If the job of a documentary is to enlighten the audience about a topic previously unknown to them, then Lily Topples the World easily fits the bill. One may not be (or, at least, this writer wasn’t) aware of the phenomenon known as “domino art.” It is precisely what the phrase spells out: Those rectangular blocks, originally devised for competitive gaming, are laid in an intricate pattern and, when toppled, retain or embellish that pattern into something artful. There is an entire community of domino artists on YouTube and other video platforms, but director Jeremy Workman’s film follows one who has found unexpected levels of success in this field.
That would be Lily Hevesh, a New Hampshirite born in China in October 1998 and adopted into the family of Mark and Catherine Hevesh a year later. She launched her YouTube channel, Hevesh5 (so named for being the fifth child in her family), in 2009. “I wasn’t supposed to have a YouTube channel,” she says with a sly smile, “but I did.” Her act of rebellion has led to cultural acclaim and nationwide notoriety – not to mention more than 3.3 million subscribers, as of this writing, and three billion views, as of August 2020. The inspiration was simple: Catherine bought her daughter a domino set at the age of ten, and since then, she has been obsessed with devising new toppling patterns.
Workman follows Hevesh through the process of creating her own line of toppling dominoes, as well as the beginning stages of true celebrity. Near the beginning of the film, she has hooked into the humble community of minor YouTube creators who move in the same circles as she does, and those people make up the interview roster, speaking to Hevesh’s beginnings and eventual status as an influence upon a younger generation of artists. Eventually, she moves well beyond that circle to perform on the larger stage of movies (with art featured in the opening scenes of 2016’s Collateral Beauty after its star, Will Smith, took notice), music (Katy Perry announces an album title with Hevesh’s help) and late-night television (collaborating with other domino artists and builders to celebrate a minor milestone for “Tonight Show” host Jimmy Fallon).
The structure here is simple and straightforward, which might be disappointing if its subject weren’t so interesting and the human at the center of it so generous and likable. We are immediately ingratiated to Hevesh’s unassuming nature, which has not apparently been corrupted by the pull of fame. She takes her accomplishments and her experiences and seems to internalize their effects entirely. An introvert in the most traditional sense, she only opens up with the help of her dominoes.
If there is any disappointment in Workman’s approach, it might be that we receive fewer biographical details than one might anticipate, with a brief overview of her navigating an early childhood after adoption. The rest of the film doesn’t have any problems allowing us to relate to Hevesh as she is now, but there might have been something to exploring how she came to love the mathematical side of her hobby-turned-profession and the decisions that led to foregoing a college education after briefly attending the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
We get a generalized picture of these events. As a result, Lily Topples the World stumbles in presenting us with an entire view of its human subject. Time is almost exclusively spent with Hevesh and her dominoes, though, and as the little blocks have given her so much, they make up half of this story on their own. To that end, this is a worthwhile documentary about a young woman who stumbled upon a most unique hobby and turned it into her destiny – and, yes, watching those dominoes topple is hypnotic.
Photo courtesy of Steve Price/Discovery +
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