Dir. John Hardwick, 2005, UK, 80 minutes
Cast:
Lars Rudolph, Eileen Walsh
John Hardwick's background is the usual tale of an aspiring filmmaker working on commercials and music videos to fund his own personal projects. After several critically acclaimed shorts the stage is set for the inevitable debut feature, but here similarities to other filmmakers end. 33 X Around the Sun is unlike anything to come from British independent cinema in recent years.
The film follows an evening in the life of an unnamed man (Rudolph) as he wanders from one surreal encounter to another. Along the way he befriends a dog, plays the part of a hitman in a film production and takes up line dancing, all the while pursued by two policemen from another reality.
Despite its deliberate lack of narrative structure 33 X Around The Sun does provide vague patterns for the viewer to hold onto. Characters reappear throughout the story and although forever changing their behaviour (sometimes even swapping voices with other characters) there is a twisted continuity at work here. For example, the protagonist lends some money to a man in a coffee shop who later appears as a doctor and when asked about the money he borrowed hands over a teabag in return. The girl (Walsh) who, despite the insistence of the other characters, may or may not be his girlfriend appears in several guises but there is a sense of a developing relationship between the two characters. This is how Hardwick leads his audience through the story, with vague hints and tempting clues to a coherent narrative behind the surface confusion.
The world created by Hardwick and cinematographer Daniel Cohen (whose previous work includes Dead Man's Shoes and Creep ) is perhaps the most impressive element of the film. Both the eerily sparse streets and hallways and the dream-like lighting combine to create a twilight world with a surprise around every corner - the world outside our windows at five o'clock in the morning. The characters who inhabit this world are played with just the right amount of weirdness by an accomplished supporting cast, although it is Rudolph's performance of a man who shares our confusion yet happily moves along with it that stands out above all. There is also an impressive and subtle use of low-budget special effects, particularly in the case of the policemen who appear and move in negative against a natural backdrop.
While effective in its component parts the experience of 33 X Around The Sun as a whole is not always a fulfilling one. Due to the nature of the cast and setting (and more specifically a set-piece involving a teleporting toilet that at one point contains a whole film crew) the film occasionally feels like an episode of Doctor Who with all the plot taken out. This is partly due to a piece-meal process of development with the film initially being shot as a forty-minute short expanded into a feature over three years. The transition is not a smooth one and there are several moments when a short film would reach a natural conclusion, but Hardwick throws us back in at the deep end. While the film that most easily compares, David Lynch's Eraserhead , endured a similarly drawn out production process the end product felt much more organic than Hardwick's film, which sometimes comes across as a compilation of deleted scenes. The film also fails to match the scope of Lynch's film which created an alternate reality festering beneath the surface of our own, while Hardwick's world is much more insular and perhaps too specific to the individual at its heart to truly capture the attention of the audience. However, this is at times the strongest element of the film.
33 X Around The Sun invites its audience into a surreal playground and for those content to sit back and enjoy the ride there is enough innovation and entertainment here to carry you over the bumps. Those looking for more coherence and balance in their films should turn elsewhere, but on pure visual and imaginative strength it is clear that Hardwick is a director to look out for in future. Chris Regan
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