down the line
by Douglas Messerli
Nathan Brunskill (screenwriter and
director) Connected / 2008 [8 minutes]
Nathan Brunskill’s film consists of
8 minutes of rather predictable and narratively unconvincing images of a
relationship between a young subway rider, Allen (Dustin Varpness), who begins
his New York City subway voyage alone, sadly recalling his evidently recent
affair with another subway rider Chris (Michael Kirby). We don’t quite know
what happened between the two, but in this wordless movie we see scenes of
Allen now in an empty bed formerly shared with Chris in an apartment which the
two convorted like beginning lovers and, at moments, argued.
And we are even more confused by the sudden reappearance of Chris at a
later stop where Allen has been peering out with hopes of encountering is
friend again. Is the pleasant recounter merely a flashback to their earlier
meetings or have they met up again, only to split once more as Chris changes to
a different line?
To a discombobulated musical score, we see more of their joyful
interchanges that Allen calls up and sense his devout sadness over the ending
of the affair.
How these two originally met up—we
imagine it was on the subway—how long they were together, and why they are now
going their different ways on the subway system remains a mystery.
The only hope, so the film’s IMDb blurb
with that perhaps “their paths may once again intersect down the line”
This is definitely the work of an
amateur student filmmaker. Surely given the banal imagery and stereotypical
scenes we’ve seen so far, we hope that the character’s paths will never cross
again. But since I’ve read that Brunskill is attempting to raise money for a
feature version of the film, perhaps we will have more explained and grow to
better like these two endless voyagers.
Los Angeles, August 29, 2022 | Reprinted from World Cinema Review (August 2022).
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