Drifting by David Lowery: <i>Low And Behold</i>

May 26, 2007

Low And Behold

Friends and acquaintances more magnanimous than I have gone down to aid in reconstruction effort in New Orleans over the past year, and they've all come back with the same prognosis: too much of the city hasn't really changed since Katrina hit. You wouldn't know this from the news, of course; the media managed to sidestep the situation a few months after it happened, conveniently brushing it under the rug of the public consicousness. This country, it seems, has no stomach for aftermath.

Which is exactly what Low And Behold, a new film by Zack Godshall and Barlow Jacobs, is about, and which, ironically, may be the reason no one's seen it yet: it's a victim of the very complacency it's an affront to. It premiered at Sundance this year, and has since screened at festivals across the country, but has yet to secure any distribution. If you live in Los Angeles, however, you have a chance to see it this coming Tuesday at UCLA:

Low And Behold
Tuesday May 29th at 7:30pm
James Bridges Theater in Melnitz Hall (on UCLA campus).
Brad Silberling will moderate the Q&A with Zack Godshall (Co-writer/Director) & Barlow Jacobs (Co-Writer/Actor/Producer)

Godshall and Jacobs are both natives of Louisiana, and Low And Behold is their paean to New Orleans and its people. Directed by Godshall, produced and starring Jacobs and written by both, the film is, on a narrative level, about a naive young man named Turner Stulll who goes to work as a claim adjuster in the months after the storm, and the friendship he forms with a destitue man in search of his lost dog. It's a simple, deeply felt story, sometimes hilarious and sometimes heartbreaking, and were it limited to that, it would have been a fine example of narrative explotation; of a context mined for dramatic purposes; but there's more going on than that. Godshall took as inspiration for their style this quote from James Agee:

The films I most eagerly look forward to will not be documentaries but works of pure fiction, played against, and into, and in collaboration with unrehearsed and univented reality.

And indeed, the film's periphery is filled to the bursting point with real places, real people, all with stories of their own to tell. Their cumulative presence is overwhelming and, gradually, the story becomes enveloped in the reality of its context. When the wool is pulled from Turner's eyes at the film's climax, we nod and think to ourselves, of course, how could he have not seen that coming? And then we realize that we're able to think this because the filmmakers have subtly, effectively done the same thing to us; we're seeing up on the big screen a microcosm of our own experience watching the film. Likewise, the last shot of the film is representative of its intentions as a whole. It's a lengthy shot, following a truck as it leave New Orleans, moving through neighborhoods, down streets, past houses. And then the truck turns the corner and is gone. We stay behind.

I'll be interviewing Zack and Barlow in the near future; in the meantime, if you live in Los Angeles, do yourself a favor and attend the screening. It's of one of the best films you'll see this year.

Posted by David Lowery at May 26, 2007 12:36 AM

Comments

Low and Behold was one of my favorite films at Sundance this year. The shit that gets picked up at that Festival, while gems like this go unnoticed ... it's depressing.

Posted by: Karina at May 28, 2007 10:52 AM

The Oprah-McCarthy interview is on June 5th. Just in case you hadn't heard. :)

Posted by: Chris at May 28, 2007 2:28 PM

Karina - I've never been to Sundance, but I've always been curious about the films whose press is stolen by the breakout hits. It's so easy to forget, by the end of January, that the festival linep is made up of more than the four or five feeding-frenzy titles.

Chris - I hadn't heard yet! I know what I'm doing next Tuesday...

Posted by: Ghostboy at May 28, 2007 3:31 PM

it seems like every year there's one under-the-radar title that slips through the cracks at Sundance. in 2006, it was OLD JOY, and this year, it was GREAT WORLD OF SOUND. unfortunately, there appears to be room for only one, which don't make no sense, but that's how it seems to be. anyway, i did my part to spread the word about LOW AND BEHOLD as well. i think it's a truly vital work.

Posted by: tully at May 28, 2007 10:32 PM

Your link under James Bridges Theater in Melnitz Hall is broken. http://www.road-dog-productions.com/cgi-bin/2007/05/%3CA%20HREF= doesn't resolve.

Posted by: Ralf at May 29, 2007 8:06 PM

Oops! Fixed.

Posted by: Ghostboy at May 30, 2007 1:26 AM

Yet another intriguing recommendation! No word on it showing up Bayside.

Posted by: Maya at June 4, 2007 12:06 PM