Bright

I recently had the chance to watch BRIGHT at the Magnolia Independent Film Festival- one of several festivals was screening at in mid February 2011 as it began its tour on the festival circuit.

From the first frame to the last, this film is a cinematographic feast. Rich visuals support a skilled writing hand, and experienced direction in this longer than normal short film. It's length however, is not a detriment. The story takes as long to tell as it needs to and the running time felt perfect.

The acting is performed with such natural, believable deliveries that, as a viewer, you often feel like a fly on the wall witnessing the true lives of real people. Sometimes you will laugh with the characters, and at other times you will feel their pain, and ultimately their redemption.

BRIGHT, for me, is about the fear of living and coming to terms with that fear. It is something many people can identify with, and I highly recommend catching as it continues touring at film festivals.

I really liked this film. The writing is elegiac and the directing elegant. Though a short movie, the performances are never rushed and the actors are given the space to take ownership of the moments. As a result the story accrues a deep emotional resonance.

Robert Wisdom is fantastic, digging in to create a rich and complex character. And Eric Nenninger's work as the central character carefully avoids the typical (read: banal) quirks and tics that are usual employed to indicate a character is damaged in some way and instead brings someone very real and captivating to life. the And any time one gets to see Andre Royo on film is a gift.

A wonderful debut(?) for director/writer Benjamin Busch who subtle writing is not without little gems of poetry.

Describing the essential requirements of a "skillful literary artist," Edgar Allan Poe wrote in a review of Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Tales from an Old Manse": "The unity of effect or impression is a point of great importance... without a certain continuity of effort--without a certain duration or repetition of purpose--the soul is never deeply moved." Every moment, Poe said, must be "conceived, with deliberate care, (to create) a certain unique or single effect."

Benjamin Busch has created such a work of art with his short film "Bright," about Troy (Eric Nenninger) a young man who must overcome a paralyzing fear in order to move forward with his life. Every moment in the film is skillfully and deliberately planned to create a particular effect in the viewer. The film establishes a rich atmosphere from its opening moments and is filled with symbolic imagery, especially regarding light. Troy is raised by a blind adoptive father, Irwin (Robert Wisdom), who represents the iconic blind sage of mythology and guides Troy on what turns out to be a spiritual journey. Irwin is blind, but he can "see"; Troy is sighted, but his back is always toward the light.

In this dystopian future, Troy works as a restorationist, helping people regain their sense of continuity with their past by finding old-style original light bulbs for their homes. This is, of course, a metaphor for the conflict between what is natural and what is artificial, what is light and what is dark, in the search for courage and meaning in life.

The pacing is deliberately slow, filmed at "the pace of real thought," according to director Busch, who wants viewers to have the time to hear the dialog. As a result, viewers can contemplate philosophically meaty lines like "There's danger in all this safety"... "Someone who never sees, never knows"... "I miss the light but I can remember it"..."I loved and I lost, and I'm glad that I loved"... and "How much would you pay to be happy?"

"Bright" won the 2011 award for Best Short Drama and the Audience Choice Award at the Anthem Libertarian Film Festival.It is a film to be seen with friends, and discussed in long leisurely conversations afterward. As Poe said of Hawthorne's "Tales," "withal is a calm astonishment that ideas so apparently obvious have never occurred or been presented (like this) before." I think Poe would have been pleased with "Bright."

I can't remember the last time I've seen such a truly poetic film – virtually every frame and every line of dialogue comes off as unbelievably precise composition. The acting across the board feels very "lived in," nuanced in a natural way. Nenninger (Troy) is a quiet force: he keeps his fears and loss bottled-up in a taut physicality, and only through his eyes can we get a sense of the emotional turbulence within. Robert Wisdom (Irwin) wonderfully inhabits the complex father (/mother) figure to Troy's lost child, urging his surrogate son to muster the courage to journey into the harsh light—and sometimes darkness—of the real world.

There's a lot of trust here on the part of writer/director Benjamin Busch—a trust in the viewers to engage themselves with the film and work to fill out the narrative, or rather, what's going on beneath the given narrative. Bright is a bit of an iceberg: we're given a straightforward drama on the surface, with a whole lot of seriously weighty matter floating underneath. It'll stick with you long after the final shot, leaving you thinking about your own fears, your own piece of childhood that you may keep alive without even knowing it, about the pools of light and darkness in our lives and how we navigate between them. Bright is an intensely contemplative film and its pace reflects this, but if you allow yourself the time and effort to deeply breath it in, you'll be richly rewarded.

Busch has crafted a profoundly resonant short, and on a shoestring no less. I can only imagine how dangerous he'd be with some money for a feature. Definitely catch this on the festival circuit if you can.

There's a REASON why "Bright" took "Best of Show" in this year's Tupelo Film Festival: It is, quite simply, a flash of great ideas and execution. The story is richly-layered, the script eloquent and original. Writer/Director Benjamin Busch has crafted a short film so well developed that it has the story appeal of a longer film without needless exposition. More to the point, you can't help but be drawn in by its multifaceted story because it appeals on so many levels -- intellectual, emotional, spiritual, and visual. The relationship between "Bright"'s central characters -- "Troy" and "Irwin" (played by Eric Nenninger and Robert Wisdom) -- is absolutely multidimensional. Armando Ballesteros' cinematography easily captures the archetypal spirit of this fine script. Editor Frank Reynolds' disciplined hand is evident throughout. Even Benjamin Keddy's minimalist score plays a huge role in its own way. There's more to this film than meets the eye -- "Bright" is a brilliant work -- and that's exactly the point. Overlook this film at your own peril, lest you find yourself in the dark without an Edison bulb to guide you back home.