Everything Strange and New, directed by Frazer Bradshaw (USA, 2009) 83 min.

Review by Michael Ricciardi

This film will probably bore many film goers—both in the overall look of the film (hazy, washed- out, nearly monochromatic colors) and its content (the boring familiarity of married life with young kids, and the series of mundane events that sum up these typical lives). I use the term content, as opposed to story because what unfolds in the film is not clearly a plot (none that we can discern) but a reflective narration around a central concept. And, for what it is, and for the way it was accomplished, the concept is interesting, and worthwhile. There is also an oblique message here--but one that the viewer will have to sit out the 83 minutes to understand fully.

The film has a certain non-linearity to it, and so we are taken off guard when we suddenly understand a scene only much later in the film. Consequently, there is a question (and a surprising answer) herein that we only arrive at, or begin to contemplate, as a particular secondary thread winds up. 

Wayne (played almost self-consciously, emotionlessly by Jerry McDaniel) is a 40 something, working class guy with a wife and two boys. His life is ordinary in most ways (he has a less than satisfying job, sex life, and a mortgage that’s more than his house is worth). He seems to be sleep-walking through life as we hear his voice also narrating over the long, long, lingering shots of his uneventful, unsurprising existence.

After work, Wayne hangs out with his two friends and they talk about their kids,

their wives, their lives...and even their doubts about their lives, what they value, are willing to trade excitement and fun and good sex for....all is done in a rather detached way (by Wayne above all)....they seem to be resigned to the tradeoffs, to the mundane realities that they find themselves in.

At some point, we see him wearing a simple (and not too inspired) clown face, and drab/hobo like costume, as he goes about his daily business. But then he shows up at his kids’ birthday party in clown getup. And we dismiss it....until we see him later in the same get-up, riding a bus or paying for beer...This would seem to be some alternate reality for him, or, perhaps, how he envisions himself in the world. But this is not clearly indicated.

But slowly, subtly, the insidious cracks of change come through the hazy veneer of these peoples’ lives. All is not what it seems....One friend divorces, another shoots drugs...thing are unraveling beneath the surface of these once stable relations. But the film takes its time getting there, for it wants to hypnotize you first, or maybe brainwash you a bit...so that you won’t see it coming, and won’t fully understand (if ever) what has happened, or maybe hasn’t happened in reality. The integration of Wayne’s alternate life (being a birthday party clown), with his “real” life as a carpenter, is pretty tight, and the line between them is as hazy as the film.

There is also a rather minimalist sound track, or “soundscape”, in the film, which occasionally punctuates the long camera shots down unidentified urban streets, or looking out bus windows as our main character transits home. It is reminiscent of Irish “river dance” music—if such music were played by people on psychedelics, or perhaps, in hell. It is noticeably lively, if repetitive (it never develops through the film), and stands in queer contrast to the look, tone, and pacing of the film itself.

Writer/director and cinematographer Frazier Bradshaw has constructed a film in which the banality and facelessness of human wants and needs plays out slowly and steadily— in both visual and narrative form ...until we begin to see the perennial passions and tragedies of Life emerge...ever-lurking just beneath the dull surfaces of our self-chosen lives.

When he returns home at last, hearing his wife and kids voices exactly as he did (or we saw) twice before, he turns back towards the door, pausing, as if to walk out of this life (as we saw him do earlier)...and we are left to reconstruct what we have just seen...And so, there is a payoff, of sorts, but it’s there only if we want to look past the dullness and haze that has us, like the nameless urban ennui of the main character, in its trance.