By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on September 8, 2018)

In my 2009 review of Lea Pool’s film Mommy is at the Hairdressers, I wrote:

It’s a perfect film about an imperfect family; but like the selective recollections of a carefree childhood, no matter what the harsh realities of the big world around you may have been, only the most pleasant parts will forever linger in your mind.

I could almost say the same thing about Jeremiah Zagar’s We the Animals. I say “almost”, because Zagar’s film falls short of “perfect” (more on that shortly). Still, it does succeed in conveying how those “selective” memories of childhood become increasingly ephemeral and abstract as we careen through adult life, slipping ever closer to the abyss.

Adapted by the director and Dan Kitrosser from Justin Torres’ novel, the film is a lyrical slice of life about a working-class Puerto Rican family living in central New York State. The narrative primarily unfolds through a 9-year-old’s point-of-view. His name is Jonah (Evan Rosado). He and older siblings Joel (Josiah Gabriel) and Manny (Isiah Kristian) are de facto latchkey kids, because their young parents (Shelia Vand and Raul Castillo) are often too preoccupied with the drama that generates from their tempestuous marriage.

As a survival mechanism, the brothers have created an idiosyncratic sub-family unit a la Lord of the Flies, with their own set of rules, hierarchy and ritualistic behaviors. Joel and Manny are already displaying signs that they may be inheriting their father’s prideful machismo, whereas Jonah shares his mother’s empathic sensitivity and emotional frailty.

Jonah’s internalized dialog throughout implies he is sharing these sense memories with some benefit of hindsight from an indeterminate point in the future. Oddly, unlike the adult Sean Penn character reassembling bits and pieces of his lost childhood in Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life (a film that feels like a looming influence, to put it politely), it’s Jonah’s 9-year-old “self” who is doubling here as our omniscient narrator (far out, man).

I’m not saying there is anything wrong with emulating Malick; after all, as Woody Allen retorts in Manhattan after someone derisively tells him he has a God complex, “I gotta model myself after someone.” I’m willing to grade on a curve, especially given this is Zagar’s first narrative feature (his previous films have been documentaries).

On the plus side: Zagar coaxes naturalistic performances from the first-time child actors, Zak Mulligan’s “magic hour” cinematography is striking, and Nick Zammuto’s soundtrack nicely complements (I strongly suspect his favorite album is “Dark Side of the Moon”).

On the down side: there’s nothing wrong with an art film, but this one leans toward being a little too self-consciously arty for its own good. I think Zagar is a talent to keep an eye on; I’m just hoping that his future narrative features will feature a little more…narrative.

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on April 28, 2018)

Aldous Huxley once wrote:

Too much consistency is as bad for the mind as it is for the body. Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead.

There is certainly no consistency in how people react to the death of a loved one. Some keen and wail and then peacefully move on. Some remain stoic and grow a tumor. Some sublimate grief by acting out over a period. And the dead, as usual, retain their even keel.

In his feature film debut Love After Love, writer-director Russell Harbaugh examines the effects of a death in the family on a freshly-widowed mother and her two adult sons. In an audacious opening scene, a beautiful middle-aged woman (Andie MacDowell) and a young man (Chris O’Dowd) engage in an almost uncomfortably intimate conversation about love and happiness (after all, we’ve just met these two people). Imagine our surprise when we find out that they are not lovers, but mother and son. Not a shy family.

They are, in fact, a family in crisis. The woman, Suzanne, her son Nicholas, and his younger brother Chris (James Adomian) are bracing for the imminent passing of husband and father Glenn (Gareth Williams). Nicholas, his girlfriend Rebecca (Juliet Rhylance) and Chris have come in from New York City to attend a gathering at their parents’ upstate country spread (Suzanne and Glenn, both theater professors, have obviously done well financially). We see Glenn up and around, enjoying himself with friends and family.

However, once the party is over and Chris, Nicholas and Rebecca drive off, it becomes apparent that Glenn is receiving in-home hospice care and is clearly near the end. When the inevitable occurs, Harbaugh depicts Glenn’s death in a stark, unblinking manner; maintaining that tone of seat-squirming intimacy that he establishes in his opening scene.

From this point forward, there are time jumps showing how mother and sons are coping. Suzanne pursues half-hearted relationships (“I still feel like I’m being unfaithful,” she blurts out to one lover, while in a post-coital funk). Nicholas cheats on Rebecca; after she dumps him he impulsively asks his clandestine girlfriend (Dree Hemingway) to marry him. Chris flounders; frequently embarrassing himself and his family due to a drinking problem. Long-suppressed resentments between Suzanne and Nicholas come to a head. There are many accusations and recriminations.  What family doesn’t have its problems?

The emotional centerpiece is an astounding 10-minute monolog about death and grieving from Chris, who is doing an open mic set at a comedy club (Adomian is a stand-up in real life). Harbaugh holds Chris’ face in close-up for most of the scene, which also serves as a Greek Chorus that contextualizes everything we’ve observed in the film up to that point.

Harbaugh (along with co-writer Eric Mendelsohn) has delivered a tautly-scripted 90-minute film about a difficult subject that is brutally honest, yet genuinely resonant. There are strong echoes of John Cassavetes. I’m sure Harbaugh has studied his work; I sensed this from the naturalistic tone, and in the comfortable manner the actors inhabit their characters, without coming off as “actor-ly”. Not always easy to watch…kind of like life.

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on April 7, 2018)

There’s a timeworn josh betwixt residents of Western Washington that we’re all D-deficient. Speaking for myself, after 26 years in these parts, I think I’m growing moss on my north side, if you know what I’m saying. Still, while chronic light deprivation does have its downside, there’s something about the prickly-piney smell of perennially soaked, verdant evergreen forests swaying under drizzly, steely-grey skies that pulls me back in.

The moody atmospherics inherent in those verdant evergreen forests and drizzly, steely-grey skies has not been lost on certain filmmakers. David Lynch filmed most of the exteriors for Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me and both iterations of his Twin Peaks TV series in this neck of the woods. And of course, the wildly popular Twilight franchise has turned the previously sleepy town of Forks, Washington into a Mecca for its rabid fans.

It’s not just fancy-pants Hollywood types who have “discovered” the Pacific Northwest as a backdrop for their projects. For some filmmakers, it’s more like playing in the back yard. For example, take Ohio-born and Seattle-raised writer-director Lynn Shelton (Humpday, Your Sister’s Sister) who has made 6 feature films since 2006, and had them all set in Western Washington. Her 7^th and most recent effort, Outside In, is no exception.

The rain-washed, backwoods-y town of Granite Falls (population 3400) is a palpable character in this drama about a newly-released felon named Chris (Jay Duplass) struggling to keep heart and soul together after serving 20 years for a wrongful conviction. Only 18 when he got sent up, he has a textbook case of arrested development to overcome; not to mention catching up with a world fraught with iPhones and laptops.

Complicating his re-entry into society is his long-time platonic relationship with the only person who gave him moral support over the years. Her name is Carol (Edie Falco), his high school teacher. Not only did she visit him on a regular basis; tutoring him and helping him keep his spirits up, but advocated tirelessly to get him released. Once he’s out, it becomes obvious that Chris’ sense of gratitude has turned into something deeper.

Perhaps this was inevitable; the soft-spoken Chris is frozen at 18 years old emotionally and socially; he doesn’t feel that he has received much love and support from his dysfunctional family while he was locked up. On one level Carol is flattered, but as she is married and has a teenage daughter, her immediate instinct is to keep Chris at arm’s length. She is adamant that the two of them have always been, and must remain, “just” friends. Then again, there are hints that her marriage is troubled. Things get complicated.

Shelton has a knack for creating characters that you really care about, helped in no small part here by Falco’s presence. She is such a great player; she says more with a glance, a furrow of the brow, or a purse of the lips than many actors could convey with a page of dialog (and I feel very strongly…strike that, I decree that she and Frances McDormand must do a film together at some point…someone simply must make this happen). Duplass (who co-scripted with the director) gives a sensitive and nuanced performance as well.

I don’t know if it was my imagination, but I think Shelton and Duplass (consciously or not) are paying homage to The Graduate. Not just the (virtual) age spread between Chris and Carol, but the interesting dynamic that develops between Chris and Carol’s daughter (a nice performance from Kaitlyn Dever). One short monolog in particular, in which Chris laments he’s tired of everyone telling him that he’s got a bright future and offering unsolicited advice about what he should do with his life, strongly recalls Benjamin Braddock’s angst. Also, not unlike the late great Mike Nichols, Shelton always finds the sweet spot between dramatic tension and wry levity. One of the best films so far this year.