First, the Recap:
“It was meant to be!”–or not. As we navigate through this wondrous journey we call life, it stands to reason we will experience our fair share of human interactions and the subsequent degrees of connection that accompany them. Sometimes, it is the road to happiness and harmony, other times a path to heartbreak and defeat. So as we make the choices that determine our steps in each circumstance, it may still come down to one essential query–what ARE we really looking for? Could it be that what we once thought was validation through marriage was really seeking a totally different intimacy? Perhaps we need to put on a façade to cover up who we really are, thinking it will aid us in our search for acceptance? Is it the desperate need to BE acknowledged as a PERSON rather than a statistic or object based on race, color, and creed? Can it be the simple longing for a rejoining of familial bonds that breaches the pain of present loss and the past, reuniting us with hope? This is the heartbeat of life, love, and our search for that which fulfills us. Now, if we could only connect.
Next, my Mind:
Four films, four sets of occurrences, four outlooks on what it is to search out the ever-elusive animal that is love, experienced in a myriad of ways and with results that could be construed as poignant to borderline punitive, but all an attestation to the powerful force it remains, regardless of the consequences or contentment. What I continue to admire about films willing to showcase such a broad spectrum of outcomes is that it IS real life, it IS how it goes, and to deny that would be impossible IF we’re being truthful with ourselves and the world around us. For while we know that we would yearn for the fairy tale outcome each and every time–folks–it just doesn’t happen. Independent cinema is so adept at illustrating these kinds of bold, unapologetic truths and hence why this set of efforts fit in so well as part of the 2021 Art of Brooklyn Film Festival.
Take, for example, director Stacey Maltin‘s “Appetite” which wears its title firmly on a fantasy vs. reality platform in telling a tale both alluring and undeniably revealing when it comes to the notion of what we truly hunger for when it comes to intimacy, both literally and proverbially, as seen through the eyes of the well-off Jack (Jeffrey Weber), his long-time wife Ruby (Jordan Bayne) and the two separate people they link up with, Rex (Nivi Canela) and Tanya (Margarita Zhitnikova), during an open love session Jack provides his wife as a birthday present. Then there is the always-present specter of “Inevitability”, this time through director Zoë Greenbaum‘s exposé on the wonders of pathological lying and the effects it has on a man named Lu (Sonnei Garces) who comes looking for his long-lost fiancée only to find a lonely heiress Emily (Michelle Redman) and her oft-traveling boyfriend Eli (Kassime Fofana) that sparks individual and group conversations laced with a mishmash of tall tales–all for the sake of justifying their actions in relationships and life. Grab the cookies, cheesecake, and your as of yet disburdened untruths for this one.
Events take a turn for the candid, unflinching, true-to-life, and evocative thanks to director Mecca McDonald‘s effort that finds a black man named Wayne (David Aaron Bell) spouting embittered diatribes and social, cultural, and racial postulations to friends Myles (Ezra Bynum) and Byron (Krisstoff Jones). The potent, necessary, brutal beauty of this particular film is found in the fact that the concepts Wayne so strongly speaks on after an apparent intense encounter with a white co-worker ARE a complete and utter reflection of today’s torn reality others have perpetrated even as it also provides another actuality–the finger can be pointed to ourselves as well. Finally, we enter a realm of total emotional upheaval yet regained kinship and healing with Sarah Nolen‘s quietly volatile and wholly stirring “Sisters”, delivering a narrative about two siblings, Victoria (Veronika Adams) and Emily (Mattie Jo Cowsert), brought together by a mutually shared loss and the reconnection on so many levels they both come to experience thanks to it. Their excursion through recollections that cover disappointments, regrets, coping, and choices made all comes with revelation that will be freedom and rekindled closeness for them both.
What this critic realizes in writing this and other pieces to date for the short film blocks I’ve taken in so far is that so much more justice can be done by having the opportunity to view each of these efforts in full and then striving to pull out from them even further all the affecting ideas they offer about the series’ foundational thematic bend, which again IS love. All four projects deftly illustrate the wide-ranging viewpoints this emotional juggernaut carries with it, as well as the equally, unavoidably formidable, influential, compelling, and dynamic force said amore imparts to the core of our being. Without question, love IS something we definitively need to give and share more of in this fractured arena that is existence, carrying the magnificent joy it heralds. But, we at least need to be ready to face those moments where the ending may not be so happy.
As always, this is all for your consideration and comment. Until next time, thank you for reading.
