Personal Velocity

I saw this film tonight at the First Annual Tribeca Film Festival and understood its success at Sundance. In short, this film is about the awakening of three different women in very different lives and circle around a news report of a shooting in Manhattan and an ensuing car accident. With the telling of each woman's tale, Miller uses a brilliant 'degree of relation' to the accident in order to develop an engaging and powerful film.

Delia casually watches the news report of the accident while waiting for the cook to bring up her next order in a small-town diner in upstate New York. Though the audience does not see a particularly unusual response that she has to it, we can imagine that her difficult circumstances allow her to relate to it on a level of shared human suffering.

Greta, who's story is told in a series of flashbacks, watches it on the morning news minutes before she has her epiphany about her failing marriage and the new turn that her life is taking as a prominent editor for a large Manhattan publishing house. Because it is the only scene in her story that takes place in the present time, the audience is left to wonder what sort of pivotal role the news report has played in her epiphany.

Finally, Paula's story brings the accident close to home as she is a witness to it. Her epiphany was a direct result of the accident since it was a near-death experience for her. She's not only shocked from the impact of it, but her struggle to explain it with cosmic signs allows her to transcend the accident and the events following it.

The performances were real, the direction was brilliant, and the common thread that ran through the intimate details of the women's awakenings flowed easily, despite the segmented telling of their tales. Miller's work in this film has inspired me to seek out her feature debut, _Angela_ as well.

Closeup- Beth in Car Door Window-Door handle opening as someone gets in-Closeup of his handsome face--Beth: Can you excuse me, I have to stop for donuts. Closeup of Shop Door, Beth walking in then ignition key turning as hitch hiker moves her car. Beth looks away. Beth: Hurry with that couple of dozen, I'm pregnant. She carries the donut box out, gets into the car. The Hitch Hiker's hand grabs a donut from the box, Closeup of a donut hole. His mouth munches one down. Cut to Rain falling on car back window, steam rising and groans from within while he makes out with her. Later, interior, apartment, Beth's hand is seen picking up a script. The cover page reads, "Never use close camera angles or other devices so often it makes the viewer lose interest in the characters and story. Try to film a movie the way you'd like a live audience to watch it. Grade F, see me. Professor Hollywood Hack."

as you probably have heard, this is a movie that consists of three portraits. three very contrived, hard-to-watch portraits.

this movie charges out of the gate with incredible potential, including a great cast, an effective score, and nearly disorienting (yet, rather successful) camera work. additionally, at the start of the first portrait, the narrative freezes, and the narrator urges the viewer to, "wait!" so he can explain something about what's going on. this device is wonderful, and immediately gives the viewer a healthy shot of intrigue. additionally, at this point, you'll probably be really excited at the unorthodox pacing that the film seems to be setting up.

that's all in the first few minutes. and this movie literally screamed in a nosedive downward from there.

while "personal velocity" bucks conventions in many ways, it bucks the concept of storytelling so much that it is simply contrived. want to see development, plot, resolution? not here. this movie tries HARD to dodge all these things, and relentlessly starves the viewer of any of these elements with its spare dialogue.

but in the absence of these elements, what's left is - quite frankly - repetition. the characters simply keep doing what they did in the first moments of their portrait (or at least what the filmmakers set them up to do). and while they rather gratingly repeat their actions, there is no true character development.

to combat this (and surely the problem of converting short stories to film), the movie employs a narrator. this (and the repetition) is the downfall. first of all, who is the narrator? well, it's a male, which is strange since this is mainly a story about three women. ok, but why is he male? and why is he speaking so conversationally at some points? and why does he know of all these women? none of these questions are answered, and the viewer is forced to contend with this narrator who speaks incessantly throughout the entire film.

now this narrator suffers from an additional problem, which plagues the film: heavy-handedness. the narrator says things like, "she could feel the emotion like a vortex pulling her soul inward." that's actually not a direct quote, but it's very close. i am not exaggerating. at one point a character says, "you look you're waiting for something." and the narrator breaks in, "she was, she always has been." this movie can't afford such lead-weighted narration. and it certainly does not fall in line with the narrator's other parts where he's talking about how great kyra sedgewick's ass looks in jeans.

in the end, you've got however many minutes (i don't know 90ish?) of superb acting and inventive cinematography. but anchoring it down without an inch of slack to go anywhere is an overbearing narrator, and three equally overbearing and repetitious movements of what could have probably been a compelling film.

I am hard-pressed to explain the praise heaped on this movie, and must sadly choose the obvious. This film would never have been touted as it has if it were made by someone other than Arthur Miller's daughter/Daniel Day Lewis's wife.

Of the film's three vignettes--domestic violence survivor, conflicted editor, and confused runaway--the second is most telling. Greta, the failure to her family, craves success and power in the literary world and only needs to have her innate talents recognized to do so. Her skill is "trimming the fat" from others' writing. However, Ms. Miller seems to have had no such attention paid to her own work. The incessant and intrusive voiceover dialogue, I assume taken directly from her collection of short stories, features pseudo-deep lines that made me literally laugh out loud.

In addition, I found many of the camera tricks and plot devices amateurish and the characters shallow and essentialized. I cannot recommend this film, which basks in its own specialness and its claims to gritty reality. Ms. Miller is a tourist in the lives of the struggling women she attempts to portray.

I don't know why there are so many recent attempts at this sort of thing: individual episodes that approach and overlap the same concept. Perhaps it is because it is easier to craft episodes with power rather than worry about an arc of 90 minutes or more.

But we do have them. Some work amazingly well. I found 'Things you can tell' nearly lifealtering because of the crafty way all the actresses picked up each others' mannerisms to merge into the same woman. '!0 Conversations' was a different take, with the action all occurring in the same world. Less effective overall (with a more overt politics) but well structured.

This, however, is a mess. It bludgeons. It repeats. It insists on obviousness. No subtly is allowed: either an effect shouts or is bleached away. And the worst thing, the most damaging thing that can be said: there is no reward, no insight, no enrichment for the rawness we experience.

Wallace Shawn and a talented cinematographer wasted as well. Shame.

The reliable Parker Posey has a line so wonderful, so noticeably superior to all else, I am convinced she made it up: she says she needs to get an underwater camera.

Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 4: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.