Still Life

Still Life was a 2013 drama that garnered a lot of favorable attention at the various film festivals in which it was showcased at, including the 70^th Venice Film Festival, the Reykjavik International Film Festival, the Abu Dhabi Film Festival, and the 2014 Edinburgh International Film Festival. Telling the story of a lonely man dedicating his life to providing funerals for recently deceased individuals who have no one to (or even will) mourn for them, it contains several aspects that would be favorable to a crowd of cinema-lovers, yet arguably wouldn’t fair well in the casual space with general audiences because as a whole, the film honestly has very little to offer. John May (played by Eddie Marsan) has a job that asks him to locate the next of kin of those who have passed away. Discovering that most of these cases either find no living relatives, or those that are still alive have no interest in preparing a funeral, he has taken it upon himself to organise the funerals for them as one last act of kindness. Upon hearing that he is going to be let go from a job he’s had for over twenty years, he fully dedicates himself to his last job, that being trying to find any living relatives of a one William Stoke. After finding a scrap book of what appears to be images of a daughter, John sets out on a journey to try and find anyone connected to this man’s life in hopes that they will be there for his funeral, not realizing that this excursion (and even this entire job he’s been so dedicated to) may be acting as a way of covering up his own feels of disparity. Still Life is a competently put together film, has a good heart at the centre of its idea, features some solid supporting performances, and carries a decent idea which with more time could’ve been more fruitful, but stands as a mostly innocuous experience with a limp main character, dull direction, and a woefully underwritten script.

The tragic thing about this situation is that there is something that could be done with this idea. While the premise is definitely on the morose side and is still a little limiting on just a base level, the idea of a man with no purpose in life filling that void by gifting those that have passed on one final chance to have those they connected with in life commemorate it, has the workings to be thought-provoking, bittersweet and even a little contemplative for one-self. However, this film is not taken in a direction that allows for a lot of thought or even that much sympathy, but instead paints a very clear and tragically simplistic portrayal of a complex idea and relies on a simple ‘’wrong versus right’’ mentality that sucks any sense of depth out of this idea. There are a lot of factors that would go into why someone would or wouldn’t want to show up to someone’s funeral; how attached were they to this person, has the passage of time altered how much that relationship meant, does the act of someone dying absolve them of any sins they inflicted on someone when they were alive, etc. Given how many people have tragically gone through this very situation and with history being riff with horrific erasures, its important to understand and at least try to comprehend this issue, but the film is so unmoving and basic with its delivery that there’s no chance to explore this in a meaningful way. Its slow-moving, stale, and dry in its delivery, features characters that rather exists as molds for the message rather than feel like existing people, and the script written by director Uberto Pasolini limits this premise to its barest essentials and never reaches beyond that, resulting in a screenplay that feels weak, predictable, and ironically driven by basic emotions without dissecting any of those actual feelings. From a directing standpoint, Pasolini does a decent enough job from a technical perspective (with this being only his second directorial film after the 2008 Italian-Sri Lankan comedy, Machan) as its presented in a clean fashion, has inklings of visual storytelling that would be effective if done more creatively, and at its centre does understand the importance of this kind of concept, yet the movie is very dully put together as well, not elevating the material any stronger than it could’ve been and leaving it as a small-scale, low-budgeted, very un-cinematic picture.

For a story all about blind empathy, you need the cast to be characters you actively care about in order to understand why the audience should feel the same kind of sympathy, yet the movie is so laser-focused on just saying these people deserve sympathy rather than actually giving a reason as to why they should get any, that it results in a good chunk of them being incredibly bland and uninteresting, which especially rings true for the main character. Being the only real character in the movie as the rest only truly act as support, the character of John May is so boringly written and lacking any element of personality trait, backstory or even motivation that he feels like a manipulative tool that only exists for people to feel bad for without giving any reasoning as to why they should feel that way. The acting by Eddie Marsan is not that much better, doing very little in the realms of expressing any form of character or even expression in general to provide anything that could result in people getting attached to him. The ability to connect with characters is by identifying their wants and desires, seeing how that forms them as a living being, and connecting with them as they go through their journey, and despite being a movie that seems on the surface to be all about the nature of humanity and how everyone deserves to be remembered, its not giving its lead any traits that would make him memorable. Even if that was the purpose (like he has no identity because his entire life is solely based around his soulless job), it doesn’t feel intentional in that regard or even fulfilling especially when it reaches the ending and expects some grand emotional wave to hit the audience when it really doesn’t. It’s just an all-around failure of a character that exists more as a visual idea rather than an actual person, and for a story that is all about remembering people, this character is not worth remembering in the slightest. While the rest of the characters are not that much different, the acting is overall much better and do feel like real people through how they talk and even with how they interact with other people. People like Joanne Froggatt, Andrew Buchan, Neil D’Souza, Paul Anderson, Tim Potter, and Ciaran McIntyre do well with the small parts that they have, and even though they still just feel like chess pieces in the script’s outline, they don’t feel like they are dragging their feet through their scenes at least.

This doesn’t feel like a film with a very large budget as the movie is painfully small-scale in term of not only its choice of actors (Eddie Marsan has been in decently big stuff, but he’s not really a huge star), but also in regard to its locations and sets. The production design for this film by Lisa Marie Hall feels very lifeless and washed out in every manner, and at least to her credit, it feels like the movie was designed specifically in that sense for some metaphorical purpose, but because the movie is so basic and bland with its allegories, this doesn’t feel like a smart visual design, but rather just a consequence of where and how they filmed the movie, which can be said for a majority of the technicals in this film. The cinematography by Stefano Falivene is quite nice and cinematically positioned in a way that results in some clean shots, but the staleness of some of the angles and how much certain shots are repeated don’t feel like an intentional decision to present a point (even though that is arguably what its supposed to be), but rather a response to how little they have to show in this movie and are just trying to work with whatever they have. The musical score by Rachel Portman on its own is a nice enough piece with a elegance to it that does feel like more than just standard background noise, but it gets overused to the point of feeling a little redundant and the film’s noticeable lack of audio in many other moments makes it feel more like a gimmick inserted in later to provide any sense of sound in what would otherwise be an incredibly awkward silent moment (which there are still quite a few of in this picture).

Still Life isn’t really a bad film, but rather a horribly misguided and poorly delivered mediocre flick that wastes its good elements on a pretty unimpressive delivery. It feels like this idea could’ve succeed if it was either given more time to flesh out its ideas and expand its script to a stronger level, or even if it was shorter and presented as like a silent short film (instead relying on simple visuals and context clues in order to piece things together and use the simplicity to its advantage), but the film exists in the horrible middle ground where no one really wins. The story has its heart in the right place yet doesn’t match it with any emotional or even psychological understanding, the supporting actors are pretty decent, but the lead is so unmovable that it doesn’t matter, and while the technicals of the film are nice, they feel more like consequences of a smaller budget rather than an active choice. For someone who doesn’t want to think too deep about this idea and is willing to get sucked into the good intent this film is going for, it will satisfy them perfectly nicely as it’s a short sit and there really isn’t anything that terrible featured, so take that for what its worth. There’s always something to remember about a person, but there doesn’t feel like there’s a lot to remember about this film.