 "Photo: clearbluetuesday.com")
Clear Blue Tuesday, an independent rock musical bursting with energy and inspiration, is breakout new film director Elizabeth Lucas's vision of disaster and transformation. It's a film that shows extreme promise and hope for a brighter tomorrow as it explores the lives of 11 New Yorkers over a course of seven Tuesdays in seven tumultuous years.
The film follows these 11 individuals in the wake of the attack on the World Trade Center, and shows their personal turmoil as they cope and grow over the next seven years. Music meanwhile outlines their journeys, each song painting the strokes of their emotions, as their lives fall apart and the forces of circumstance teach them how to put them back together again.
Each character has his or her own distinct personality, past and issues since that fateful day, and each has his or her own path to change.
In this rock music chronicle of misfortune and the fresh beginning that follows, these 11 New Yorkers are guided by "love, desire, art, ambition, fury, grief, faith, fear, hope," and the connection they have with one another.
The film is written by Lucas and its cast of diverse individuals — one of actor-singer-songwriters that hail from the rock and roll scene, improv clubs, and the Broadway stage. The artistic breadth of this group of talented individuals helped Lucas create Clear Blue Tuesday and relate her musical message to the world.
But it was after a brush with death in 2007, when a taxi slammed into Lucas while she was riding her bicycle, that the story first came to her.
The filmmaker was left seriously injured with multiple broken bones and time to ponder the importance of life while on bed rest.
That is when the seeds of Clear Blue Tuesday were first planted in her mind and she began to wonder about 9/11 and how this one catastrophic event effected so many and showed them what really mattered in their lives.
But Lucas insists that the film "is not about the events of 9/11 but about the changes people go through in the face of an unavoidable, universal, catalytic event."
Her intention for Clear Blue Tuesday was to show how a major destructive instance has the power to change one's life forever.
"It's not really about what happened that day, but about what came after, about a period of time that spurred lots of different people in NY to really look at themselves, at where they were going and ask whether they were still on the right track on their personal lives," she said.
Clear Blue Tuesday is a unique picture with abstract emotional power.
Its look and feel and soundtrack has the spunk and quality of similar urban stories and musicals like Rent and Moulin Rouge, just on a lower budget.
It just seems stretched among too large a cast with extreme personas, and a lot to say in too short a span. However, it lets the music do the talking and that is its greatest strength.
It's an ambitious take on trauma and rebirth, and a fairly good film in the independent genre. The film generally has a beautiful story to tell and wonderful lyrical imagery when telling it.
Clear Blue Tuesday will officially inspire the audience to "Paint a brand new sky" at Quad Cinema on Sept. 3.