As someone who has watched Britt's videos for quite some time, my expectations for this film were high. And, to be honest with you, I was disappointed on first viewing.
Seafood Tester wasn't perfect, but it had a kind of magic to it. It's little flaws were made up for by it's uniquely powerful character drama and dynamic storytelling.
Unsound feels like someone took the technical skill and magic of Seafood Tester and stretched it out like Silly Putty over the one and a half hour runtime. And, as we all remember from our childhoods, Silly Putty begins to get stringy and snap at a certain point.
The cinematography isn't always the smoothest. Actors individual capabilities varied from meh to amazing. The film always looked hyper-digital but never sharp, (I wasn't sure if it was the lighting or the camera itself, but the softness of the film and sterility of the image quality overstayed its aesthetic welcome after the first hour or so.) and the fact that the film never quite left the uncanny valley between an uncomfortably accurate self-insert alternate reality and a true biopic made me uncomfortable as a viewer. Is he telling his own story, or telling a fantasized version of it? Is the lead actor Darius by necessity or choice? Both options scared me equally in different ways.
Confused as to why Britt's magum opus looked like an above-average film student's passion project rather than the sharp, tight, and colorful short films he has recently produced, I turned to a very special and very helpful resource he left along with the project - a feature length documentary on the agonizing journey that this film has taken from script to screen, spanning 5 years of constant hammering.
This altered my perception of this film wildly.
The documentary gave Britt two very, very precious tools for his audience with the release of the documentary - empathy, and context.
I'm not going to go over the documentary point by point, but the general feeling I left with was that this film was a hard-fought battle against all odds, and it took everything Britt had to get it to this point. And, once I understood why things were this way or that, the story behind this, and the purpose behind that, my complaints began to melt away. First of all, a majority of the technical issues can be attributed to the films age, and Britt's general lack of experience at the time. Despite the fact it was just made available to the public a few short weeks ago, this film began shooting in 2011, which was practically a decade ago. As an artist myself, I get frustrated at things I made a few mere months ago, so I can't imagine how much Darius has improved since, and, knowing his skill and character, how much he wishes he could go back and do things better. Britt was in a position many filmmakers find themselves trapped in early in their career - too good to waste their time on shorts, but not quite good enough to do a full-on feature film. And it is my sincere belief that Britt was correct in his decision to make this story feature length despite his lack of resources and technical ability, as the story is outstanding and deserves every hour of labor this film took to make in order to get it out to the world.
Now, I'm a filmmaker myself. I know how absolutely brutal this experience was for Britt and everyone around him. And after watching the documentary, I can't help but feel like young Darius was a divine but humble prophet, burdened with a task far greater than himself but still making the decision to push through and make it a reality. Through this divine quest, his storytelling became the vessel for one of the finest expressions of mental illness (and living with it) to hit the silver screen.
