Perhaps the best breakout comedy movie from the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival is a Capra-esque gem called Nobody’s Watching. It’s a smartly-executed work which captures powerful and authentic emotions, whose laughs are not throwaway and cheap, but based in real sadness and approached with great reverence.
It was almost shocking to discover this gentle, cheery person with a disarmingly childlike smile was the same person who made such a dark and challenging movie. The contrast between who I encountered in a hotel lobby and what audiences will encounter with Son of Sofia only augments the sense of humanity both the film and filmmaker so strongly convey.
Could the savage butcher Jeffrey Dahmer been brought back to a course that could have led to a normal, fulfilling life? Obviously, we can never know. What we can know is that a lot of people failed him. And to be fair, it certainly seems like a dark cloud was lodged deep in his psyche, perhaps one which could not be repaired. But this film attempts to find the humanity within this real-life character, employing an organic approach which gives the figure perhaps the best chance his life could ever get to a fair trial.
In concert with celebrating Hambleton’s achievements, the film looks unflinchingly at the insanity and degradation which is the artist’s very messed up life. As the details unfold, we find some of the usual suspects behind self-destructive geniuses. More surprising are the nuances of this troubled man’s path, the almost pure motivations which repulsed him away from success, intermingling with the frailty of a human being succumbing to an endless parade of indulgence and personal neglect.
What could have easily have gone off the rails as a series of zany low-grade sitcom vignettes settles in as a restrained effort relying on quieter moments of experience showing (rather than dialogue explaining) both the laughs and the tears. Refusing to play it safe, there’s a lot of tough scenes between the lighter fare, including some stark and belligerent sexual encounters.
Using transitions between a harsh, stern reality and the deeply dark realm of an abused and neglected child’s imagination, it’s a haunting expedition into a shadow world of juvenility without light and hope. Nestled in the core of this savage trek, however, is an important discovery. What is the outcome of insight? This film seeks the answer to this through a beautiful and besmirched prism, where disillusionment is uncovered as a fractured form of enlightenment.
Lovely milieus are crafted which do everything from mock a funeral to provide meditative contemplations of buildings as living things. Always, always in the service of framing the manifesto. More than once we go from hives to drones to queens and broods, our insect instincts trying to gain meaning from a larger culture and history.
The visual transition is caught in wild nature, like much of the film, and offers a tiny flicker of hope – don’t blink or you’ll miss it – in a grand spontaneous gesture, as far from phony as you get in cinema. Truly, this work is a grand achievement, Guðmundsson’s first feature, hopefully foreshadowing an equally brilliant career to come.
In short, when Mine is very quiet, it is really very smart. When it gets noisy, not so much. But those more meditative moments of silence and contemplation really are worth sitting through the flaws of the film. Guaglione and Resinaro are absolutely an exciting new team whose careers I am thrilled to follow from here.
The reek of degradation is so impactful, it’s hard to wash away from the mind. And therein lies the true horror the film offers as well as its cinematic triumph. The murders take a back seat to the explorations of the utter raping of the psyche of a teenager we are subjected to. No amount of gore could make an audience more uneasy, seeking the exits than what The Snowtown Murders has conjured.
