This is what I sent to New Directors/New Films:
Synopsis: A man carefully irons a shirt before spending the day at the rural Utah dry cleaners once owned by his grandfather.
Utah Ark? It is shot in one day and is about the past, memory, and the links between history and present. It’s not one take, ain’t the Hermitage, though, and we didn’t shoot the nearby Springville Art Museum…
Dogme? Well, it’s close. Perhaps fitting for a movie shot in small-town Utah, it adheres quite closely to the Vow of Chastity. But the Dogme filmmakers are fighting auteur-y demons I don’t see, I have to confess, we didn’t put a record player in the backseat of the driving shots, so our music is verboten. And they don’t certify short films anyway Dog-me films, indeed.
The Grandson: No violent deaths, no throbbing neck veins and stifled rage, but from the reviews for The Son and a familiarity with/admiration for the Dardenne brothers’ previous work, I have to imagine some of their films’ stylistic tendencies and refusal of melodrama have an (indirect) influence on my work. Cf. Souvenir‘s setting in a loud manual work-place, the handheld camerawork and (near) absence of music. I can only hope I attain some of their film’s emotional impact. Read David Edelstein’s Slate review .
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the making of, by greg allen