|
|
 |
In this haunting dark romantic drama, filmmaker Jeff Wedding looks at what happens to a lonely man obsessed with a love he cannot experience, and what he will do to escape his obsession. After a failed suicide attempt, a patient lies in a coma, near death. His head is completely bandaged up as he lies in bed, lost in dreams, completely unaware of the priest and nun that sit by his bedside, waiting to administer his Last Rites before the inevitable.
The story cuts from this bedside scene to inside the mind of the Patient (who is never named); the audience hears his thoughts in voice-overs as he speaks of his single-minded fixation with a woman named Gracie, whom he murders by drowning her in a creek. Even after he buries her, he is still haunted by images and memories of her. Torn between his obsessive longing for Gracie and his penitent guilt over the murder, he finds that her body has been washed up from the shallow grave after a massive storm. Taking this as a sign from both God and Gracie, the Patient takes the body into his cabin, where he carefully washes it. Convinced that she will come back to life, he places her body in a chair, fully clothed, and sitting up with a Bible in her lap and a rosary in her hands, just as she used to in life. But when Gracie’s hoped-for resurrection does not happen, the Patient attempts to commit suicide by shooting himself in the head. At this point the story returns to the Patient’s bedside, where the nun and the priest continue to watch over him.
--WARNING! Spoiler info ahead!--
It is then that the nun explains to the priest that the Patient had come to her when she was about to join the convent; when she explained to him that she was dedicating her life to God, he became terribly upset. It is then that the nun’s face (which was hidden in the shadows up until now) is revealed to show that she is Gracie. It is this woman that the Patient has been so obsessed with but can never have. She explains to the priest that the man was barred from the church last week, which is what drove him to try to commit suicide. Gracie and the priest pray for the Patient’s forgiveness and that he would be received into Heaven; immediately after the prayer, the Patient dies, having received the respite he so longed for.
Content
To begin with, this is an avant-garde film. The medium used (8mm) and content of the story make this a very artistic piece. The pacing is quite slow, which is a detractor for general audiences; however, people who are into artistic/avant garde films have a degree of patience that most movie-goers do not posses, and will probably not be bothered by it. The content of this film is very psychological; it takes an introspective look into the mind of a deeply religious man who is not only alone, but obsessively in love with a woman he can never have. It can be very difficult to portray such intensely internal emotions in a mostly silent film; other than the voice-overs –which are very analytical in their tone—there is no indication of the characters’ emotions other than their faces and body language. Big kudos go to Jaco Booyens, who does an outstanding job of portraying the Patient; the audience is clearly able to see the multiple conflictions of desire, guilt, and devotion in everything he does. The VOs are spoken by Gracie and the Patient to each other, but not directly (i.e. they receive no response from one another). Everything they say is spoken in the first-person future tense, such as: “Concerned about the shallowness of your grave, I will visit you, checking whether or not your hole has been dug deep enough to sustain proper burial.” This indicates that all of the actions are in the mind of the Patient, things he has thought about, but has not acted upon. This adds an additional degree of insight into his troubled mind.
However, the biggest problem I had with the story came at the end. In the nun’s dialogue with the priest, there is no mention of why the Patient had been barred from the church. For a man as deeply religious (albeit troubled) as he was, we assume that he would have had to commit a major trespass of some kind to get barred from the church. This is a very important point, as it is the final straw that leads to the Patient’s suicide attempt. This either needs some kind of explanation (e.g. maybe he tried to break into the convent to see Gracie again) or should be removed altogether, and we assume that it is his realization that he will never have Gracie that drives him to suicide.
Visual Look
Being shot in 8mm black and white (except for one scene in color toward the end), lends a feeling of rough harshness to the film. The world of the Patient is seen in stark black and white, with very little gray. It is up close and personal (it is almost all handheld, with no wide-angle shots), and is grainy and a bit out of focus at times. The handheld camerawork does an excellent job of bringing you in close to the Patient and his environment; the unsteady movement fits in well with the overall feel of the film, as well as with the action. The one time I felt that the unsteadiness detracted from a scene was when the Patient was looking out his window, remembering Gracie on the yard swing. Because it is a close, personal shot, the subtle up-and-down shaking of the camera is distracting. (The lines of the window panes make this movement even more noticeable.) While I am totally in favor of handheld camera moves, I would suggest using a tripod for shots such as this, especially because they can be so powerful.
|
|
|
|
