Ralph McKay's program of short films, "Throwing Water into the Sea," is nothing short of astounding. It's astounding that somebody actually wants these films to see the light of a projector and expects people to sit through them, let alone pay for the privilege.
Things start off on a particularly sour note with "Elegy." It's an eight minute shot of a woman in a bikini swimming. From underwater. In slow motion.
It's the longest eight minutes in experimental film history. The tedium is excruciating. One continually digs to find some rhyme or reason in it, particularly in the ambient noise of a woman's recorded voice on the soundtrack. But she's just jabbering about random things and there's never any purpose for her presence in the movie or her connection to the visual. It seems like the director has seen one too many early Atom Egoyan films and seeks to imitate the style while throwing any attempt at substance out the window.
"Elegy" is a complete and utter waste of film. The celluloid that was spent on this trash could have been used to make hundreds of perfectly useful guitar picks.
The follow-up film, "A Wisdom Day," is at least watchable, with some vibrant colors, cool shot compositions and a pair of warm performances in the forefront. Though its clumsy editing and pacing cause it to descend into tedium on a pretty regular basis, it's still fairly compelling.
"A Wisdom Day's" drawn-out ending lacks resonance, and one can't help feeling it would be more meaningful or make more sense if fleshed out and expanded to a feature length film. It might work.
Things go back down the toilet with the next film, "Angel Beach." It's an endless series of vibrating stereoscopic photographs. They were taken around 1970 and are converted to film here.
The people in these stills are stationary while the environment around them shakes relentlessly. Unfortunately, the novelty wears off after about 20 seconds. This is a problem, since the "short" goes on for 24 minutes.
The silence accompanying these eyesore images is deafening. If "Angel Beach" had some smooth editing, catchy music and a running time of two or three minutes, it might be a winner. As it is, it will likely induce dizziness, nausea and/or existential boredom.
"Dolce e Calmo" and "City at Night" have some brief flashes of brilliance, but are generally tedious and uninspired, consisting basically of one endless, semi-well composed slow-motion shot after another.
"Passages" is an extended home movie featuring people rambling in German with English subtitles about places they've been and things they've done. It does have some interesting globetrotting documentary-style footage, but overall is a pretty insubstantial work.
"Going to the Ocean" is just lousy, a letdown, especially since the filmmakers had the luxury of working with 35 mm film.
It's par for the course that it begins with an endless slow-motion shot of a ship moving across the camera's line of vision.
What is it with all these directors using endless shots of ships moving slowly? It wasn't cool when Werner Herzog did it in his 1979 "Nosferatu" and it's not cool now. There hasn't been much of a thrill in seeing boats move on film since roughly 1902.
Also worth noting is the terrible noise on "Ocean's" soundtrack. It sounds like a 5-year-old trying to play an accordion for the first time.
"Ocean" then climaxes with lame stock footage of groups of people running into water at a beach. Wow.
If there was a point to any of these movies, I must have blinked and missed it.
This is probably the worst collection of short experimental films I've ever seen grouped together. With the exception of "A Wisdom Day," I would rather be forced to listen to Yanni and John Tesh albums at full blast for 48 hours straight than sit through another one of these shorts again.
This is entertainment for people who think audio recordings of running water are high art. Or if you think watching paint dry should be a spectator sport, you'll eat this up.
If you want a much more fun water-related activity than this, stay home during the film festival and do the dishes. You'll have an infinitely better time.
Ralph McKay's collection of experimental film shorts, "Throwing Water into the Sea" will be shown at 4 p.m. Friday at Vinegar Hill as part of the Liquid Light series.
Read More
The best albums of 2014
By Noah Zeidman | December 4, 2014Across genres, it has been a pretty great year in music.
Top 10 movies of 2014
December 4, 2014This has been an excellent year for film, offering everything from gripping blockbusters to innovative personal films.
Iggy Azalea is “Reclassified”
December 4, 2014It has become common practice among music artists to repackage their albums in an effort to simultaneously boost single sales and dish out new content by slightly renaming the album or slapping “Deluxe” onto the title.
