Some
filmmakers apparently forget the elementary and obvious fact that their medium
originated in nonverbal narratives and flourished in silence long before the
introduction of spoken dialogue (which many critics and historians initially
regarded as a retrogressive, rather than a progressive, step), and, therefore,
film should always rely on its visual possibilities. Whatever its merits, Personal Velocity, which arrives here
decorated with prizes, aptly illustrates the problems caused by reliance on the
verbal, rather than the visual, elements in its essentially literal adaptation
of a literary work.
           Rebecca Miller, who wrote the trio
of short stories on which the film is based, also wrote and directed the movie,
which means that although she may have earned the accolades her work has
received, she also bears responsibility for its several problems. Those faults
mostly derive from a discernible retreat from the opportunity to reshape the
source material into imaginative cinema.
           Miller tells her stories in three
separate segments, linked by the common mention of a concrete event that occurs
in an almost casual, off-screen reference in the first two “chapters,” but
figures importantly in the third. The small town in upstate New York, which
appears in at least some of the scenes in all three stories, also connects them
through some vague and not entirely meaningful geographical similarity.
Finally, and most importantly, the major characters in all three parts —
though otherwise unrelated — all experience some level of desperation and,
for completely different reasons, confront a point of crisis in their
relationships and their lives.
           The first, and easily the best,
episode, “Delia,” involves a woman named Delia Shunt (Kyra Sedgwick). Once the
easiest girl in high school, she leaves her brutally abusive husband for a life
near the bottom of the socio-economic ladder. The second story, “Greta,” shows
a successful New York book editor (Parker Posey), who discovers that her
ability to trim an author’s wordy prose also enables her to edit her husband
right out of her life — as easily as cutting a redundant paragraph. The third
segment, which in a sense concludes the cycle of departures and terminations,
deals with a young woman (Fairuza Balk) coping with the twin shocks of
pregnancy and a close encounter with a sudden, inexplicable death. She seems
the one character to achieve some measure of redemption, even grace.
           The filmmakers shot the movie in
digital video format, which not only costs a great deal less than normal 35 mm
stock, but also imparts a special gritty immediacy to the image. The size and
portability of the video camera allows the operators to shoot within constricted,
small spaces — the movie constantly travels inside automobiles with the
characters, for example — and employ ambient light, which creates a sense of
authenticity and naturalism in the people and action. The director of
photography also relies heavily on extremely tight close-ups, numerous freeze
frames, and even frequent pixilation.
           However, the equipment and technique
tend to wash out the color and obscure the resolution, so that much of the
picture appears hasty, fuzzy, and amateurish. The close-ups on faces and
objects tend to blend all the images together without distinction or
significance, and the jumpy hand-held camera rapidly turns into a tiresome
distraction, shifting point of view for no particular reason, calling attention
to itself instead of conveying a sense of ordinary reality. Independent film
far too often mistakes mere technique for art, so that the hand-held camera
becomes an excuse for movement for its own sake, shooting from odd angles and
unorthodox setups simply because it’s possible, rather than meaningful or even
functional.
           Worst of all, the stories lose their
sharpness and richness through the insistent, prolix voice-over narration,
which helpfully tells us everything the characters are doing, what happened to
them in the past, what they are thinking and feeling, and so forth — while
neatly canceling out most of the visual narrative. The best story in the
trilogy, “Delia,” a tough, sad, painfully true account of an abused woman at
the end of her resources finding confidence in the assertion of her sexual
power, loses much of its point and meaning in the narrator’s nonstop babbling.
           As in the other segments, the
soundtrack interprets almost everything the camera shows, thus preventing the
actors from acting and the dialogue from achieving its full meaning. This
suggests that the writer-director may have lost faith in the possibilities of
her own work.
           Personal
Velocity constantly looks as if it should, and, perhaps, even could be
better that it is — its sense of the sad difficulties of ordinary life
certainly seems rich enough for powerful visual development. But,
unfortunately, Rebecca Miller apparently forgot she was making a movie.
Personal
Velocity, starring Kyra Sedgwick, Parker Posey, Fairuza Balk, David
Warshofsky, Leo Fitzpatrick, Tim Guinee, Patti D’Arbanville, Ben Shankman, Joel
De La Fuente, Marceline Hugot, Ben Shenkman, Brian Tarantina, Lou Taylor Pucci,
Josh Philip Weinstein, Wallace Shawn, Ron Liebman, John Ventimiglia; based on
the book Personal Velocity, by
Rebecca Miller; written and directed by Rebecca Miller. Little Theatre.
You
can hear George and his movie reviews on WXXI-FM 91.5 Fridays at 7:15 a.m.,
rerun on Saturdays at 11:15 a.m.
This article appears in Jan 29 – Feb 4, 2003.
