directed by:
W.M. Weikart written by: Andrew Rivas, W.M. Weikart genre: Drama, Fantasy |
There’s something just so extraordinarily disgusting about meat. Don’t get me wrong, I freakin’ eat the stuff like there’s no substitute, but I’d readily acknowledge there’s a whole lot of grossness that comes along with being a carnivore. So when I watch shows like “Dexter” and movies like “Soul To Squeeze,” where you get a whole lot of visuals with a bunch of food being sliced and meat being cut or ground up, heck yeah, I get squeamish. Soon after the intro & credits, we’re introduced to young Jacob Stafford, who seems to be living in a place that’s as generic as it gets. The place has zero personality from top to bottom; everything’s in these yucky, bland-ass colours, and practically nothing has labels, not even the food in the fridge. He decides that his personal sadness is so severe that he’d rather sign up for some kind of experimental treatment in an attempt to fix himself. “Everything that happens here is you.” A voice on the phone is trying to guide him in a very shrouded and mysterious way, but it sure doesn’t seem like Jacob’s in the kind of place in life where he’s ready to listen to anyone’s advice, let alone some strange voice on the other end of a corded phone. Things appear depressing. I mean it.
Visually, this all looks pretty bleak. Jacob seems angry, intense, and withdrawn all at the same time, and he seems to have only food and a television documentary from the 1950s to provide him with any entertainment. I don’t know how you go about calming yourselves down when you get too riled up…I suppose food can do that for some…but beyond that, you need a little more stimulation of some kind, don’t you? The documentary that Jacob is watching is about how our eyeballs work - I don’t know how many times he’s going to sit down and watch this one program, but you get the point – there’s not a whole lot going on inside this house he’s staying in. After tossing and turning, trying to sleep, he gets up to discover that a whole different person is in the house with him. The Unconscious Man, played by Greg Baldwin, quickly reduces Jacob to a dog in what appears to be a form of humiliation – but self-humiliation when it comes right down to it, because again – “everything that happens here is you” – as in, it’s all Jacob no matter what we see onscreen. “Soul To Squeeze” makes it known early on that we’re dealing with a highly psychological concept, which is predicated on the concept of merging the physical body with the subconscious mind. Which is - to some degree, basically a roundabout way of saying this is what it would be like if we were to experience our dreams and nightmares while being awake. For those of us out there who are already way too familiar with derealization to be comfortable with or have a harder time discerning whether or not they’re ever really awake - or always asleep…like me…you’re probably going to appreciate a lot of what you see in this increasingly bizarre film directed by W.M. Weikart & co-written with Andrew Rivas. The emotions on display basically rampage from a desolate nothingness to raging anger, often with very little in between. Jacob (played by Michael Thomas Santos) doesn’t seem to have the luxury of having a whole lot of patience, so with the slightest push, he’s primed and ready to go right off the deep end at a moment’s notice. That being said, he experiences a whole lot of craziness, like the bathtub scene, where he ends up being almost completely covered in hair from head to toe. The monotony of living with such bland choices around him…such a lack of all personality where everything seems so sterile, yet there’s a giant amount of contrast in how awfully gross & dirty some things can be, too, like the bottom of a coffee cup. Honestly, it seems rightfully unnerving, and the way that Jacob seems to be spiralling out feels at least somewhat justified. To think that everything he’s going through is the result of his own subconscious creeping out into the daylight…I mean…life already seems weird enough for this guy to begin with, but just imagine how much stranger it would be if you were going through all of this and had to eventually reconcile with the fact that you are, indeed, responsible for everything you’re experiencing. Like, at one point, Jacob meets a mermaid with a burp so loud it could put your best one to shame, and he still hasn’t left the place he’s in, despite it looking so different than it did originally. If anything, you get the sense that this guy could desperately just use a couple of solid hours of shuteye, but at the same time, you still have to be able to trust the notion that you know the difference between being awake and being asleep. If you don’t have that, how could you ever have an ounce of the kind of rest we all need? How would you be able to assume the reality we take for granted is any more real than a dream would be? Being awake & asleep would be on an equal plane of trustworthiness…and that would mess you up.
Much to his credit, for this whole idea of “Soul To Squeeze” being as off the wall and unpredictable as it is, the movie moves with an incredible degree of reliable steadiness. Just because it’s a new concept to us doesn’t mean that Weikart was at all unprepared – in fact, I believe that what you see is a film made with supreme confidence. We might not have any idea of where this is going next, but it’s very clear that Weikart did, and again, he’s done a remarkable job of making sure that Santos was fully prepared and dialled into the character & script. With just about every inch of what we see resting squarely on the shoulders of Santos, it was crucial that he made a connection to this disconnected character he plays, and I feel like he completely succeeded in finding the heart of what makes Jacob’s troubled mind tick. Weikart has also done an exceptional job with his use of visuals. Whether it’s effects, multi-layered screens, strange physical sets like the three televisions having a conversation with Jacob, or random ideas added in like the Unconscious Man, the Game Show Host, and the Mermaid – much of what we experience in watching “Soul To Squeeze” feels like it’s directly attacking our own conscious state to make us more curious about how firmly we believe in what we think we know and the reality we’re in. I’m not suggesting that the steadiness of which it’s made isn’t still going to lose a few folks along the way…honestly, I don’t think you can make a film like “Soul To Squeeze” without throwing off a large percentage of the audience in pursuit of the end goals/points you want to make with a film like this. It does wander a little too far for most, I’m sure, and possesses a relentlessly artistic perspective that is bound to clash with the average everyday viewer of mainstream entertainment. So there’s that, but again, I’m reasonably sure all involved would have understood that before signing onto this project. Does the fact that it moves slowly from its 4:3 aspect ratio to 2.35 by then make this concept hit even harder? No. I’m not going down that road. Unique, sure. Too much effort for the point it would be trying to reinforce in the concept? More than likely, when compared to how many people would ‘get’ a film like “Soul To Squeeze.” An unnecessary gimmick? I mean…kind of? If it was more of a dramatic shift on a visual level, it might be…but considering how slowly it morphs, it’s not really something that most people are even going to notice, unfortunately. Does it make sense by the end? Santos does an excellent job with the material, and we can sympathize & empathize with the circumstances that have got him so mixed up – but we also have to think a simple tab or two of acid would have felt a whole lot better than this experimental therapy he’s putting himself through, and gotten similar results, yes? I’m into it, though…you don’t find movies as far out as “Soul To Squeeze” every day. There was clearly a vision as to what this concept could become onscreen, and it was executed with undeniable confidence. I’m going with a solid four and a half stars out of five…you probably won’t have any idea of what it is that you’re really experiencing - but more so than anything else, that’s probably the real point of it all. If you ”cut out the ugly stuff, you cut out the pretty stuff too” – “Soul To Squeeze” reminds us that it’s all part of the soup y’all…that there’s good and bad in our lives because no life would be complete without the strange balance we obtain by experiencing the beauty and perils in the extremes of both sides of the spectrum. The fantastic ending that this movie has is nothing short of remarkable and a brilliant way to circle back to the concept of “everything that happens here is you.” The only thing that’s ever stopping us from becoming who we’re meant to be is us…the quicker you learn that the faster you’ll find your way to the other side of the mirror & back out into the world with the perspective you need to succeed. |
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