reminds me of closeness, of sharing something in silence. That really does change everything. Some films become special because they are brilliant, others become special because of the time in your life when they find you. Waves is both. It is a beautiful film on its own, but it also holds a memory for me, and that makes it even more nostalgic now. It reminds me of a person, a feeling, and a part of my life that I cannot revisit in the same way.
The story itself is another reason I connected to it so strongly. It is about family, love, pressure, mistakes, grief, and healing, but what makes it resonate is the way those things are shown with such honesty. No one in the film feels simple. People love each other and still hurt each other. They want to do the right thing and still fail. They carry pain they do not know how to express, and that pain spills out in ways that change everything. That kind of messiness feels true to life. It also ties back to the title in a powerful way. Emotions in the film do not move in straight lines, they keep returning. Pain returns, guilt returns, memory returns, love returns. Even after something crashes, the feeling does not disappear. It comes back in another form, just like waves do.
The depiction of teenage love is one of the most moving parts of the film for me. Waves does not treat young love as something shallow. It treats it as intense, serious, and fragile, which is exactly how it feels when you are young.
At that age, love can become the centre of your emotional world. It can make life feel brighter, but it can also make everything more frightening, because suddenly you have so much to lose. This generation understands that kind of love well. Younger people feel things at full volume, and that is what makes the film resonate. It understands that being young is not always light. It can be beautiful, but it can also be overwhelming in a way that feels almost impossible to explain to anyone older who has forgotten what that intensity feels like.
I think that is why I connected with Waves as much as I did. It reached something in me that not many films can, and it was not just the story, but a combination of everything. The title, the visuals, the music, the tenderness, the sadness, and the way it understands emotional intensity so well. It felt honest about what it means to be young and overwhelmed, and it also felt deeply personal because of who I shared it with. To me, the name Waves represents not only the emotional structure of the film, but also the way I remember it. In flashes, in feelings, in pieces that come back unexpectedly, just like waves. They keep returning to me.
To sum it up, Waves is special to me because it feels like more than just a film. It is like emotion, nostalgia, and memory shaped into one. It speaks to younger people because it understands the way emotions can take over your whole world. It stays with me because it is visually beautiful and deeply real, but more than anything, it matters to me because it is tied to something real in my own life. That is why the title feels so right. The film moves in waves, the emotions arrive in waves, and even now, my memories of it return in waves.
