Travis Bryant | Unravel / 2020

packing up his duffel

by Douglas Messerli

 

Travis Bryant (screenwriter and director) Unravel / 2020 [6 minutes]

 

One might almost describe Travis Bryant’s short film Unravel as a music video for Los Leo’s sad catchy song, “Take Sight.” The narrative of the film, otherwise, is a basic freshman 01 version of “breaking up is hard to do,” as the images, without hardly any dialogue, take us through those always pleasant times of gay love. You know, running out to the ocean from the beach, pushing one another fully clothed into the swimming pool, hugging each other just as you are about to get into the shower, and dozens of other sunset-time hugs as the two travel through time and space

     Here also one of the figures (presumably Travis Bryant) packs up the clothes of the other (Murat Simu Kilac) who is apparently determined to leave Travis. Yes they’ve had a fight, one even leaving the car. But we are given only a few clues of why they may be breaking up, or why the

film’s presumed “unraveling” of the relationship is taking the place.

      I suspect the fact that Kilac shows up at the door at the end in Army fatigues might be the most important piece of evidence. Has he gone off and joined the military without consulting his lover? We’re never told. In fact, we’re not told anything which is what makes this little sentimental journey through their former love life so frustrating.

     Surely there must have been more than a single fight in the car to justify all this outburst of nostalgia and rerun through their picture-perfect relationship.

      Yes, Kilac returns, and it’s clear that they still love one another. But we have the sense that he hasn’t come back to unpack that box but just to stall for a short while. After all, the military calls.

And we fear that after that experience it may make be difficult for him again to take sight of anything but through a gun, a phenomenon the so many returning soldiers encounter. In nothing else, their sunset hugs will take on a very different meaning.

      And if his actor is just wearing a military-like shirt without any intentions of joining up, either he has returned with further battles on his mind or the director clearly isn’t taking careful sight of the film he’s created and the images he’s projected upon the screen—the latter certainly a possibility given all the cliches Bryant has allowed to slip by without any questioning.

 

Los Angeles, September 12, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (September 2024).