Gravid Review
By Noam Hessler
YouTube is full of very strange things. Music videos, short films, commercials; think of something that can be captured on video, and there’s probably some of the odder of its breed available for free from the red play button. A lot of the videos and work on YouTube hasn’t been catalogued or preserved after any initial discussion, due to the flash-in-the-pan nature of video content these days. My goal here is to present an array of videos that I think are interesting and worth remembering, and discuss them in the manner of a reviewer. For our inaugural project, I’ll be reviewing a film I have a soft spot for, Gravid.
I still don’t understand what the title of this movie really means, or what it has to do with the film itself. Perhaps only the film’s writer and director, Ari Bach, does. Ari Bach is, from what I’ve gathered, a film student somewhere in California, somewhere in his thirties. Despite what that might imply, he is surprisingly prolific: he has written a trilogy of novels, a novella, made several short films and at one least feature-length film, Jealous Gods. I have read one of his books, and I can say that it has quite a dry sense of humor.
This movie actually looks better when you don’t put 3D glasses on
That quality is present in Gravid, Bach’s 45-minute experimental 3D film. Homaging thoroughly both the Cohen Brothers and David Lynch while never successfully attaining the quality of either due to some pacing problems, Gravid nevertheless has a wonderful, sinister sense of timing with both its comedy and its horror, and for those that like surrealism and dry wit this is an interesting romp.
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The story of Gravid is relatively simple in about the same way that one of those ant-mimicking spiders relatively resembles a real ant. A young woman finds a VHS playing a video of a man watching a television. In an attempt to discover who this man is, and why the tape exists, she throws her world and relationships into flux. This plotline is accompanied by tangents about such topics as candy and ingrown twins, and ends in a climactic boomerang chase. Despite the absurdity of what I just described, the film takes great pleasure in a careful doling out of strangeness, leaving you tense, waiting for the next scare or joke to be delivered.
There are of course, some flaws in the film worth discussing. The first is that the pacing, although mostly very good, occasionally dips into tediousness to focus on a joke that simply isn’t funny. For those that hate slow pacing, it can make the movie unwatchable. This feels especially egregious in a situation where I’d otherwise commend the film for its use of slow pacing. In addition, the 3D is an interesting visual gimmick, but many of the scenes are lit in a way that feels very dull, and when watching it in 2D (an option) it can become unpleasantly clear how much of the film is actually set in a living room.
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But those missteps I’m willing to chalk up to a lack of experience and budget for the director, and of course this is a relatively minor project. I’m tough on this film because I love it, it really has a magical, nightmarish quality and when the jokes land, they really land. If you like Lynch or the Coens, or just weird stuff, and you have three-quarters of an hour to spare, check this out. You might just really like it.
My “quality” rating where I feign objectivity: 3.5 out of 5
My personal rating: 4.5 out of 5
With that in mind, take care now y’all, ‘till next time.