Last Few Viewings of 2021 (part one)

North by Current (Angelo Madsen Minax, 2021)

Minax's deeply humane documentary about a family tragedy might productively be studied against one of my least favorite films, Dear Zachary. While the earlier film is told from the standpoint of a defiant outsider, who believes that behind every crime there is an absolute truth and an irredeemable culprit, North by Current is a more melancholy affair. The elements of Minax's life story that could position him outside his family as a ruthless observer -- he is transgender, an ex-Mormon, and an urban intellectual -- actually serve to pull him closer. He craves acceptance, not tolerance, even as he recognizes this family unit as being marred by violence and dysfunction.

Although North by Current is primarily an inquiry into the death of Minax's two-year-old niece Kalla, it is also a heartbreaking portrait of repressed emotion and forestalled mourning. Although the film makes clear that the authorities' desire to punish a suspect for the child's death is cruel and vindictive, it also refuses to dispel the possibility that he is actually to blame. This will undoubtedly frustrate some, but North by Current is essentially about mourning as a wound you learn to live with, one that cannot be resolved by the promise of justice.

FIRST TIME [The Time for All but Sunset - VIOLET] (Nicolaas Schmidt, 2021)

One of the few films this year that can be said to have formulated its own unique cinematic language, FIRST TIME is characterized by both icy precision and romantic, openhearted warmth. Although it's a facile comparison, I feel it may be worth making. Schmidt's medium-length para-narrative is like a structuralist rethink of a Linklater Before film, with two young men having a real-time encounter that seems predicated on unabated want. However, part of the intellectual charge of FIRST TIME is the fact that only the viewer can provide this possible subtext. Schmidt calls forth certain narrative expectations but doesn't give an inch in the way of outright suggestion.

Music is a driving force in this film, and from what I've read, Schmidt seems to be focused on a particular kind of music-video logic, making a series of EDM-esque tunes the bedrock of his practice. Like those songs, FIRST TIME is repetitive and avoids the peaks and valleys of more typical formal structures. And so we first see a field of pure color, followed by still medium-long shots of various U-Bahn stations in Hamburg. Then the concluding long take, nearly thirty minutes in total, whose eventual loop back to the station of origin underlines the emotional non-journey we've just experienced. The words of the title, "first time," suggests a tryst that will initiate someone into their sexual life. But here, Schmidt conflates that connotation with an objective fact -- a full iteration of the loop, maybe the first of many. In this respect, the film suggests that every potential erotic encounter is a trip back to the beginning, a return to somewhere we never really left.