The Vast of Night (Andrew Patterson, 2019)
SPOILERS (but not really if you've seen damn near every mainstream film of the past 100 years)
Imagine a narrative version of part 8 of Twin Peaks: Season 3 and you're in the ballpark of what Andrew Patterson (along with screenwriters James Montague and Craig W. Sanger) have achieved with The Vast of Night. The story centers around a radio station in fictional Cayuga, New Mexico in the 1950s and it starts off with refreshing ambiguity. Fay Crocker (Sierra McCormick) is a nerdy but tough-minded teenager who tags along with the slightly older Everett (Jake Horowitz), a night-shift DJ, to fix an audio problem at the high school gymnasium during a basketball game. Their interaction during this opening scene and their trek back to their respective jobs (Fay works the town's switchboard) bespeaks mutual respect. Fay seeks Everett's expertise and Everett makes sure not to condescend. He even pushes her to go to college. And all throughout, I kept repeating to myself "Please don't heterosexualize this relationship! Please don't heterosexualize this relationship! Please don't heterosexualize this relationship!"
Fay picks up some odd space noise on one of her lines and patches it over to Everett who broadcasts it over the air in the hopes that one of his twelve listeners will be able to identify the sound. And while soon a dying black military man, Billy (Bruce Davis), and an old woman who gave birth out of wedlock, Mabel Blanche (Gail Cronauer), contact Fay and Everett to inform them that the sound is coming from aliens in the vast of night, you realize that the real story is back down here in small-town America. Fay, Everett, Billy, and Mabel Blanche are all misfits connecting with one another under cover of the fugitive night while almost the entire town is at the high school basketball game. Billy and Mabel Blanche are in their last chapters but there is a future for Fay and Everett far from Cuyoga. The aliens merely brings that reality to the fore. In this respect, the most redolent moment occurs when Mabel Blanche says to Everett, "I listen to your broadcast every night. I think you're very good and I hope you can get far away from here," to which Everett responds with a matter-of-fact "Thank you."
But then the ending...which might irk some viewers with its ambiguity with respect to the aliens but is really quite conventional. About ten minutes before the end comes the suggestion that there may be some attraction between Fay and Everett (Fay's friend Gretchen smiles at Fay's mention of Everett and Fay, embarrassed, tells her to stop, an exchange included in the trailer). And the end seals the convention as the aliens beam up not just Fay and Everett together but Fay's baby cousin Ethel as well. Whether this means to signal the destruction of the heterosexual nuclear family or, more likely, its centrality to rebirth, the iconography remains the same. I do too want narrative cinema; I just want it to Tell. Different. Stories.
Still, this is a remarkable, highly recommended work which uses its virtuosity to generate narrative tension rather than show off. Just as noteworthy as the soon-to-be-famous tracking shot are the long takes that are quite literally breathtaking; you honestly forget to take a breath for considerable stretches of time. And now I hear that, unsurprisingly, Patterson has a development deal with Bezos' bottomless coffers. I eagerly await his Southland Tales.
Grade: A-minus
Imagine a narrative version of part 8 of Twin Peaks: Season 3 and you're in the ballpark of what Andrew Patterson (along with screenwriters James Montague and Craig W. Sanger) have achieved with The Vast of Night. The story centers around a radio station in fictional Cayuga, New Mexico in the 1950s and it starts off with refreshing ambiguity. Fay Crocker (Sierra McCormick) is a nerdy but tough-minded teenager who tags along with the slightly older Everett (Jake Horowitz), a night-shift DJ, to fix an audio problem at the high school gymnasium during a basketball game. Their interaction during this opening scene and their trek back to their respective jobs (Fay works the town's switchboard) bespeaks mutual respect. Fay seeks Everett's expertise and Everett makes sure not to condescend. He even pushes her to go to college. And all throughout, I kept repeating to myself "Please don't heterosexualize this relationship! Please don't heterosexualize this relationship! Please don't heterosexualize this relationship!"
Fay picks up some odd space noise on one of her lines and patches it over to Everett who broadcasts it over the air in the hopes that one of his twelve listeners will be able to identify the sound. And while soon a dying black military man, Billy (Bruce Davis), and an old woman who gave birth out of wedlock, Mabel Blanche (Gail Cronauer), contact Fay and Everett to inform them that the sound is coming from aliens in the vast of night, you realize that the real story is back down here in small-town America. Fay, Everett, Billy, and Mabel Blanche are all misfits connecting with one another under cover of the fugitive night while almost the entire town is at the high school basketball game. Billy and Mabel Blanche are in their last chapters but there is a future for Fay and Everett far from Cuyoga. The aliens merely brings that reality to the fore. In this respect, the most redolent moment occurs when Mabel Blanche says to Everett, "I listen to your broadcast every night. I think you're very good and I hope you can get far away from here," to which Everett responds with a matter-of-fact "Thank you."
But then the ending...which might irk some viewers with its ambiguity with respect to the aliens but is really quite conventional. About ten minutes before the end comes the suggestion that there may be some attraction between Fay and Everett (Fay's friend Gretchen smiles at Fay's mention of Everett and Fay, embarrassed, tells her to stop, an exchange included in the trailer). And the end seals the convention as the aliens beam up not just Fay and Everett together but Fay's baby cousin Ethel as well. Whether this means to signal the destruction of the heterosexual nuclear family or, more likely, its centrality to rebirth, the iconography remains the same. I do too want narrative cinema; I just want it to Tell. Different. Stories.
Still, this is a remarkable, highly recommended work which uses its virtuosity to generate narrative tension rather than show off. Just as noteworthy as the soon-to-be-famous tracking shot are the long takes that are quite literally breathtaking; you honestly forget to take a breath for considerable stretches of time. And now I hear that, unsurprisingly, Patterson has a development deal with Bezos' bottomless coffers. I eagerly await his Southland Tales.
Grade: A-minus
posted by Kevin John at 9:53 AM
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