The Vast of Night - 2019
My best friend hated The Vast of Night. After we had both finished viewing it, a verbal sparring match ensued. I pressed him on what he didn't like, laying out all the things I loved in the process (which I'll do here momentarily). His response was illuminating. I'm paraphrasing here (He is a SOLID amateur film critic in his own right): "NOTHING HAPPENS! People just talk and talk and the story goes nowhere! There is no forward momentum. There are no emotional stakes. I don't care about any of these characters..." and so on and so forth.
Now, I begin with these thoughts, because on further reflection I completely get them. I understand them entirely, but I STILL emphatically disagree. I find the picture to be a remarkable achievement of mood and pastiche on a shoestring budget, a directorial debut worth its weight in gold. But I think that there will be little middle ground in the experience of this picture. You'll likely either land in his camp or mine.
Since I am me (and try not to let the profundity of that Cartesian paraphrase bowl you over), let me take a swing at convincing you of the film's many merits. Or, rather, to just point you to the work that Andrew Patterson did himself. It's true that not all that much happens in The Vast of Night. The story is nothing singular, or distinctly special. But the narrative and especially visual storyTELLING, now that is entirely sui generis.
Well, I suppose not even that is entirely correct. This film has historical antecedents. They just happen to be throwback sci fi yarns of the 1950's. And Patterson lets us know it. He uses old tape recorders, 50's style garb, phone switchboards with the multi-wired interface, and other production design details which ground us in the time. He also keeps flashing up an antique boob tube with the film's happenings running in frame before zooming back into the action. The vintage aesthetics will blow you away in this one if you let them.
But, Patterson marries the distant past to the most cutting edge so effortlessly. The film essentially starts with a 20 minute oner between the two leading actors. Though there may be a few cuts here and there, Patterson weaves it together seamlessly, as these two wander in and out of the town gymnasium hosting the basketball game which has attracted seemingly the entire village, between a sea of cars in the parking lot, down backstreets on their way home, and to the town radio station where the leading male plies his trade. Then again, when Billy's character begins to add suspense to the story in relating his military take on an unknown ship, we get a sweeping long take (a drone maybe?) which flies across fields, into the gym, around it, back out to the radio station and around the entire circumference of the town. The long takes. The use of black screen with voice over. It's all just jaw-dropping visual chops.
Now, I can already hear the haters waiting in the wings. Awesome, Nick. Great visual flair. But what about the story? It goes nowhere! But, does it? See, sometimes the old bifurcation of style and substance does not hold. In rare instances, where the style grounds the story, creates tension and atmosphere and the like, the dichotomy gets flipped on its head - Style becomes substance. That is entirely the case here in my mind. Furthermore, I don't believe that any fans of The Twilight Zone, which this is HEAVILY copping from and paying homage to, would see this as entirely bereft of narrative.
The story simply belongs to a time gone by, when fear dwelt in American hearts in various forms. When pressing questions were: Are there UFO's in the sky, or Soviet aircraft coming to wipe us out? Not all that much actually happens, but it's the trepidation of what COULD that keeps the tension palpable. Perhaps I'm speaking out of turn, but I'd say that comes about as close to capturing the spirit of the Cold War as anything else I could muster. It's suspense felt rather than seen. Far more Close Encounters-era Spielberg apprehension than Cloverfieldbloodletting. Don't miss the radio call sign WOTW (Read: War of the Worlds) either. I was never less than enthralled.
It's true, I didn't care all that much about the characters. The cocky radio DJ with that vocal affectation for the airwaves seemed as much the perfect victim for an alien abduction as a lead who shouldered half the weight of the picture. I was not overly invested in him, but I oddly was interested in what was going to happen to them. Where the tale was headed. And at a tight 85 minutes, I was able to wade through the dialogue-heavy atmospherics to reach the destination, which I would argue is the most poignant part of the whole affair. Put another way - What a finale!
With The Vast of Night, Andrew Patterson has made a film that is not for everyone. But maybe it's that kind of edge of a razor storytelling which will so endear him to genre fans going forward. At the very least, he's made one heck of an ode to sci fi films of years past. With it, we have one large introduction to the world - a promising young filmmaker from whom many can't wait to see what comes next.
FOF Rating - 4 out of 5
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