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The central character in this film, (played beautifully by Vlasta Vrana) isguilt ridden over the abduction of his daughter by a cult years ago. Audio recordings of a psychiatrist's evaluation show that Jack is obsessed with his daughters disappearance, and even after spending years in a psychiatric hospital, Jack, after his release, (who let him out? Was he even let out? ) decides to put an end to his obsessive guilt by having the owner of an old building hire him as "super". In his mind, though, he believes he'll be treated as "king" while acting as leader of a cult that live there. He also believes this same cult of tenants will murder him after a year - to pay for their sins. It seems they have a guilt complex too so Jack is sold. It's shot in black and white with moments of intense colour to emphasize Jack's shattered state of mind, and the camera mostly rests on close-ups of his expressive face. The sound plays a huge role in telling the story; It's creepy, sparse, and very effective in making us feel what it might be like to be Jack. -(my favourite aspect of this confusing and touching little film, along with the ambiguous story telling. ) In the end, I was not frustrated that I could only guess at what really happened to Jack. I was sad for him. He seems as lost as we feel watching his ordeal. Don't bother seeing this film if you're expecting cult orgy scenes because you'll be disappointed... it's all about emotion and interpretation - and completely worth your time.
9/10
13.11.2006 -
cleverdum@ - age: 26-35
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There's a pervasive sense of dread in the micro-budget, super-16mm indie A Year in the Death of Jack Richards that puts most burnished Hollywood horror-shows to shame. On the basis of his first professional feature, Concordia University grad B. P. Paquette (a decorated student filmmaker in his native Sudbury) is an estimable mood-setter. He's also clearly an optimist: the film, a sepia-toned puzzle-box mystery about a retired theology professor (Vlasta Vrana) who takes a superintendent job at an apartment building in an attempt to distance himself from his troubles (about which the less said, the better) is elliptical enough to give even hardy avant-gardists fits. It's pretentious, but at the same time, it's not disposable: Vrana, a familiar character actor, convinces us there's something at stake in his character's apparent mental breakdown, and Paquette drops just enough juicy-yet-inscrutable clues to keep us intrigued despite our (ultimately confirmed) suspicions that the fantasy-vs-reality gamesmanship won't amount to much. The Lynchian sound design and frequent red-tinted shock cuts, meanwhile, keep us alert: Paquette's occasionally lulling technique works all the better due to his tendency to violently interrupt it.
8/10
11.11.2006 -
radiofreeadam@ - age: 26-35
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[ATTENTION: This review reveals content of the movie.]
A Year In the Death of Jack Richards is not only a psychological portrait in film of a professor of theology in his 50s who is mortally entangled in his own psychodrama, but a film about film itself. As a story it smudges the conventions of narrative. As a film it questions the conventions of film-making. Jack Richards is portrayed with powerful subtlety by veteran Canadian film character actor Vlasta Vrana. Much of the storytelling resolves into tight closeups of his expressive face, lined and gouged by a lifetime habit of kindness in adversity. His eyes do not threaten but are riveting none the less. Jacks interior life is obsessive to the point of mental breakdown and has been for at least two decades. However, on the outside, his eyes, deep-set beneath bushy eyebrows, never lose their compassionate expression. In taped interviews with mental health specialists voiced over a still shot of Richards in his thirties where his long-hair and beard suggest the face of Christ, we learn that he believes obsessively that his daughter Jessica has been abducted by a cult. The information is delivered clinically by the doctors voice on the tape, and the clicks and whirs of the tape being rewound and replayed is amplified. At 50-something, Jack decides at last that death is preferable to self-pity and resolves to commit suicide by allowing himself to be abducted by a cult, whose members will treat him as a king for one year, providing him with a "castle, " "concubines" and "gifts, " and then, when the year is up, will murder him for their sins. But the "cult" never manifests itself in an objective wayonly in Jacks eyes. He applies for a job as super in an old-fashioned, once-elegant apartment building called The Grosvenor. He is interviewed by the manager of the building, and installed in a roomy apartment with hardly any furniture in it. He meets the tenants who are without exception kind, and in the case of two young women in the next apartment to him, kind to the point of deliberate flirtatiousness. He discovers that a painting in the apartment covers a hole in the wall between the two apartments. When he investigates he is shocked to observe that the women are naked. He retreats in alarm. During the year he meets Julie (Micheline Lanctot), a woman from his past, whose troubled life means she is also currently single. A romance seems to be possible. But again Jack withdraws from intimacy just as it is heating up. Jacks state of mind is projected into the films narrative style by a surreal treatment of conventional reality. His conversations with his boss and his tenants are mostly small-talkgreetings at the door, exchanges of care-taking details but the conversational rhythm is rendered remote by pauses between what is said to Jack and what he says in reply, during which Vranas face fills the frame, and his eyes, while remaining neutral, convey a sense that he has to examine every detail of what is said to him like a small child examining a new toy. The film is shot mostly (but not entirely) in black and white. With uncanny skill, director-screenwriter Benjamin Paquette treads the line between consensus reality and Jacks reality, holding them in continual balance, unfocused, so that we are fairly sure but never certain that what is taking place in the story is reliable. Our belief is suspended without ever being totally ruptured. The use of black and white with its greater abstraction over colour in the matter of detail is an essential technique in telling Jacks ambiguous story. Its a striking achievement. Paquette is a throwback to the "auteur" style, like so many film-makers were, particularly in France, during the late 60s and early 70s. Not quite irrelevant comparisons run through our minds in my case, Rose-marys Baby (because of The Grosvenor but otherwise totally irrelevant), and Last Year At Marianbad (because of the surreal style) This is a film to see with film buffs and friends and is meant to be heatedly discussed afterwards over coffee. While what it means and how it was achieved are likely to arouse the biggest differences of opinion, on one thing, all are likely to agree: Vlasta Vranas extraordinary performance. It is a tour-de-force by an actor who knows the camera better than he knows his own mirror.
8/10
11.11.2006 -
spedersen@ - age: 50+
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