prodigaldown

From time to time there comes a picture so breathtakingly original, so startlingly well shot and well told, that you hold your breath in anxious anticipation throughout the course of the film, afraid to miss a single gorgeous frame. There are films that have come before that have changed our understanding of death and life: Koslowski's "Bleu," Fellini's "La Dolce Vita," certainly Bergman's "Det Sjunde Inseglet (The Seventh Seal)." And any film critic is hesitant to put a film in that heady category. But Day's story is fresh and new, his visual style compelling, his script nuanced, yet straight-to-the-point. With only 25 minutes to tell his story, he doesn't have time to mess around, so he gets right to the point, traveling from important scene to important scene. A big wheel race. An all-female "Hamlet." An average day at the nursing home. A re-enactment of the 1912 World Series. Each one hits home in its own way, but each piece complements the whole with a surprising clarity seen rarely in new filmmakers.

But it's the celebration scene that sells the piece. The young couple comes in to join their friend, and as the camera spins around them, we see each couple. The film then cuts to shots of each of the couples, one after another, 31 times, as important a number as there is in film today. In each of these shots we see a fully-fleshed out relationship, a story waiting to be told. As the scene ends, the camera, hesitates, as if unwilling to leave the scene, leaving us there as onlookers for nearly a minute, waiting patiently in the moment, 'til the tension of it all contorts your stomach with the pain of it.

I'd never be so thoughtless as to tell you the ending, but the feeling in the hushed auditorium was one of pure shock. The film finishes slow zoom out, followed by a shot peeking through the window. And the consensus was, from those there watching, that the camera seemed to be peeking into our soul.