Ham on Rye

Original, thoughtful, beautiful, intelligent. The film takes significant moments we all confront during our coming of age years, and concentrates them into loosely connected symbolic vignettes, exploring issues around identity and the roles we're assigned in life, willingly or not. It utilises a tone of suburban isolationism and being lost in the meaningless unknown to keep us off balance and wandering through uncertainty. While the narrative structure does not present a palatable or traditional plot or any form of character development, nor does the presentation guide us on what we're supposed to think or feel about anything, there is an opportunity to see the world through the lens of melancholic but unthreatening nihilism. If you can sit with slow burn, abstract narratives then you might be into this.

A very nice film, I enjoyed the pace and tone of this movie and it's just what I expected from first viewing! I don't know why it's got all the low scores but it made me think about how weird growing up is... and the absurdity of leaving your hometown or being left there while everyone else moved on. I loved the jaggered lynch tone and just the feel of the movie, would watch again.

The first 20 minutes teens are pretty much just walking on the street. Very little dialogue. Sets the tone for a move where...not much happens.

This film seems mostly to be about the disappointment of getting older. The first half of the film is sureal and magical, it was also quite funny with bizarre existential questions being thrown around but never answered; I guess the subtext is: you don't need answer them because you're young. The second half of the film seems to be about the inevitable unfulfilled expectations and the loss of connection with people who have taken a different life path to you. Overall the first half is more enjoyable to watch and the second half is incredibly slow and down beat however, I think it leaves you feeling exactly what the film makers intended.

While dotted with isolated moments of remarkable beauty and emotional acuity, the film mostly plays like an attempt at another "Myth of the American Sleepover" (David Robert Mitchell's wonderful 2010 debut), albeit one heavily influenced by the work of David Lynch. It's a difficult film to "get into," but I was ultimately moved by its dreamy, elliptical opacity. I'm just not sure whether it really adds up to a coherent work.