Film Review: Silhouettes
When I started watching Silhouettes, an independent movie that debuted at Siskel Center last week, I couldn't help but think of a conversation phoenix_anew and I had a few days earlier. We were talking about how so many movies on Netflix Instant (and film festivals) is just wish fulfillment for male filmmakers. It opens with Aamod (played by film writer and co-producer Tom Silva) a well-off but seemingly unemployed man looking at a pretty woman in a coffee shop. You can almost see the though process. In real life, you may never quite get up the courage to talk to her, but when you have your own narrative to play with...
It turned out that it wasn't quite the wish-fulfillment story I was expecting. But it was also a film that was very much a product of Silva's personal vision - which is both its strength and its greatest weakness.
Without giving away too much, Aamod is a former corporate executive and a self-proclaimed dandy. This part could've been obnoxious, with Aamod getting all the ladies - but thankfully, the character is allowed to fail. The pretty - and engaged - Shakti (Puja Mohindra) doesn't go for his attempts at seduction, so he goes back to the cafe and tries to hit on another woman, a lawyer named Nadia (Fawzia Mirza). This time, there is a connection - a tenuous one, but a connection nonetheless. Aamod offers to show Nadia around Chicago before she has to take a train to her parents' place, and slow-burning romance ensues.
At least in theory.
I've been watching indie movies since 2006 or so, and one thing I've noticed is that a lot of filmmakers who are just starting out want to make a Big Statement, talk about Important Themes, and they get so caught up in it that it overwhelms everything else. There's nothing wrong with discussing issues of race, class and the South Asian experience in general that the Silhouettes touches on. But in order for it to work, you need to have some underlying plausibility. The themes have to come through dialogue, and dialogue has to sound like something actual human beings would say. Otherwise, you wind up with what amounts to a lecture that happens to have a framing sequence. And Silhouettes doesn't pull it off. There are moments of genuine human emotions, moments of actual bonding, but they are so few and far in between that it just makes me sad from what could have been if the movie had a co-writer who could check Silva's desire to convey The Message.
It doesn't help that every major character sounds the same. I know I'm not necessarily the one to talk - I've struggled with getting individual voices in my own writing, I still am - but from the other side, boy is it ever noticeable.
In the Q&A after the screening I attended, Silva said that he likes to let his actors improvise, which explains why most characters manage to get a few moments of plausible dialogue here and there. Cal, a magician played by Sean Masterson, comes off the best in the process - the character's dialogue isn't natural, but it's unnatural in the way that makes sense for his character, an over-the-top performer.
It doesn't help that pretty much every other actor on screen is better than Silva. It's not that Silva is a bad actor - he's perfectly decent. It's just that other actors are so much better than him that his shortcomings become more pronounced.
Aside from the few moments that actually work, Silhouettes have one big thing going for it. Silva loves Chicago, and he wanted to incorporate locations that don't usually show up in movies. It was kind of amazing to see West Loop lofts, the farmers' market in Rogers Park, the murals of the Lake Shore Drive underpasses, the sculptures near Morse 'L' station, the Edgewater bungalows, the Lincoln Square fountain, the more obscure parts of Lincoln Park. Heck, there was a scene shot on a beach not that far from my apartment. Thanks to director Gustavo Bernal-Mancheno and Director of Photography Wonjung Bae, those places are rendered beautifully. Even Lake Street 'L' tracks - which have shown up in so many Chicago-set movies and TV shows it's almost a running gag - are filmed in a different, more interesting way. It was nice to see the parts of Chicago a lot of people don't get to see displayed on screen, and displayed so well.
And I feel I almost have to give credit to the film featuring a South Asian Indian cast. Whatever else may be said about the characters, they aren't stereotypical. They are characters who are affected by their ethnic backgrounds, but it's not the only thing that defines them. It seems like such a no-brainer, but it doesn't happen nearly as often as it should.
Honestly, I think there are many reasons why Silhouettes should have worked. The plot is a bit predicable, but decent, and avoids the more egregious self-insert trappings. The actors are good to pretty damn great. The setting is used pretty well. The film is well shot and well-edited. The soundtrack is good. But it's that script, that leaden sociology lecture of a script, that drags everything down.
If only there was a way to go back in time and make sure the movie has a different writer. Or, at least, more than one writer.