I've now seen Whensday twice (the minimum number of viewings required to actually 'get it') and find myself obsessing over every aspect of this film. It is absolutely fantastic.
I see Whensday as a 3-layered onion that wraps back on itself:
Layer 1: The scenes that make up Whensday are diverse and many of them stand alone as fully realized concepts. Initially, the film appears as a "collage" of shuffled-up shorts because the storyline is not presented sequentially. The result is that with each cut, the viewer can be transported to any point along the film's time line, blurring the "when" and intensifying the focus on the "where" and "who."
Some scenes are capable of evoking deep contemplation and (dare I admit) stifled man- tears; while others knock the audience into doubled-over laughter. (I have not laughed this hard at a movie in a LONG time.) The major clues and plot-drivers are well spaced so that most viewers will have grasped the basic story arc (...story ∞?) by the end of the film. This brings me to...
Layer 2: the story and the driving concept: the chicken/egg/"pair of ducks" strange-loop the characters exist in. Once the story is understood and the unifying concept of the film is grasped, the chaos suddenly falls into sublime order. I was blown away during the second viewing at how brilliantly entangled all the scenes of the movie truly are – with so many little clues, correlations and allusions that all tie together into a very satisfying figure-eight. The first time I saw the film I liked it. The second time, I loved it. I don't know if all audiences will be able to hang on to the threads, but for the adventurously thoughtful Whensday does not disappoint.
Layer 3: The final "layer" is the town, people and philosophy that produced this film in the first place. Remarkably, "Old Town" Fort Collins, Colorado is more than the setting of the film, it is a starring character, and stranger still: a driving force in the film's creation. At a Q&A session after the Denver, CO premiere, the all-volunteer cast and crew of Whensday discussed the strange string of serendipitous events that lead to the film's creation. I left feeling oddly convinced that this small Colorado town had somehow brought forth all of the elements that its inhabitants would enjoy seeing most and wove the story out of Fort Collins itself.
This is further reinforced by the underlying philosophy shared by the producers: that local creative communities have everything they need to make the movies their communities want to see... that it is senseless to wait for Hollywood to come and give us a re-hash of our own hometowns and lives. Whensday is a true NoCo (Northern Colorado) Experience. If you live up here this film is not to be missed, and if you have never been to NoCo, the film is an hilarious sub-cultural voyage for the price of a movie ticket.
Bottom line: This film is great. You will have your mind twisted. You will laugh your ass off. You'll be inspired.
Go watch it already!
