Until The Night (2004)
Picture: C+
Sound: B- Extras: C+ Feature: C+
Norman Reedus stars as a man who is not certain of love or
a happy future in Gregory Hatanaka’s Until The Night (2004), a feature
that may want to be in the mode of Steven Soderbergh’s Sex, Lies &
Videotape (1989). What could have
been a sly updating of some of that film’s themes instead becomes a stringing
together of some storylines that never add up to make any points that could
form a statement about relationships and sexuality today.
When the characters are not being dysfunctional in
fighting, yelling and even getting violent with each other, they are trying to
have sex or show their sexual infantilism by being involved with a XXX industry
very tired and well past its prime.
Though some of this is made to look like we are maybe looking into
private lives, it never totally clicks, though some name actors like Michael T.
Weiss and Sean Young surface. The film
is not up to similar work by John Cassavetes or Robert Altman, but the
potential was there. The biggest
problem in Hatanaka’s screenplay and direction is not having enough ironic
distance for the audience to learn more about these characters and demonstrate
the realization more explicitly that they are doomed to modern isolation. Had he done that more explicitly, the film
would have been lifted up to the next level.
Instead, he takes the undeveloped characters and their
serious situations too seriously, causing the work to become muddied and too
similar to what we commonly see today.
He is on the right track and you get the sense the actors know
this. Overall, that makes Until The
Night an overly melodramatic, but interesting failure.
The anamorphically enhanced 16 X 9/1.78 X 1 image was shot
on video and demonstrates softness in various forms. The credits do not note film or a sound format, but this manages
to look a cut above many of the outright video productions we have seen
recently. Yasu Tanida does a mixed job
as videographers, but I would like to see what would happen if he did an
all-film production without clichéd shaky camerawork. The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix is the highlight of the DVD, managing
to have a better sound than one would expect from such a low-budget production. Extras include audio commentary by the
director and two guests that shows an unevenness similar to the film itself,
stills gallery, two trailers, seven text biographies of the main cast, nine
deleted scenes that are a bit fuzzy and would not have made a difference in the
film.
One telling moment in the commentary is when the idea of
that shaky camera work is discussed. A
dichotomy of shaky camerawork for the young who can handle it versus the older
who cannot is a disastrous assumption that somehow this means hipness, talent,
or energy. Well, it really means
amateurness, idiocy and a bankrupt lack of ideas by persons who are too caught
up with the mechanics of production and that they are getting one done to pay
attention to what really counts.
Hatanaka has some talent, but he needs to take better, more refined
control of the situation. That will
make the difference in future projects.
One last thing, I could not stop thinking of the great
Billy Joel record that shares the title of this film. Maybe Hatanaka could license it as a joke in one of his later
films.
- Nicholas Sheffo
