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Tomorrow Mourning follows six different people over the course of several days as they deal with different experiences of pain and loss. Their stories are intercut as the audience sees how each of the characters deals with their struggles. Kyle is in his early 20's, and his father, Joshua, is a strict and severe minister. His mother Sheila is caring but emotionally removed somewhat. Kyle is struggling to come to terms with the fact that he is gay, and what that means for his relationship with his family. Drew is restless and disillusioned with life in general, especially that of his family and church. His search for meaning in life has been fruitless to date, and he has been consuming increasing amounts of drugs to take his mind off of his emotional and spiritual search. Lisa is a prostitute who has been selling her body in an guilt-driven attempt to save up enough money to buy back a treasured family heirloom she pawned several years ago for drug money; after her mother turned her out of the house for selling the heirloom, Lisa determined to get it back, believing it would make her mother love her again. Ester is an intelligent, thoughtful Goth who works as a tutor. Although she goes out of her way to mentor and help her young student, she is routinely maligned by others for her odd appearance and Wiccan beliefs. Roger is a college-bound baseball player with dreams of a big career. After his father is killed in a random accident, Roger's grief is compounded by more tragedy, bringing him to the edge of despair. Mike is a thug/drug runner for a bigshot distributor. After sampling a new drug his boss intends to sell, Mike wrecks the car he's driving, killing his girlfriend. In his drug-addled state, he tries to retrieve all of the drugs from the car, but accidentally leaves some behind. Upset with all of the trouble Mike has caused, his boss tells him that he must single-handedly sell all of the remaining drugs to make up for it. All six of these people and their stories converge at the end in a climactic confrontation.
Content
The film itself is 2 hours and 55 minutes long; we're talking Braveheart/Lord of the Rings film length here. Now, if you're telling an epic-like story, a 3 hour running time is appropriate; but there is no reason that this film should be longer than 2 hrs. 15 min. at most. The editing needs to be significantly tightened up all throughout the film. There are many scenes in the film that can (and need to) be shortened, such as dialogues/monologues that tend to ramble, action scenes or montages that go on longer than they need to, etc. By trimming such scenes, the film would be much tighter and it would flow together better.
Much like Crash, Tomorrow Mourning attempts to show how the lives of unrelated strangers are connected by their pain. However, there are far too many characters to keep track of, and they are never properly introduced. It took me over half the movie to figure out the names of half of the main characters. Not only were the characters hard to sort out, but it was extremely difficult to follow what was happening with the different storylines. (This was partially due to some problems with visual quality, as explained in the Visual Look section below.) Because it is so hard to keep track of the characters, plots, and conflicts, it ends up confusing the viewer, making him/her lose interest in the film. A few suggestions: when introducing a new main character for the first time, have a freeze frame with the character's name at the bottom, or have that person's name clearly mentioned through dialogue within the first minute of their entrance.That way, the audience knows who is who. Also, make it clear when you've switched storylines; this is especially necessary early on in a multiple-plot film when the audience is trying to figure out what is going on. You can give each story a distinctive visual look, or use title cards to introduce a new thread (e.g. "Lisa"); obviously, title cards can also double as character introductions. You wouldn't need to keep doing this for each story all throughout the entire film, just the first time. But be sure that you keep the order of the threads the same so that it's easy for the audience to keep track. (e.g. Kyle's story, then Drew, Lisa, Roger, Ester, and Mike; then Kyle again, Drew, Lisa, and so on.) Livelihood is a great example of a mulitple-plot film that is very easy to follow.
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