Ragged Heart

AWARD THIS 2023 NOMINEE! The title of director Evan McNary’s Ragged Heart is apt. The story truly displays a torn soul, filled with sorrow and grief, battling mental health troubles, and stuck with a sense of loneliness and failure. It’s a staggering, beautifully painful display indeed.

Wyatt (Eddie Craddock), a resident of Athens, Georgia, is a forgotten musician, now living an estranged life. His daughter, Miranda (Willow Avalon), has followed in his footsteps and has become a professional artist. One day, Miranda reconnects with her father, leaving lyrics to a song she wrote. Miranda then passes away, sending Wyatt into agony. Seeing the sadness of his daughter’s last words, Wyatt begins to search for what drove his daughter into that traumatic trap.

“…Wyatt begins to search for what drove his daughter into that traumatic trap.”

The major attraction of the film is its characters. The actors’ performances vary, but writers Debrah and Evan McNary have done impeccable work creating these characters and giving them distinct traits and personalities. Wyatt is a disturbed and muddled person who salvages rejected goods and valuables and turns them into art. Since he’s a washed-up musician, his old-age struggles resemble the incompleteness he experiences as an artist. All these characters offer an authentic feel to the tightly woven narrative. Several other supporting characters contribute to the film’s homage to independent musicians. All these characters draw several allegorical parallels, making it much more emotionally profound.

Though only appearing in fragments, Miranda offers a melancholic vibe. Miranda’s values of life and her perception of art give depth and momentum to the narrative. Avalon’s character makes Ragged Heart rich in metaphors. We see a little backdrop of her life and childhood, which certainly impact her adult life. Her music, her lyrics, and even her dialogues symbolize the ideas the film explores. Finally, and most importantly, her character contrasts tender feelings of woe and her music’s mild optimism in her life.

McNary uses extreme close-up angles to capture these emotions and bring them into focus. The film resonates with Wyatt’s agonizing guilt in its setting, making Athens embody the issues he is dealing with. The filmmaker shoots snaps of different locations, focusing on set props (including Wyatt’s salvaged art pieces) to convey a connection between the story and the characters with the setting. To align with Wyatt’s disoriented state of mind, McNary arranges the film in a defragmented and non-linear fashion. The idea is to make the film more engaging, perhaps. But, on several occasions, these unstructured breaks in the story’s path may deviate attention from the screen. But compelling performances compensate for such concerns.