Awkward.

There's something difficult in offering an honest evaluation of a friend's work. I find myself constantly trying to balance the critical with the encouraging, finding the right blend of honesty and consideration. Usually these situations arise in the early stage of a friend's work: a couple of paragraphs from a short story, the first few pages of a script, a rough concept for a painting, a short film for a class.

That's not the case with this one. For the first time, I'm wrestling with a friend's feature film. His name is Omar Naim and the film is The Final Cut. It's the real deal: ninety minutes, multi-million dollar budget, movie stars, amazing crew. I want to like it, becuase I love the backstory. I mean, how many twenty-five year olds get whisked from their shitty industry jobs and get a budget and backing and a place at the Berlin Film Festival? Yeah, not too many.

The blunt truth is: it's an average movie and I'd probably be a whole lot less forgiving if Omar wasn't involved. On the positive side, the film looks really great despite its modest budget. Tak Fujimoto is an ace cinematographer and James Chinlund's production design is a pleasant homage to David Cronenberg's organic/futuristic visions. On top of it all, Omar's visual sense doesn't fail him; he loads the film up with camera trickery that doesn't seem superfluous, just smart and confident.

I think the film's stumbling point is a certain hesitance in the script and an unfortunate release date. That is, Omar's script--the futuristic story of a "cutter" who takes memory-storing microchips out of the deceased and edits the years and years of memories into hour-long films for funerals, keepsakes, etc.--doesn't allow itself to be pigeonholed (which is fine), but it doesn't really rise to the challenge of any of its various influences. It doesn't have enough depth to be a real character study, not enough edge to be a media satire, too few action scenes to a thriller, and on and on. As for its unfortunate release, I mean that it comes just a few months after Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind tackled a similar subject (the meaning and importance of memories, the ethical implications of deleting memories, how the past can play tricks on us, etc.) with much more scope.

So that's that. I wish I could say it's one of the best things I've seen in ages, but I can't. I can say that I'm happy for him and proud and excited to see where the kid goes next.