THE PLAINS
dir. David Easteal, 2022
Australia. 180 min.
In English.
SATURDAY, AUGUST 12 – 5 PM with filmmaker Q&A (This event is $10)
FRIDAY, AUGUST 4 – 6:30 PM
THURSDAY, AUGUST 31 – 7:30 PM
“In Easteal’s first feature, the Australian director adopts a durational model of filmmaking that arguably hit its peak around the turn of the 2010s, but he parlays the conceptual framework into a casually engrossing work free of slow cinema’s more trying aspects (e.g., long passages of silence; quasi-symbolic characters on seemingly endless quests toward enlightenment). Running 180 minutes and set almost entirely inside a car, The Plains depicts the daily commute of a middle-aged businessman from the parking lot of a Melbourne law office to his home in the city’s outer suburbs. Every day, at just after 5 p.m., Andrew (Andrew Rakowski) gets into his Hyundai, calls his wife, and checks in with his ailing mother, before listening to talk radio for the remainder of the hour-long drive. Occasionally, he offers a lift to a coworker, David (played by Easteal), who’s going through a breakup and is generally dissatisfied with his personal and professional life. Over the course of the film— told recursively, beginning at the same time and location each day—Andrew and David reveal themselves in casual, offhand conversations (apparently scripted but delivered so naturally as to evoke the feel of a documentary) that accumulate into an acute portrait of modern life—one in which otherwise unarticulated beliefs, regrets, and anxieties bring to light a shared humanity too often lost in the commotion of the world.”
Join us on Saturday, August 12th for a special screening and Q&A with director and star, David Easteal.