So what is left when you are completely disillusioned with Netflix, the latest TV series, and the movies in the theaters? Find your local independent filmmakers and beg to see what they have got to show for their months (or in some cases years) of near-starvation and bad credit.
Like Adam Bolt's short film "Vanished Acres." From the opening credits I was, for one of the first times in recent memory, transfixed and speechless. This film speaks with an artistic voice and visual poetry that hold captive the viewer on an emotional level that is almost uncomfortably close. With precision of timing and splendidly fresh visual arrangement, "Vanished Acres" makes accessible and familiar to the viewer a neglected farmhouse and its unlikely mix of tenants, never letting the audience feel like an insider peeking into another world. We are there. We feel the despair of the rundown house, the ominous warning of the horn worm, the loss of those days of youth so far gone, so far across the world. The music comes in, like a faint and distant memory long forgotten, but tickling something we should be remembering, and regretting that we don't. The fun J-Pop video cut into the bleak existence of Jerod Grot should tip off the viewer that the world is about to upset in a most unpredictable way, the ground never again becoming stable beneath our feet. Jerod's confrontation with his nemesis can carry interpretations on so many levels, but even at face value serve the film in a remarkable way. The exchange is relentless and tragic, exposing truths that cut deeper than we can imagine surviving. And yet, we do, though forever changed. If the film has a weakness, it is the physical mannerisms accompanying Jerod's reaction to Caroline's lost letter. However, the honesty of his loss of control in the bedroom scene makes up for any deficiencies earlier on. When both morning light and the light of the consequences of Jerod's actions come to the farm, the film wraps in what could be the only satisfying way. Adam Bolt's stunning storytelling shines through "Vanished Acres," and leaves me anxious to see what else this guy can do.
