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A Place on Earth: Silver’s Period Commune Channels Cinema-Verite

While his 2014 title Uncertain Terms still awaits theatrical release as it makes the rounds of the festival circuit after premiering last year at the Los Angeles Film Festival, the increasingly prolific Nathan Silver unveils his fifth feature. Stinking Heaven represents a change of pace stylistically and dramatically within Silver’s preferred parameters examining human beings tossed vicariously into strained living situations, where they often wear each other down to an inevitable breaking point. A period piece set within the confines of a well-meaning commune in early 90s suburban New Jersey, the grainy look and feel of Silver’s film lends it a vintage realism that aligns it with the cinema-verite styling of documentary filmmaker Allan King, whose films like Warrendale and A Married Couple focused, unobtrusively, on isolated groups or units of people in similar fashion.

Lucy (Deragh Campbell) and...

We all live by rules. Whether they are personal choices to undertake or those put upon us by work or family, we live by them. But sometimes those rules can destroy us.Nathan Silver's fifth feature, Stinking Heaven, takes place in suburban New Jersey, circa 1990. Lucy (Deragh Campbell) and Jim (Keith Poulson) are a young married couple who have structured their home as a community for sober living, themselves addicts on the mend. We enter the home amidst a celebration: the wedding of Betty (Eleonore Hendricks) and Kevin (Henri Douvry), surely a bright new beacon in this house for the healing power of love. But when Betty's old flame Ann (Hannah Gross) shows up, it sends the house into a tumult not everyone will come...

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Writer/director Nathan Silver’s latest tale of an improvised family doing its best to wreck itself is one of the year’s most uncomfortable watches. A character drinking bleach is among the milder examples of Stinking Heaven’s emotional ruthlessness. Set in a New Jersey clean living commune in 1990, the film’s cast of characters are utterly merciless to one another. After one man recounts his lowest moment as sucking dick in an alley for $20, only to be beaten into an epileptic fit (and never get the money), another mockingly claims that his lowest moment was beating a man who tried to suck his dick for $20 into an epileptic fit. Sober living has done these people few favors.

Former addicts of all ages and backgrounds populate the Passaic house, which is run by a husband-and-wife team and sells homebrewed kombucha roadside. The fragile stability of the group begins to...

A pair of sections that we’ve been covering almost since its inception, the American Film Institute (AFI) announced their selections for the New Auteurs and American Independents line-ups and we’ve got a noteworthy, eyebrow-raising sampling of award-winning items from the Cannes played hellish immigration drama Mediterranea from Jonas Carpignano to Sundance (Josh Mond’s James White) to SXSW (Trey Edward Shults’ Krisha) winners. Since Park City days, our Nicholas Bell has reviewed a good chunk of these titles, but we’ll still likely have a couple of more reviews once the festival begins. Here are the selections and jury members.

New Auteurs Selections (11 Titles)

From Afar – When a middle-aged man is assaulted and robbed by a young criminal, an unlikely relationship develops. Dir Lorenzo Vigas. Scr Lorenzo Vigas. Cast Alfredo Castro and Luis Silva. Venezuela/Mexico. U.S. Premiere

Disorder – Matthias Schoenaerts plays an ex-soldier who becomes locked...

"A sober-living safe house is neither safe nor sober in Stinking Heaven, the fifth feature (and fourth in 3 years) from director Nathan Silver," writes Jesse Knight at Movie Mezzanine. "In New Jersey circa 1990, a young married couple, Jim (Keith Poulson, Listen Up Philip) and Lucy (Deragh Campbell, I Used to Be Darker) run a commune providing refuge for recovering drug addicts of any age who pass the time making and selling bathtub kombucha ('fermented healthy drink')…. It’s Short Term 12 by way of the Marquis de Sade." We're collecting a first round of strong reviews for the film that also features Eleonore Hendricks, Henri Douvry and Hannah Gross. » - David Hudson...

"A sober-living safe house is neither safe nor sober in Stinking Heaven, the fifth feature (and fourth in 3 years) from director Nathan Silver," writes Jesse Knight at Movie Mezzanine. "In New Jersey circa 1990, a young married couple, Jim (Keith Poulson, Listen Up Philip) and Lucy (Deragh Campbell, I Used to Be Darker) run a commune providing refuge for recovering drug addicts of any age who pass the time making and selling bathtub kombucha ('fermented healthy drink')…. It’s Short Term 12 by way of the Marquis de Sade." We're collecting a first round of strong reviews for the film that also features Eleonore Hendricks, Henri Douvry and Hannah Gross. » - David Hudson...

natural history

Dissent was brewing in De Doelen this year. For reasons unbeknownst to the vast majority of attendees at this 44th edition of the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the powers that be decided to make all the bars in the fest’s headquarters cashless. Instead of creating some pseudo Marxist utopia, however, this "innovation" resulted in frustration, as night after night, critics, filmmakers and producers waved their fest passes preloaded with Euros at bartenders in hopes of getting a poorly poured beer.

What does this have to do with Iffr as a whole? Well, it all felt suggestive of things to come. According to the ever-reliable internet, there are now more tickets sold during Rotterdam than at Cannes or Venice. (Indeed, there were several screenings during the festival that sold out faster than I expected, leaving me scrambling to re-jig my schedule and sprinting from the Pathé theatre to the Cinerama.

We all live by rules. Whether they are personal choices to undertake or those put upon us by work or family, we live by them. But sometimes those rules can destroy us.Nathan Silver's fifth feature, Stinking Heaven, takes place in suburban New Jersey, circa 1990. Lucy (Deragh Campbell) and Jim (Keith Poulson) are a young married couple who have structured their home as a community for sober living, themselves addicts on the mend. We enter the home amidst a celebration: the wedding of Betty (Eleonore Hendricks) and Kevin (Henri Douvry), surely a bright new beacon in this house for the healing power of love. But when Betty's old flame Ann (Hannah Gross) shows up, it sends the house into a tumult not everyone will come...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...