Sometimes it's better to talk than film The beauty of an arthouse film for a director is that he always has an excuse - no matter what claim he is presented, he will be able to answer at any time that it is stunningly strong author's beginning and that the rules of film construction, which refer to the discontented, do not apply to him. From here are born all these endless European films of modern young creators - detached, prone to monotonous portrayal of the monotonous phenomena of ordinary life, verbose, monosyllabic, fixated on themselves and pretending that there is nothing forbidden for them, when in fact they do not allow themselves much - to manifest feelings in a more obvious way, for example. The cinema gravitated toward high-fiction films for intellectuals, which is a beautiful thing in our age of template Hollywood production. But the price comes with week-long demonstrations of so-called “kitchen melodramas” from Finland or Croatia, or some other cold, dull country whose inhabitants, pale and exhausted, only sit in kitchens talking about Kierkegaard da Nietzsche or how miserable they are. The native of Massachusetts spoke somewhat about another time and other films, but the essence of his discontent remained the same and did not lose relevance - in the pursuit of intellectuality and independence, the output often results in pseudo-intellectuality and dependence on one's own independence, which does not allow the film to start breathing, not just choking. Despite the fact that “Two Gates of Sleep” is an American work, it does not have the acute sensuality inherent in the author’s cinema of this country, the proximity of the characters to their viewer and the desire to talk about topical problems that everyone has forgotten. But there is this cold stinginess of European cinema and the desire to make the picture as insensitive as possible in the hope that minus gives a plus.
The ideal field for comparison is the slightly later film “Jess and Moss”, which was also shot in the American countryside, is inclined to depict domestic idleness and does not voice directly all the details of the pain that befell his characters, and the confusion that is happening in their souls. But behind the empty conversations of the young heroes with each subsequent minute, the contours of the mystery begin to emerge, which they still hide from the audience, and their actions without subtext, which they seem at first glance, begin to gain more meaning, as well as confused memories combined with records in the style of "help yourself." “Two Gates of Dream” similarly approaches the image of the surrounding world of heroes, paying much attention to forests, fields and picturesque rivers that seem so un-American that when one of the characters mentions a possible visit of the sheriff, it seems that he simply can not be here, in this place free from legal authority and signs of civilization. However, law enforcement agencies do not appear in the way of heroes, as well as the answer to the question of what really rules in this almost forgotten wilderness. The more time passes, the more obvious it becomes that the beautiful forests will remain the only ones alive in this film, since the characters never begin to take shape, and their story continues to be a black hole in which white spots can sometimes flash, but only to further emphasize the empty blackness.
And you can say, of course, that the main characters are in the first stage of the human reaction to the death of a loved one - the stage of denial, and decide to send their mother on the last journey in a way that she would prefer, but was it? Or was it what was left of her mind, eaten away by unknown anxieties? In that case, what problem makes the characters susceptible to the continuation of the insanity that she lived through in the last months, perhaps even years of her life? What makes them react in this way and not in others? Who are these people, where did they come from and where are they going? What is the source of the darkness that suddenly engulfed them, is it not in this charming nature, which the director so lovingly relishes? And why does the audience ask all these questions, and not the director himself and not in his picture? It is as if the mere presence of death suddenly fills everything with a special meaning, and you do not need to take care of it yourself, filling the characters with thoughts and history, and not just filming the surroundings. As if the fewer words and deeds there are, the greater the indescribable sense of loss and loss that the author tried to recreate in his film. However, it turned out rather an atmosphere of almost complete indifference to his viewer, both from the director and from the heroes created by him, in which “I don’t know” – the answer to all questions, so fashionable in independent cinema today the evisceration of animals – a tribute to the genre, and the apparent lack of rules is actually a game strictly according to them, just in a more veiled form.