Empty Spaces

There's a certain subtlety to the main actor's performance as his character goes through life pretending everything is o.k., saying he's fine when really he is not. It's the sort of thing you will only pick up on if you've been through it yourself.

He's trying to keep it together for his kids, but he doesn't know quite how to proceed with his life now that his wife has left him and so much has changed. That's where the title comes from. He has "empty spaces" in his daily routine because he has forgotten how to live without his partner.

But everything is not o.k. like he wants it to be and things gradually begin to deteriorate, leading to a psychotic episode involving a garbage disposal. Other than that, he only verbally hints once or twice at the fact that he is suffering inside. Men don't really like to talk about things like that, and this one is no exception. Instead he does what so many of us have done in his situation: he drinks and he drinks.

There's no big climax or clear resolution here and the future for these characters is left open-ended and somewhat ambiguous, as is so often the case in real life. The audience isn't left with hope or a happy ending or anything like that, or maybe they are depending on what they choose to take away from it. I suggest you watch it twice, because the second time around you just might pick up on a few things you missed the first time.

Actually, I was not expecting to like this one as much as I did. It is a very low budget drama with only a few actors, but it is well done for what it is. There are no gimmicks here, just good old fashioned storytelling.

It is the story of a man who is dealing with a bit of a crisis in his life. At first, I kept waiting for something major to happen, but I realized pretty quickly that this was not that find of film. Instead, we get a glimpse into the real life of this man and those around him. It feels like a documentary at times, and its strength is in its simplicity.

The acting is pretty good for the most part, although there are moments when it is not so great. Some of the best acting actually comes from the two child actors, strangely enough. The film feels slow at moments, but overall it's really good and I liked it a lot. Some people will undoubtedly find it boring, so consider yourselves warned.

My girlfriend watched this movie when she went to visit her sister and she was confused by it. She couldn't figure out for the love of her life why the man took so much money out of his ATM account and then went and buried it and neither could her sister. They were baffled by it, but when she explained the movie to me I knew right away why he had done it without even having to see it. I told her my theory and she didn't believe me but then I watched the movie for myself and my suspicions were confirmed. He did it because he didn't want his wife to get the money! It is so obvious! My girlfriend said that it doesn't explain it in the movie but it really does! He goes and buries the money and then afterwards he tells his friend that he has split up with his wife and she spends all his money on stupid things and he is going around trying to get his life in order. He doesn't come right out and say that he went and buried the money because of that but I know that is the reason why he did it. Maybe it's just something that women can't understand because my girlfriend couldn't figure it out and neither could her sister but I did.

The main thing that prevents the viewer from getting into this, or at least for me, was the completely pointless chopped up editing and the camera going into weird angles. All it does is disrupt the continuity, although what masquerades as a plot here really meanders to nowhere. The music is annoying and in no way matches up with the onscreen action, for lack of a better word. The few positives here don't counteract all the other amateur ploys they use to try and draw the viewer in. I don't appreciate when they waste ten minutes to hammer a point home that could have been made in one minute. No, nothing works here. More art house crap.

Empty Spaces is not a "family" film in the way that Bambi or Lassie are family films. Rather, it is a film about a family, starring a real-life family, and, from what I can tell, produced by a family. There are no big special effects, but rather an honest and up-close look at some dysfunctional lives. Don't watch this one with the kids (there's cursing and innuendo) unless of course you want them to get a look at some real life situations. Maybe it would do them some good. Apart from that, the film is very well-made from a technical standpoint, despite the obviously modest budget. It is not a documentary or a home movie, but it does incorporate what appears to be real home movies of the main actors as children, which is an added bonus. The real treat here is the special dynamic shared by the real-life brothers, which really gives their characters added layers of depth and believability, and which certainly makes them far more interesting to watch. In my eyes, they do it better than Luke and Owen Wilson ever could.