Fade

This is an imperfect film. But as it boldly states in the 'about' for the director, this was shot when he was 19 and probably didn't know any better. Whether that makes it more obnoxious or 'endearing' is up to you. I would say in production terms, finding out a kid just out of high school made it doesn't shock me at all. The kids in Super8 had more production value. But then it hit me towards the end: this is a spiritual movie. This wasn't made with much money or technical knowledge, but it conveys a great feeling. It hints at something I have rarely seen in movies. It is like when someone scribbles a beautiful poem onto a messy cocktail napkin. That is Fade: very flawed and scrappy, but worthwhile for the evocative grandeur it reaches for.

I'm really into artsy indie films, and a friend of mine met the director in school and told me about this, so I bought a copy. I have to say that for a first project this is really good. I've seen a lot of indie movies, but it's nice to see one that's so smart and really seems to be trying to be different from all the other ones.

The synopsis is really no-frills: a woman named Chloe374 lives and works in an isolated hospital type of building without windows or plants or any other color decor than gray and white. She monotonously lives a very simplistic lifestyle, passing out pills, cleaning things, etc. Things seem to take a turn after she is supposed to 'fix overpopulation.' After that, she meets a very fiery woman named Anna, and they share a few brief hours before Anna is to be 'fixed' herself (and there are some interesting nods to Anna being a lesbian). Then Chloe decides to leave the building and venture into this massive forest where she grows lonelier and hungrier with each passing day. At one point, she meets a strange man in a gas mask, who leads her even further into the forest. And then comes an ending that isn't really anything of a shocker, but I won't spoil it anyways because it needs the rest of the movie to build up to.

A lot of people probably don't like this, and I'm not surprised...there's actually a comment on the box that compares it to Gus Van Sant's Elephant, so that should be enough of a warning for people if you've seen that. It feels like an art project rather than a movie, and because it is so low budget, some people probably don't like the lesser quality. But for those of you who are into this kind of thing, I really recommend it. It's really philosophical, and really visually spectacular.

Well, I'll assume you all saw G. Lucas's first 'feature', "THX-1138".

Resident of bland and confining futurustic dystopia lives underground, then gains the idea that they need to see the above-ground world.

Yawn. FADE captures this notion perfectly for the first 48 of its first 70 minutes. The visual design is a bit remarkable in that the director and his production team have found a real bland generic facility in which to film; where Lucas went just a little whizz-bang with some futurism props.

FADE differs in that the life above-ground is explored in minor detail, and another existence different than that of our protagonist (Chloe374) is introduced to the audience.

As other reviewers reflected, FADE feels more like an art project than a movie or a narrative. Yet it was still good visual art, creative design and fine to look at.

Where FADE suffers is the audio engineering. Since the late 1930s, and certainly as a finished concept by the 1940s, Hollywood film production learned that actors often needed to record their lines at greater than a whispered voice. And the MPSE specialty has known forever that whispered lines need to be ramped up farrrrrrrrrrr into the audible range, and all dialogue needs solid transmission, enough to overpower the film's music portion, which is intended as a pure background or mood-establishing portion.

Director Beer and his team have found some nice musical pieces, yet I will repeat: they belong in the background, not overpowering conversation.

Yet FADE apparently occurred without the use of any audio engineering, and it suffers considerably because of this failing.

At mid-film, critical dialogue which inspires Chloe374 to look further is whispered a foot and a half across pillows upon a bed. Sadly, director Christopher Beer chose to record this dialogue as the same filmed whisper, using apparently the camera-microphone, held 4-5 feet away. Absolutely unintelligible.

Later in the progression, there is apparently more expository dialogue between Chloe374 and the beings which make their life above the surface. Again, absolutely unintelligible.

'Shots' like these were meant to drive the film/art forward, and their lack of listenable dialogue had really derailed the film/art for me.

To barely salvage the notion of continuity, the director inserted chapter-like titles such as: "Sadness, loneliness, exhaustion". These helped but didn't save the narrative.

I welcome the notion that director Beer went beyond G. Lucas's story, and showed what a train wreck the surface world seemed to be.

But the pivot of this film/art was the notion of escape or progress, and I was honestly unable to catch on to how that occurred.