Mark Reviews Movies: THE YEAR OF THE EVERLASTING STORM

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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 2, 2021

Seven filmmakers from around the world have contributed segments to The Year of the Everlasting Storm. Each story, in direct and indirect ways, reflects life as it was happening in the year 2020—the first year of the ongoing global pandemic.

Four of the seven short movies are stories about ordinary people, caught up in the effects of lock-down measures and other plans meant to help diminish the spread of the virus. The other three at least break up the sense of repetition gained from the others, but even they suffer from this anthology's clear lack of a guiding narrative or thematic principle.

That absence is kind of the point, as proposed by an epigraph quoting the filmmaker Robert Bresson: "One does not create by adding, but by taking away." With so many resources and technical assistance taken away by this virus and governmental restrictions, what can these filmmakers make? How can they work around various limitations in order to say something about how much has been lost?

In theory, that's an intriguing proposal, and some of these segments are fascinating, if only to witness how these filmmakers have made something with so little or embraced the very idea of minimalism within the piece. Others aren't nearly as effective, if only because they feel so similar to another—and better—segment in this movie or because they simply have too little to say—or try to say too much in such a short amount of time.

The familiarity begins immediately, even before we get the gist of the first segment. It's called "Life," and it's directed by Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, who's no stranger to taking advantage of the limitations and restrictions put upon him as a director. Rather famously, Panahi has been the target of the government of Iran, facing a ban on him making movies in any capacity.

He has gotten around the ban, of course, and this short film, which sees the director and his wife receive an unexpected visitor in the person of the filmmaker's mother, continues that trend and the director's ability to blend narrative and documentary. The story—about the pressures COVID-19 has put on families, especially elder members of a family—is a simple but lovely one, about a mother talking to her son, a grandmother worrying about her granddaughter, and a woman, who despises a giant pet lizard, learning to find some common ground with the animal.

The familiar idea, of course, is living within a state of lockdown, and that continues with the second short, called "The Break Away" and written and directed by Anthony Chen from the heart of the viral outbreak in China, and a later one, called "Sín Titulo, 2020" from director Dominga Sotomayor in Chile. Both of those are domestic dramas, although calling the latter on a drama suggests there's more to it than actually is.

In the first, a married couple (played by Zhang Yu and Zhou Dongyu) face the stresses of close proximity, raising a child who's becoming more bored by the day, and various financial strains. It's fine enough, with an uncomfortable sense of intimacy and some mounting tension, although it certainly suffers from its immediate connection to Panahi's work.

As for Sotomayor's effort, it's a story in search of one, watching a woman (played by Francisca Castillo) try to connect with two daughters—one who ends up living with her, after discovering the young woman is sleeping on the street, and another who has just given birth. Some scenes of the two women driving through the empty street of the country and the roadblocks of a city are, unfortunately, the most interesting moments within it.

Malik Vitthal and Laura Poitras offer back-to-back but very distinct documentaries with, respectively, "Little Measures" and Terror Contagion." The first follows a man in his efforts to regain custody of his three children—a process that has been stalled by the pandemic—and is underwhelming, despite the incorporation of simple but striking animation. Poitras' segment is easily the most ambitious of the bunch, attempting to break down the proliferation of a privately developed malware/tracking tool and the real-world effects it has had. Her concern is that governments are starting to use software from the same company in order to trace the spread of COVID-19. It's a short that needs far more time to breathe.

The final two—and the last one especially—are the most experimental. David Lowery gives us "Dig Up My Darling," which follows a woman (played by Catherine Machovsky) using letters and a map to close the book on a family's tragedy. It relies entirely on a hauntingly post-apocalyptic mood and look, which only gets it so far. Finally, Apichatpong Weeraskethakul observes insects, flying and crawling around and upon a vacant bed, building to a crescendo of buzzing and faded human voices. It suggests a lot—about absence, death, history, and a literal touch of hope—in strikingly uncomfortable ways.

Some guidance, obviously, would have helped The Year of the Everlasting Storm. Without it, we're left to take what we can get from the effective shorts and observe the entire enterprise as an unfortunate missed opportunity.

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