Since the Portland International Film Festival started I've managed to catch two separate programs of short films, totaling 13 small movies. Of those I only liked one of them. This was not it, though I would hesitantly call it the second best, mostly due to conception and execution. It's a ten-minute, single-take view of an attempted bank robbery from what would be someone's balcony or maybe second-story window. The point-of-view gives a nice feeling of voyeurism, as it pans and tilts and occasionally slowly zooms into the action. Even though the zoom is by far the least natural of camera movements, here it comes as close as possible to replicating the way our eyes focus on faraway objects, ignoring things in our peripheral vision.
And the film begins well enough, introducing us to two characters who will become, if there is such a thing in this movie, the protagonists. One of them thinks some guys pulling up on a moped intend to rob the bank. What follows is an attempt to examine the strange surreality of witnessing an event we've seen countless times in movies actually happening. What actually follows is a bit of a muddled mess, which often feels more like a cinematic version of those Dumb Criminal stories that were all over the internet 10 years ago than any real attempt at asking why we experience such strange occurrences with an odd sense of detachment. And to further complicate matters, the film eventually switches gears and becomes inexplicably serious, showing bank guards manhandle the would-be robbers in a way that is not funny and actually kinda sad. But, based on the previous material, the director doesn't seem to have all that much sympathy for them. Then a joke at the end diffuses the seriousness, giving me tonal whiplash. For something that took so much time and effort to orchestrate, one would think they'd have spent more time getting a better handle on what they were trying to communicate.
No comments:
Post a Comment