TRIBECA 2019 REVIEWS: Mark Webber’s THE PLACE OF NO WORDS is a brave and risky excursion into fantasy as grief and loss are navigated
In our culture, the term “fairytale” has come to mean something that is both unrealistic and unduly positive. A “fairytale” romance, for example, is one so free of trouble, it cannot possibly be for real. Dig deeper into the history of magical folklore, from Aesop to the Brothers Grimm, and you’ll find the original concepts to be far less inclined towards happy endings. Indeed, as a genre, the literature of fairytales as a whole is rich and complex. Grief and loss are explored as often as victory and joy. And so, we come to this remarkable achievement from director Mark Webber. The Place of No Words is a brave and risky excursion which delves into the issue of coming to terms with death while stomping through the much-trampled ground of magic and myth. But it’s the unique metaphorical twist which makes this film much more than it seems at first.
The story opens with a Viking father and his son – both clad in the attendant regalia down to the swords – crossing a body of water before facing a mountain they must both climb together. The incredibly precocious young lad, upon viewing the snowy rise they are to summit, remarks with an innocent wisdom how slippery the path looks. It’s a spot-on symbolic setup which could have come from Lord of the Rings. Together, they go to face whatever arcane forces await them in the unforgiving wilds they must confront. But this jumping off point is only the beginning of what leads this film into becoming the triumph that it is.
Suddenly and jarringly, the established genre is interrupted as the film switches from an epic flight of fancy to scenes of modern-day regular life. That’s where we start to meet the father and son “in our world.” Instead of monsters and goblins, now they are facing a bleak and commonplace truth: the father is suffering from a terminal disease, and his very young son is trying to understand what is happening. Back and forth the audience is taken from a haunted-woods-with-fairies-and-witches allegory to familiar visions of birthday parties, trips to the park and hospital rooms. Within a few of these transitions, it becomes clear that what’s actually happening. The fantasy quest segments are in fact a vision of the child’s imagination playing out. Using that thin line which children straddle between make-believe and the real world, we’re watching him struggle to process and cope with the fact that his dad doesn’t have long to live .
Once that key is in viewers’ hands, the film becomes a harrowing and delightful treat. The parallels between the swords and sorcery tropes and the real-world events and concerns of the father, his wife and their child reflect each other seamlessly. Dangers encountered in the ethereal setting mirror the very difficult conversations occurring as the man tries to explain his own impending demise to his very young offspring. Here’s where things become even more intense: the director is playing himself and has casted his own kid – who cannot be five years old yet – as the son. His wife also plays the kid’s mother. They all use their real names. And the stuff they talk about is painful, weighty and sublime.
If it weren’t for the fact that the key cast are all family, it would be almost shocking to see a child put through such dramatic paces on film. But Webber is too smart to traumatize his son. And he’s perfectly able to deliver a deeply meaningful story in a very unusual way while baking unmatched authenticity into the cake from the get-go. On top of that, there are actually more laughs, fun and strides of youthful abandon to be found here than the overarching heavy stuff. It’s a remarkable balance struck and as such, an astounding accomplishment by Webber, wife Theresa Palmer and their breakout child actor son Bodhi.
There are many fantasy movies The Place of No Words recalls. Like Dorothy’s Yellow Brick crew in The Wizard of Oz, Bodhi’s “dream” world is populated by friends and families from real life (and even paper puppets – don’t blink or you’ll miss them!). And then there’s the whole idea of sharing fairytales a la The Princess Bride with intervals between grandfather and grandson. But films like that don’t try to do anything more than merely entertain. As formulaic romps of problem-danger-resolution, stuff in those stories just happens more or less like a carnival ride with very little hazard to the casual moviegoer.
Here, Webber takes those geek tropes, clearly as a loving fan, and uses them to deliver a far more profound meditation on life and death. At one point, the son realizes this in his own way. While enjoying a bit of bedside hide and seek with his parents, he angrily declares “I’m not playing a game, guys!” He’s realizing that life is encroaching upon his fantasy. Innocence is lost as comprehension grows. Without trying to, he devastates anybody watching. Moments like this appear throughout the feature as pure cinematic alchemy. How they captured such perfect moments time after time with such a little kid is hard to understand.
The blend of heavy situations and fun Dungeons and Dragon adventures comes off as a wonderful cinematic sweet and sour sauce. Weber’s aesthetic of mixing his own life with the on-screen tale brilliantly incorporates elements usually reserved for spectacle tentpole films, flipping them from escapist gimmickry to emotional immersion. And all the while, he never once insults the audience’s intelligence with expository speeches or other obvious markers to “explain” what’s happening. Instead, viewers are gently rocked into this double-layered narrative, dreamily coming to understand its framework – and it’s extremely rewarding.
The Place of No Words is the real deal, sincere human connection of the highest filmic order. By using nerd culture to produce a more moving and touching work than probably anything in its realm that has come before it, it transcends genre and falls squarely into greatness. A new high bar has been set for fantasy films and hopefully, will challenge others to reach for the same heights.
