Mark Reviews Movies: GOD'S TIME

God's Time, IFC Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | February 23, 2023

"I'm not a hero in this story," Dev (Ben Groh) says during one of his many fourth-wall-breaking moments in God's Time. It's a nice little bit of honesty, or it might be, if not for the fact that Dev is even more honest in the follow-up statement. After taking a beat to reconsider, Dev clarifies that he's not a superhero type of hero, because he's the protagonist or hero of his own story, obviously. Well, he is the protagonist/hero here, right?

Writer/director Daniel Antebi, making his feature debut, certainly lets us think Dev is the main character of this tale, which spans the course of a day throughout New York circa 2020 (The pandemic, by the way, is simply treated as a fact of everyday life at the time, not the entire purpose of the story). That's mainly because the guy makes such a big deal of making us believe that.

Dev is a recovering addict to various prescription drugs. A lot of his adventures revolve around making support group meetings, looking for people at another meeting across town, dealing with suspicion of relapse or worrying that someone might have relapsed because of some upheaval in life, and just trying to have some kind of ordinary life amidst a routine that has become so focused on addiction, its consequences, and trying to stay sober no matter what comes. For all that the film does in a relatively brief amount of time, its straightforward honesty about living through the likely trials and contradictions of recovery might be its greatest strength.

The core of the story, though, involves Dev's relationships with two other regulars from his primary support group. One is Luca (Dion Costelloe), a struggling actor who has become Dev's best friend. Dev himself is a sort-of wannabe actor, too, although his lack of real commitment—being late to read-through with Luca and not cutting his hair, as the casting director specified he needed to—suggests he's doing most of this for his pal. Indeed, whatever he actually does for a living at a moment or wants for his life in the future takes a backseat in his mind at this particular moment, and that feels right, too. Heroes don't have to worry about day jobs, and there's little reason to worry about the future, because heroism exists in the moment.

For Dev right now, being a hero means helping Regina (Liz Caribel Sierra), a woman from the group whom Dev insists that he loves—even though they don't really talk in meetings and definitely don't spend any time together outside of them. Dev explains his feelings about her as the two hug, after she has shared just how bad things are with her ex-boyfriend, who kicked her out of her own apartment and took her dog, for the umpteenth time.

He's looking at the camera again when he does so, and Antebi seems to break the movie's established rule about the story's perspective when Regina looks and winks at the camera in a reverse shot. The truth of the moment is that she's looking and winking at Luca, since the two are having something of an affair—a fact Luca is keeping from Dev. The real truth of that shot, though, might just be that Dev really isn't the superhero, ordinary hero, or even protagonist of this story. Maybe he's a different kind of character altogether or especially from someone else's perspective.

Antebi's film becomes increasingly fluid about a lot of things—perspective, plot, what these characters mean to each other in their own mind and in the reality of the situation, what they want at any given moment and how they justify those desires. It's fairly complex, particularly as Dev starts to learn, not only that he might not be the hero, but also that he might not deserve to be one and in how the other two characters start to reveal more about themselves. The thing that keeps all of these shifting notions of self and relationships stable is the feeling of inconsistency and uncertainty that they're experiencing. That feels bluntly, painfully honest, too.

Once we get the basics of the setup with the regular meetings and an upcoming audition for a movie and Regina's anger over losing her dog, Dev notices something different about Regina's sharing session on that particular day. When she talks about wishing that her ex were dead, she always adds that he will be, although it will happen according to the title phrase.

This time, after fantasizing about killing her ex-boyfriend, Regina doesn't include the postscript, so Dev is convinced she's actually planning to murder the guy. When Regina confides in Dev that she's planning to leave the country the next day, he becomes certain she'll kill the ex before the day ends. The rest of the plot amounts to Dev and Luca following Regina, trying to determine if her plan is a real thing, and figuring out a way to stop her if it is.

It's a rush of style and dark humor, and there's a real unpredictability to how things unfold, not only in terms of what happens, but also in the way Antebi makes the camera an active participant—looking away from certain moments and slowly leaving Dev behind, as it becomes clear he's far from the one with any real problems or of much interest in comparison to at least one of his acquaintances. Through it all, though, God's Time gets at some deeper truths about these relationships forged in recovery and how the desperation of these characters has become a different kind of addiction.

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