This is a quiet movie. It's a simple story about a writer who cannot write his story coming back to his home town to get started but instead he gets involved in a friendship with a weird older man whose life externally represents perhaps the internal state of the writer - it's a museum of unfinished ideas, outdated equipment and "useless" people.
There are no extraordinary circumstances or any big movements in the plot. It's a movie about internal changes. Being stuck in their lives which are not developing much, the principal personages get to help each other to transform, stop leaving in dreams and achieve something or at least get a change and give their lives the desired and long-awaited new direction.
On the film-making side I can think of only one weakness which could also be considered as a feature - we do not get much of characters description or inner world insights. It's very narrative on the side of thoughts and events and we have to guess about their true feelings which are rather hidden but still you can see them, and this is what makes your own mind work, trying to figure them out, to understand the impressions made by those people, and it's not empty underneath - the actors definitely hold well some inner states proper to their characters. It's close to the real life where you mostly never know someone well enough to understand them completely, and this turns us around and puts in front of our own feelings and choices.
What's most important for me is that this simple almost flat story leaves you pondering afterwards, about your own life, about your own dreams and achievements, are there any or are we caught up in the routine and pleasures, leaving at 100% or only dreaming about it, could we do more and move somewhere we'd rather like to be than just leaving feed ourselves and others the tales like "I'll do this one day"- not moving one finger to make this actually happen, or "I'm fine where I am" because it's easier to go by the habits than to actually make a change? At least that's the impression it left me with and it was very timely for me, which adds to my appreciation of this far-from-famous movie. I definitely recommend it to anyone who likes the movies meant for the heart but those who need events and actions should stay away.
