Summary
Living in Oblivion is the comical story of a group of independent filmmakers trying to shoot a film.
My Thoughts
If you’ve ever worked on a low budget/ no budget film, then you’ll appreciate this movie. This picture is a hysterical love letter to independent filmmakers; it’s one that portrays shooting a film in a very honest light. It shows the chaotic madness of trying to bring art to the screen while dealing with little quirks of actors with different visions for the film, an ego-inflated director of photography, an increasingly harried 1st AD, lighting changes, focus issues, boom mics in the shot, and a director who’s just trying to hold it all together. This movie is crazy, but it’s honestly one of the closest portrayals to real low-budget filmmaking I’ve seen.
(SOME SPOILERS IN THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH)
Nick Reve (Steve Buscemi, “Fargo”) is an independent film director trying to finish shooting a scene, but things keep going wrong. His lead actress (Catherine Keener, “Sicario Day of the Saldado”) is having issues with their lead actor (James Le Gros, “Certain Women”). His director of photography (Dermot Mulroney, “August: Osage County”) feels he knows better than him. And the dwarf (Peter Dinklage, “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”) he hired for a dream sequence is having a kind of epiphany about the work he’s doing. Will the shoot ever be completed?
(SPOILERS END)
The best part about this movie is also the part that I think might turn some people off: it’s realism. I feel like, though this movie has a few strange moments, this film is extremely close to reality. But, if you haven’t worked on a film set, the movie might not seem that interesting to you. Working on a film set is, much like the title of this film suggests, like living in oblivion. Things take forever, and this movie capitalizes on this. Very little happens in this film, because it progresses at about the rate of an actual day of filming. The movie is broken up into essentially three different sequences with three different scenes, and the entire time, it’s just Steve Buscemi trying to get through his shot list. To a lot of people, I believe this movie could be rather infuriating, because it seems like the movie is just repeating itself over and over again. But guess what?
That’s the joke.
For me, the longer I watched this movie, the more apparent it became what the film was really going to be about, and the funnier it got. I was in stitches during plenty of scenes in this movie. The situations are ones that are incredibly familiar, and I think that makes it even better.
The acting is all top notch here. Each of the actors embodies a different kind of stereotype of kinds of people we’ve all worked with. The writing is snappy and fast paced. The directing is innovative; DiCillo alternates black and white and color sequences for differentiating real life vs what’s being shot in the camera. Everything just feels fast paced and chaotic, yet at the same time, it feels like you’re making no forward progress as far as plot goes. It’s wonderful.
Verdict
It’s hard to say too much more about this film other than to say it feels like one big inside joke for people in the film industry. It’s definitely not for everyone; as I said above, I’m sure many people would find this totally infuriating. But, I personally loved it. If you have an interest in the work behind the art, this movie could be for you. If you’ve ever worked on a set, this movie is absolutely for you.
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