If you’re looking for an epic cross generational drama with tragedy, family rivalry, and common people subject to the government, you’ve come to the right place. So Long My Son is the story of two families driven apart by China’s infamous one child policy and their differing fortunes. It’s just over three hours, so there’s plenty of time to build each of the characters, but it also doesn’t feel too long. This might be because of the narrative that pieces together different time periods without ever leaving the present. It forces us to figure out which part of the protagonist’s lives we are at, but also slowly reveals more and more about the characters and their lives to add to our mental picture. It’s like a Memento of cross generational drama with a dramatic Chinese one child policy backdrop.
In Right Near the Beach, Jeffrey Jacobs, Jamaica’s world record breaking sprinter is beaten to death near his home. His murder sparks a frenzy of media coverage that digs into his friendship with a gay man. Jeffrey’s single father becomes a social pariah because of the reaction to his son’s death, living alone in the hills. It’s only when his youngest son returns that he is given a chance to transcend his isolation and grief.
Right Near the Beach tells its story effectively through the images and sounds it presents. Firstly, the film develops Terrence Malick’s visual style to create a more visceral feeling. Right Near the Beach still has the trademark wandering camera and meditative shots familiar to Malick’s films, but adds a varying shot length to better convey the varying emotions Jeffrey’s dad feels.
For most of the film, the average spot length feels longer than your typical Hollywood film. This gives the audience more time to watch the characters as they wander in rural Jamaica alone, allowing us to feel their search for inner peace. However, for a few key scenes, the emotional toll of the media and neighborhood gossip is too much for them and they release their frustration in sin scenes with frantically fast cutting. The quick shots that rapidly cut around Jeffrey’s dad when he starts axing a tree root creates an urgent feeling of blind rage that contrasts with the otherwise relaxed feelings generated by the longer shots. It’s one example of how the filmmakers brilliantly use shot lengths to change the feelings of each scene.
Secondly, the sound of Right Near the Beach provides the foundation for the visual experimentation. In the first half of the film, the soundtrack is dominated by a constant stream of radio show interviews with people discussing Jeffrey Jacobs’ homosexuality. The real homophobia you hear on air (these interviews were conducted with real Jamaicans) penetrates the silence of the rural area Jeffrey’s father lives. What he hears forces him deeper into isolation just to try and silence the country’s prejudice. This changes in the second half of the film, when the prejudiced voices that plague him start to ease after his youngest son’s arrival. They’re replaced by more natural sounds from the rural environment they live in, marking his successful coming to terms with his eldest son’s death. It’s as if he’s managed to meditate away the hateful media and replace it with a calm peace of mind. Just as the visceral visual style builds emotions, the sounds we hear guide us through Jeffrey’s dad’s grief.
To take the film full circle, the filmmakers end the film with the reunion of the dad and his youngest son. It’s a touching end to an emotional film that shows they have both transcended the deaths of their brother/son and mother/wife.
Right Near the Beach manages to accomplish a lot. Firstly, the editing and cinematography work incredibly well with the soundscape to depict the character’s raw emotion and path to overcoming their grief. Secondly, the full circle script gives the film a spiritual completeness that many films fail to achieve. But, that’s not all. Right Near the Beach also touches on the prejudice in Jamaica and how the country is largely overlooked internationally except for beaches and running (hence the ironic title). I’m excited to see more from these filmmakers.
If you enjoy watching people try to deal with high pressure scenarios then check out A War. A husband and wife face two uniquely high pressure situations – the husband in organising his squadron in Afghanistan, and his wife in bringing up 3 kids on her own. Unfortunately the husband is the first to crack and the consequences are bad.
Witnesses follows a group of brothers who have returned from the front lines of the Croatian-Serbian War as broken men. Their thirst for revenge fuels a late night attack on a Serbian neighbor. Rumors of witnesses pushes them to solemnly work to eliminate all of them. However, stuck in a bleak city on lockdown in a narrative that keeps replaying the past indicates that their fate is unavoidable.
It feels like the three brothers are doomed right from the start when they murder their Serbian neighbor. As they drive towards his house crammed into a small car, they’re completely silent and lifeless. Their lack of emotion makes it feel like their condemned to act instead of acting willingly. After the murder, they appear solemnly sat around the table in their mother’s house in silence. Their mother is dressed black in mourning, and their father is lying next door in an open coffin. An empty bar is the only other place the brothers are pictured, sipping on pints of beer in silence. It feels like they’ve already resigned themselves to their fate and are simply waiting for it to catch up with them.
Their hopelessness is also imbued into the setting. The skies are constantly overcast which shrouds everything underneath them in a bleak palette of greys. The lack of light makes the brothers faces appear more ghostly and pale, in contrast to the more vibrant colors of their flashbacks on the front lines of the war in a time before they’d lost hope. Now, with trauma from the war and having murdered a neighbor, their pale faces are a mark of the life that has left them. They’re sleepwalking like zombies towards their fate.
The narrative structure also serves to construct the prison of trauma they’re stuck in. Following the murder, they’re never given the same freedom as in the opening scene where the camera follows them around the town in their car in one shot. As the film moves on, the same scenes start replaying: scenes of the three brothers in the bar, scenes of the three brothers around the table by their dead dad, and scenes of the three brothers at funerals. Repeatedly showing the brothers in the same places traps them within a limited area. Furthermore, the scenes are all shot with still cameras that don’t move, mimicking their guilt by trapping them within the frame. Even though they haven’t been found guilty, the way the cyclical narrative and fixed cameras become their prison. They’re stuck within the deserted town to be consumed by their guilt and trauma from the war.
The bleak setting, emotionless characters, and cyclical narrative imbues hopelessness into the look and tone of Witnesses, turning it into a gloomy but effective film about the futility of war and hate, and the grief and trauma it causes.
What to Watch Next
If you’re looking for more bleak portrayals of the Balkan Wars, I strongly recommend watching:
The Load: A road trip movie following one Serbian man’s truck journey from Kosovo to Belgrade. It’s also his journey to becoming aware of the grim reality of the war.
Shok: A short film that depicts the brutal occupation of Kosovo.
Or if you’d rather watch more bleak films featuring characters blindly moving forward in divided countries check out Mozambique’s Sleepwalking Landor Rwanda’s The Mercy of the Jungle.
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