Corpus

Filmmakers are faced with three grand challenges: starting, building, creating remembrance (usually thought of as ending).

There are few that do any one of these right, and the greatest deficiency seems to be in starting. It is a simple challenge: you have only a few moments to slide the viewer into an entire world, with all its situated dynamics. This is why genre exists — as a ready short cut, but if you rely on it, you start with three bullets in the chest.

Now this first film by a new filmmaker will not matter much, because it fails on the third point. It has no third act and sort of flags toward the end.

But oh, how confidently he pulls off the other two. This thing begins so well that I was really amazed. It looks easy, you know. But when you have to take the viewer to some place where the vision and the dynamics are personal, different and risky, it requires some mastery and I see that here. What happens is that the same devices are used to roll the cinematic narrative over and around us.

The camera investigates, but not obviously. There is nested folding of time, observation, introspection... The score is natural. The two initial actors are extraordinary, especially in the first ten minutes or so. I hope that they as well as this filmmaker are seen again.

There are jumped scenes that shift using time, space and sound in patterns that are always easy to read but not anticipate.

I think that for the first two thirds, this is far superior to "Love Liza," with Philip Seymour Hoffman, but that film doesn't know where to go toward the end either.

You don't need to watch this. But you do need to watch this filmmaker. He has engaged us in this first chapter of his life, his beginning.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.