After months of watching their amazing vidcast, I finally saw the actual movie. Wonderful film. I don't want to use the term unflinching, because that isn't quite right. It is full of flinching. It makes you, the viewer, cringe in the best possible way. Capturing that struggle of finding that "other," how language doesn't come close to conveying your true thoughts, how you don't even know your own true thoughts, how art can seem so distant and unachievable but yet is the only way to speak.
To paraphrase: "I am going to say something... and I am going to film it."
For such a simple film, it work so beautifully on so many levels. Especially on the issue of art... and truth. Which makes the film seem mindboggingly pretentious, which it is not. It is slyly aware of it's place, yet manages to exceed that place. In spirit it reminded me of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Combine it with their vidcasts and you have a piece of meta (yes, I hate that term too) that is excruciating true. And for all it's flinch worth cringy excruciating pain, it never drops to melodrama.
Yes, I liked Four Eyed Monsters.
Afterwards, I walked home and thought of just going to sleep. But the urge to talk to the film makers overtook me, and I headed off to Soda Bar to see if they were there. They were. Let me say that Susan Bruice and Arin Crumley are just plain nice. Friendly, nice, open folks. Rambling conversations about truth, autobiography, the future of the internet, open source, art, financing, the future of film distribution, etc. These are amazingly real people.
So, go to their website. Watch the vidcast. Fill out a request for a screening in your neck of the woods.
Also, a note on the generosity of people: I have been frozen by the world, by pain, by this city. Recently, tonight in particular, I was reminded about how good people can be. It saddens me GREATLY that I am unable to either receive or return this. I hope it is temporary. But the fact is that I have destroyed so much good, have rejected it. If I was whole, if I was able to process the good that is passed towards me... Wow. I want to, and I am trying to, but I haven't yet. I pains me and to watch it pain others... Oh, hell. I can feel love, feel it embrace me, desperate to comfort me, yet I am still unable to accept it.
Sigh.
