Putty Hill

can't dislike this odd movie! again as i stated in another movie, "bad posture", the viewer is taken into the lives of these lower working class people. you share their feelings, what they see, their thoughts, etc. my favorite scene are the girls in the house. they have too much time on their hands and quietly talk among themselves about nothing in particular while lounging on a rather very used mattress.

the one scene that i found confusing was the angry girl yelling at her father. there just wasn't enough buildup to support her reaction. plus we know nothing of her life in Delaware. so all we have is a frustrated girl taking it out on her father - she never really knew him! but with that issue aside the entire film is very 'artsy' and i'm using that term as a compliment.

in my worthless opinion the director pulls his intentions off very well because the feel, look, sound, pacing, attitude of this movie is consistent. bravo!

Some may call this or what happens in it, mundane. Everyday life or death - and how people are dealing with both those things. We get a lot of characters and we get a lot of ... well skits. While you can relate to certain things or characters and what they go through and what they convey (be it joy or pain), I think something is missing to push this over to great territory.

But that is me, there are many people who cherish the vibe the movie gives, the independent low budget nature of it and all that. And in that sense, the movie is consistent! In that you can't credit the movie enough. The director has a style and you can tell what it is ... and you can also tell if it floats your boat or not. Well made, if not really for the masses

Putty Hill did everything right.

I'll skip any in depth discussion of formal excellence -- real critics like Roger Ebert and Richard Brody have already said much about that -- and just say that almost every shot, every element of the film is fantastic. Porterfield has a great instinct for composition, for length of shots, for what to focus on and what to leave off the screen. He introduces a few unique elements, including a lot of lingering shots away from prevalent dialogue. The visual style alone is reason to see the film.

But it's not the most important reason. Putty Hill accomplishes something very, very exciting on the level of the heart. In a brief Q&A after the film screened, Porterfield was asked about his decision to shoot the neighborhood and people he did, rather than any of the "shine" that the city of Baltimore has. Porterfield answered that it was part of where he came from, and that he saw it as an ethical responsibility to represent the working class in a moderate, non- sensational light. Much more than something like The Wire (or, say, Winter's Bone, another contemporary film with a similar focus on devastated, poor working class America), Putty Hill does not exploit poor, mostly "white trash" (as one British writer called them) characters, does not sensationalize or wring out their dire situations in hopes of creating great drama. The film is stark and realistic, but the treatment of characters is sympathetic. This is not a film that tries to shock the viewer with a saturation of hyperrealistic details about "what life is like on the other side" of the poverty line: it's not all drugs and violence and grime. Instead, Putty Hill is a film that shows a group of people living their lives just as they know how to. Sure, some things are dark, some things are gritty, some things are sad... but on the other hand these are people, like anybody, with great capacity for love and understanding.

Putty Hill is the greatest current example I have seen of art treating the lives of the working class with both realism and respect. It's not coddling, it's not political, it's not a shock piece. The camera rolls, and what we see is Life, with all of its imperfections, problems, and beauties intact.

When this accomplishment of subject is combined with stunning formal elements, what results is one of the most exciting, important films I've seen in years.

I usually don't turn off movies, but wow. WOW. who ever came up with this story should not be in the business. Stop wasting peoples time and find something you are good at, definitely not writing!

This is a drama about a wake that's kind of coalescing just after the death of a young man from an overdose. The cast includes ex-cons, skate-kids, dropouts, long-suffering retirees, generally low status folk sat on the sidelines of modern America doing their own thing. It's shot well enough that it looks like a documentary even though it's not. Lots of folks are interviewed about the dead guy and end up having a karaoke wake. The guys in the movie seem pretty anaesthetised most of the time, they're just trying to get along, and take things as they come.

There's some nice stuff, including a memorial graffito sprayed as we watch, of the words Rest in Peace spelled out on three Japanese bridges that look like they could come from a Monet painting.

At the end the film unfocuses on a road scene (an old trick) and you get all theses spheres of coloured light dripping across the screen. Like I say, an old trick, but it's done well here, and the unfocus is meaningful for this film, as the folk we see try not to focus too much, for example they go paintballing a week before the service, they just get on with it and don't mope. The wake at the end is actually fairly moving, and fleshes out the film a lot, adds meaning to some of what you see beforehand.

I have a lot of love for this film, and I can see what it was trying to do, it's grown on me a lot since the night I watched it.

I must warn you though that some shots are held for too long, and I'm a guy who likes long takes, furthermore there was a spalling walkout, which quite astonished me, probably the first time I've seen it happen in a film which wasn't violent, overtly sexual or confrontational. In fairness the film was shown quite late at night, and folks may well have seen several films beforehand and been tired (this was film #4 for me of the day at the Edinburgh International Film Festival).