I am Rust, I am Gravity, I am the Best Senior Thesis Film This Year
A Review/Ponderance of Blue Car by Mike Meyer

An interesting thing happened when I saw Blue Car last night which may have “condensed” or “framed” my opinions a certain way. They forgot to change the gate on the projector after the opening commercial spots ran. There was no one there and I was too lazy to get up to correct the situation, so the whole film was projected in a perfect square. But the movie wasn’t a huge sweeping 1930s sword-and-sandal movie so I got to see the essentials at least. And seeing this kind of film in that aspect ratio at least gave physicality to how I felt about the movie as a whole.

But before we get into the thick of it, let’s get the story out of the way. Meg has a shitty life. Her father has left. Her mother works during the day and goes to school at night, leaving this girl to take care of her deranged sister. To help deal with all of this compounded with all the stress of high school life, Meg writes poetry (no, really?) and eventually finds a friend in her creative writing teacher who tries to get her on a more focused track with her writing while helping her out with her personal life. The rest you all should know, but if you don’t, Doug Benson* summed it up best with his review of Blue Car - “The teacher-feel-student-good movie of the summer”.

The creative force behind this film was great. Everyone executed his or her said tasks very responsibly. Not astoundingly, but responsibly. Most notably, David Straitharn delivers a great performance as the sexually inhibited, hollow creative writing teacher Mr. Auster and as did Agnes Buckner as Meg. The only real breakout performance of this film is Rob Sweeney, cinematographer. Rob creates a uniquely bleak film from start to finish without giving into anything outrageous. He subtly washes out all colors except for dirty blues and greens that add immensely to the texture of the film. Hopefully, this film will serve as means to get this Hollywood second unit guy into shooting more films with him at the helm. Karen Moncrieff also gives us a well crafted story that, like it or not, is definitely a solid example of how to write well constructed fiction that has been done a million times before but still has a stamp. You may say, “I haven’t seen too many movies like Blue Car. What are you talking about? I even see a lot of indie movies too.” Well, as I discussed with my friend on the way home, whatever you get from Blue Car depends on what you came into the film with.

Just as my friend said he was shocked at all of the stark real moments in the film, being a child of a not-so-friendly divorce himself, I came away with a very different sense of what the film was. You see, I’m not a child of divorce, but I am a former film student. And anyone who’s gone to film school has seen hours upon hours of just this type of film. It’s every other senior thesis film ever made. Simple movies involving little frail people in horrible real life situations who deal with it by writing, enriched by a lot of “staring out the window in deep thought” shots (although Meg didn’t smoke so it wasn’t a complete relapse). What really added authenticity in this case was Adam Gorgoni’s score with its nondescript piano and electric guitar riffs, emulating every homegrown film school score ever composed. And seeing the whole thing in a square frame, one very similar to all of aspect ratio of a 16mm student film, it was like I was back in Carbondale, IL reliving all of that time in a dark theater/soundstage lost forever to unfocussed shots of people pondering photo albums and warbling voiceover that sounds like the microphone was pressed against the narrator’s Adam’s Apple.

But take my cynicism exhibited here with a grain of salt. As the title and a portion of this review let’s on, it’s still a very well crafted film. Plus, you probably haven’t seen a bunch of student films and you all probably outright hated The Hulk, so my opinion is of no use to you anyway. So this may be a new experience for you, good or bad. Try it and let me know. And if you don’t like it, call me and we’ll watch The Adventures of Baron Munchausen to cleanse the palette.

*Doug Benson is a film reviewer who writes the column “I Love Movies” for www.bobanddavid.com.


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