Vividly pictorial portrait of an artist who is struggling with the demons of his past.
With his third feature film, Peter Brunner proves that he has a special talent for intense material. The main characters of his previous work Christos Haas (The Blind Heart) and Jana McKinnon (Everyone Who Falls Has Wings) also play an important role in his Ode to the Night, but the focus is clearly on Caleb Landry Jones (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri , Get Out), who delivers an impressive performance as an installation artist between shadow and light.
Norman still suffers as an adult from the aftermath of a post-traumatic disorder that he suffered from watching his parents burn to death as a child. But he has no memory of it and tries desperately to reconstruct the images of the fire and the feeling that he is about to die himself in order to achieve something like healing. The longing for the family, which he never had, seems to be fulfilled with his girlfriend and his little son, but Norman, who constantly vacillates between tenderness and anger, endangers the temporary idyll with his auto-destructive search for redemption.
To the Night is a classic travel film, except that the trip does not go to distant countries (even if the Brooklyn locations with their exquisite shabby chic play a major role), but into the interior of the multi-layered and contradicting protagonist. A stringent plot is not the main interest of the director, it is more the man's condition that is captured in an expressive visual language that keeps the balance between naturalistic and fantastic elements very well.
In addition to the images of the night, the fire and above all the faces of the four expressive main characters, the passion with which the potential superstar Caleb Landry Jones gives this tormented soul a body remains in the memory. The story will be remembered less; you will look in vain for a classic Hollywood dramaturgy in any of the Peter Brunner films. This is of course a conscious decision, but a little less volatility might have done the film quite well. If, as a viewer, you are looking for a dramaturgical development, you are more likely to leave the cinema disappointed, if you can get involved in the flickering will-o'-the-wisps that is at the center of the film, you can expect an intense cinema experience.
