The Votive Pit

This is an inept film, but a potentially intriguing project depending on what you are prepared to allow.

The "theme" of the story is adult tolerance for adolescent inadequacies. That's the only way you can get some value out of it: by similar allowance. Normally I wouldn't say it would be worthwhile except for an added dimension in this case:

The thing is written and the performance is held together by a man for his son, at least I think it is his son. The son takes the project as a play and delivers it to us as a film. So the more inadequate it is as a film compared to the writing, the more it makes its point.

This is the sort of thing I specialize in, art that is what it expresses. I call this folding.

The situation is simple enough: a collection of teachers in a high school. Students largely unseen as if they were crowding the scenes but insignificant. Among these teachers is the theatrically named "Shamrock" McShane as "the bald guy." He's the writer of the thing, our surrogate witness and the holder of the eye that manages the mix of angst, frustration and mystic touch we see. There are some other teachers as well, but they are designed as blatherers, alternately in proud teaching stance, complaining crawl or emotional bafflement.

A web search reveals that all these actors have some professional standing, and you can sense that they could be directed to be effective. None of them seem to know that film acting is fundamentally different, that motion matters. That spatial anchors exist. The direction seems to be simply a matter of placing the camcorder. You learn early in the game (but by research, not through the film itself) that the only student you see is the kid making the film.

So its a strange thing. An adolescent, simplistic, inadequate, callow presentation of his dad's structured drama about the frustrations of pulling kids out of that very same state. There's some business about violence associated with the disconnect. I didn't see the tendons of how it all was supposed to be connected, and this will frustrate the viewer, especially if that viewer knows "Brick" which has much the same sense of distance from the classroom and similar tethers.

As with several films I report on, this is simply a poorly made, thin film that would otherwise be worthless. But if you can get past the poor film-making, you might see some messy but earnest family business, more of a documentary, about father and son. And that makes it sometimes resonate. It did with me.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.