<PERSON>
my first film back in the cinema, a day before my birthday, a year and change from when i developed panic attacks, specifically triggered around a newfound fear of mortality -- of course it had to be old.
i wrote with signs that <PERSON> cast himself as the man who killed the preacher's wife and that this reflected to me a writer's burden, obligation, or responsibility towards the world they create. that if there is suffering done to these characters, then the dramatic catalyst coincides metaphysically with the writer's stroke. he's in the scene and behind the scene, splintering <PERSON>'s world in half, depriving him of his love and hope on every narratological plane. as he writes her death, he's at the wheel too, nodding off, falling asleep in just that precise moment. empathy is an overwhelming force. to write necessitates the good and the bad. his short cameo in glass where he gets to thank <PERSON> cascades across planes again, thankful in the character but thankful to be able to return to this series about faith again. that they all have faith in him to come back and weave another story whole once more. thankful alone just to show a son's unwavering love and adoration for his father.
old is a mean movie. it could be a lot meaner, i think. the formal control here is very delicate and i'm far more sensitive now to the swells and the relief. never goes too far, and when it does it it embraces the unreal and never the too real (think: how the camera frames what happens to <PERSON> versus what happens to <PERSON>). what strikes me here then is the technician role that <PERSON> plays, as he's both creating this beach narratively and participating within it through the diegetic cameras capturing the beach's events. 80
like drones that fly overhead, alienating the subjects, his cameras are always above and away. the distance to the subject helps aid indifference, helps the systematic execution of processes to their end. from his character's point of view, they might as well be fleeting shadows cast along the sheer rock. there for one day and gone. well... he does drive them there, i suppose.
his character disappears though, once he delivers the tapes. i think this perhaps strengthens a critique that m night is (intentionally or not) participating in -- the passiveness of most directors/creators with regards to the material they invent. but i'm not sure if there's a reconcilement here towards the end. once we're left without the voice, it's a rather humdrum, nod of the head type of ending. a little bit of beauty with the young boy's hand on <PERSON>'s face. easily the weakest part of the film and the part most disorienting. i don't think there's a coherent political statement being made -- just some weakly staked out reconciliations. i would have ended it with them escaping... but that's me. 698