Windscreenwiperman is the Skype username of automotive engineer Simon, who finds himself surfing the internet and stumbling from an article about a horrific crime through some clickbait articles about Chatroulette and, finally, onto the site itself to try it out. Many awkward or pointless interactions later, Simon finds himself chatting to a teenage boy. It is not the most inspiring chat but it goes pretty well, so when the boy asks for a Facebook or some other contact, Simon hesitates but ultimately does, starting a casual online friendship with the boy.
Calling something "interesting" is not always a positive response – and if you want an example, trying saying that when someone asks how the food they cooked you tastes. However it is perhaps an accurate response here because it is a film that is worth seeing, and stays with you, but at the same time is not without its fair share of weakness. As a piece, I found it interesting simply because of the questions it caused me to ask of myself – while also seeing the characters asking them too. I am not sure that it caused my position to change at any point, but while watching I did find it hard to justify why I shared the view of girlfriend Annie, that it was weird for a grown man to be friends with a teenage boy – particularly via the internet. To think further, I had to put to one side the fact that the example of it being less weird if they met at a bus-stop did not fly for me, since it would seem equally odd; however the focus here seems to be on the internet as the factor.
This weakened it a bit for me, but still kept me interesting and thinking. As it plays out we are continually confronted by awkwardness and have to ask why we feel it – mostly there really being nothing to justify it. I liked that the opening of the film was honest in its internet use; it is superficial, skimming between links and, in the case of the Chatroulette sequence, just depressing and awkward in how the face-to-face interactions continue in the same way. But yet this is not the bit the viewer finds weird, because it is perfectly normal, but yet two people chatting is the thing that sticks out, simply because of the age difference. Again, I struggled with this because the means of meeting was not the issue for me, but I got the point and I thought it was pretty well made.
The film does run really long to make this point though; it is over 20 minutes long and for sure it could have used a much harsher edit to slim it down. Blumenthal and Hurst work well together though; capturing a feeling of awkwardness really well so that it does not feel like the film is rushing to convince us of some great friendship growing rapidly. I liked Herod a lot here, but at the same time I wonder if her character could not have been reduced to save running time. The film's online setting does give it a very lo- fi feel, not one that always works but it does draw the viewer into an online world that is familiar and recognizable.
In the end, the open nature of the film and the way it encourages the viewer to think about why they feel they way they do (like Annie), but while it engages doing this, it is too long a film, and the challenges to the viewer are not as direct or clear as the film would have liked; and the ending is not particularly satisfying since, while Simon appears to have reached a point in his mind, I don't think the film had taken the viewer there with him. It works as an interesting film, but as a complete short it has too many things that are not quite successful enough for it to be wholly satisfying.
