Now, with that said, the ending is actually fairly creative and original, with a unique choice that the mother comes to which has been subtly foreshadowed throughout the film. Unfortunately, the ending is at a counter-purpose to the rest of the film’s overall concept. If the rest of the film is pro-peace and anti-war, then the ending argues that you should be as violent in removing people’s right to choose their destinies as any war is. No festival would ever show this sort of film if that rationale was taken to something like the Pro-Choice/Pro-Life debate, but there are indeed festival runners that are tired enough of the current war for this totalitarian message to have traction.
For future movies, I would suggest Mr. Maurino try to explore things that he’s not quite so passionate about so that he might take a more balanced level of presentation. This will encourage writing on both sides of an issue and a deeper exploration of the characters and what drives them.
Visual Look
The overall visual look of this film is quite good, with very nice shot layouts and decent lighting for much of the film. The HVX200 combined with the M2 35mm lens adapter allowed the use of shallow depth of field, which was quite nice, but it also introduced additional problems. Because the HVX200 is already a light hog and the M2 knocks down the HVX200’s light sensitivity a couple f-stops in addition, this combination is very hard to light brightly enough. As such, there were a number of scenes, like an early living room scene, where there was a fair amount of digital grain due to the fact that things weren’t lit quite brightly enough. (Ironically, one way to get around this problem if more powerful lighting can’t be afforded is to switch to the SD DVX100B with the M2, because the DVX100 is so much more sensitive to light that it’s easier to light it with the M2’s light issues.)
The overall editing of the film was quite good, with an especially nice sequence of CUs toward the end where Casey is beating on a djembe drum, while his mother destroys all the things that remind her of him.
In the area of editing, to showcase the mother’s memories of her little boy which tie her fear for him, the director uses Super 8 film for flashbacks of the past. This is a good idea, but the first few flashbacks come too quickly back to back, causing them to transition awkwardly into the footage. Flashbacks often need moments of introspection, so having just one or two flashbacks that last a little longer would be a better choice than three faster flashbacks.
Now, there is one other editing issue that occurs in this movie. We first see this issue in a phone call sequence in which the mother is calling friends to try and get them to talk to her son to keep him from going to war. The director chose to use jump cuts (cutting between shots at the same or similar angle and focus depth) to show the transition of time as she made the calls. Unfortunately, the camera that this was shot through was panning back and forth, which makes the jump cuts completely jolt the viewer and appears very obviously wrong. In order for jump cuts to work as a time transition, the camera that is used must be unmoving. Later in the film, when Casey is talking to his friends, more of these problematic jump cuts were used again. My recommendation would be to remove all the jump cut edits and let the sequences play out or to simply use fewer sequences with dip-to-black dissolves between them to show the passage of time.
