Very_little_time (2005)
In the old days they used to call
them "Backyarders" or "Backyard Epics," films made
on little to no budget, usually by a group of friends,
often filmed with 8mm or 16mm cameras and utilizing
dubbed sound. A few of these became popular but overall
most of these are forgotten Z-grade films that don't
even have a small cult following anymore.
The video revolution, of course,
made such epics even cheaper and easier to create
and within very little time in the 90's, film festivals
began to be inundated with these type of films submissions.
Working as a screener for a couple Austin film festivals
over the years, I've seen quite a few of these "homemade"
video movies and most of them are awful. Occasionally,
if you're lucky, you run across one now and then that
blows you away. "Living in Missouri" was one. So was
"Blue Citrus Hearts."
A pair of brothers named Tim and
Todd Wynn sent me a copy of their backyard video epic
(on DVD - which is also now also becoming commonplace
in film festival submissions) called "Very_little_time."
The title has the underscores in it because it represents
the screen name of a character who communicates on
computer in the film.
To be sure, "Very_little_time" has
a lot of problems. It's basically a short film story
expanded to around 80 minutes and this leaves the
film seeming threadbare and elongated. Due to the
lack of material this plot can evoke, the pacing is
so slow as to be irritating and this makes the film
nearly unwatchable. What there is of a plot here is
fairly common and becomes dubious in the brothers'
hands. The subject here is time travel, and as we
learned with last year's arthouse fave "Primer," that
topic becomes very confusing and enigmatical quite
quickly. While "Very_little_time" deals with it much
more effectively than "Primer," that really isn't
saying much. "Primer" was so elliptical and puzzling
as to become not only unclear but downright opaque.
At least we can somewhat follow the Wynn Brothers'
plot here. That is, if we can stay awake.
Other problems with the film include
the brother who acts in the film (is it Tim or Todd?
I can't remember) deciding to use a Australian accent.
It's awful. It sounds forced and phony from the first
and this makes relying on anything that happens in
this quite unbelievable plot even more demanding on
the audience. The brothers are from the Great American
Northwest, so the surroundings (i.e. their backyard)
easily double for Australia, but this doesn't make
the film work any better as supposedly happening in
Australia because the accent is so bad to begin with.
The film has one character (albeit with several dopplegangers),
so the fake Australian accent gets overused and irritating
quickly. At it's worst, it seems like thespian showboating,
at best, a novel idea that doesn't work.
The character the brothers create
for the film is an interesting one and a rather amusing
one for their film's plot. Since the film is about
a character who bounces back in time over and over
in a continuous loop (ala "Groundhog Day" and numerous
other films), the brothers make the character one
who experiences repetition in his daily life: A product
tester We watch him test several items over and over
early in the film (doubling and redoubling the film's
boredom) and this initially makes for an interesting
character study. But the brothers nearly ruin this
device by having the character tie tags to all of
the items he tests showing how many times he is supposed
to test them per day, as if this is something the
character has done to help him in doing this job.
This seems a highly suspicious way for a home-bound
product tester to work. I didn't buy it. It seemed
more like it was supposed to be a "cool cinematic
device" rather than something that would reflect the
reality of the character. (There are several "props"
in the film that were obviously made with MS- Word
on a computer, little more than black text on white
paper, that looked totally wrong for the film. These
"props" simply made the film look even cheaper - not
cooler.)
Another interesting thing about
the film's character, which really isn't played as
well as it could be, is that the film has one character
but he has several "doubles" and this effect is interesting
especially when it's used in a film made by two brothers
who, we assume, may be twins. Is this really only
one of them acting in the film? (Only one is credited
as "Starring" in the film in the opening credits which
tries to make fun of the fact that this film was made
by the brothers by listing their names over and over
in numerous different way. It's a tired joke and it
doesn't work here). Are they identical twins fooling
us? Or even better: Is this really one guy who has
created a "false" twin brother to make the film seem
more interesting. That would be totally rocking. I
haven't listened to the DVD commentary precisely because
I don't really want to know the truth. But sadly this
interesting "behind the scenes" aspect to the film
does make the finished product that much more appealing.
There's no scenes with two or more people who look
alike here.
The cinematics here are rather dull
and lifeless, since the film has little to offer in
plot, but that really isn't surprising since this
was obviously shot on a consumer grade camera. That
is to say, there is nothing wrong or embarrassing
about the way the film looks. It certainly looks decent.
Technically the sound is good as well. It is only
story and plot and acting that are lacking here.
"Very_little_time" leads one to
believe that the Wynn brothers will continue to make
films in this manner and may eventually even make
one worth watching. There's obviously some talent
here. They just need to stop trying to be so clever
and work harder to concentrate on story and pacing.
And for God's sake, please don't
use a fake accent.
Note:
The filmmaker's website is http://www.toddandtim.com
Viewed in Austin in May 2005 on
a DVD provided by the filmmakers.
