It started small and grew big. It began with the Bukowski: Born Into This documentary. After re-reading much of Bukowski in a fortnight (but was it really a fortnight?), the next logical choice was the film Factotum. While I didn't love Factotum entirely, the mood and pacing -- the stillness vs. explosiveness of characters -- was divine. Rarely have I seen characters emote so much, a moment evoke so much in simple (but complicated) stillness. The angles and views, the cutaways and the straightaways were different from anything I've seen recently. I was intrigued, interested. I wanted more. So where has Factotum taken me? Directly to Factotum's director Bent Hamer and his sweet little movie Kitchen Stories.
Kitchen Stories grew out of Hamer's own reading of post-war research books that detailed various studies conducted to determine the efficiency of the Swedish housewife. The goal of the studies was to use the findings to develop a bevy of household items (better oven, more effective vacuum) that would make Swedish housewives even more efficient. Hamer found these studies quite amusing (and a little disturbing) and bent the concept in another direction - what if these studies were conducted on the kitchen habits of single men?
This premise creates an opening for a very dry, very wry film that not only captures the absurdity of the studies (observers sit in very tall chairs in their subject's kitchens and they are not allowed to speak to each other or in any way acknowledge the other's presence), but captures the need for human connection and equality (the subject devises his own plan to "observe" his observer and is charmed in the process.) The icy coldness of rural Norway in winter and the painfully slow passing of time chips away at their resolve and the two men begin to form a forbidden connection -- friendship.
Is this a movie that changed my life? No. But as I think of the path that led me to it, I can't help but think there was something larger at work. I'm knee-deep in my character class, trying to develop fictional characters that resonate. While I'm drawn to the concept of the big character in the big story, I always come back to these quiet characters in these quiet, human situations. I marvel at how so much can be communicated with so little (sound familiar?) and I find myself wanting to write characters that are equally eccentric, equally jumbled and equally human in their attempt to find meaning in any situation. Less fanfare, more substance. The only question now is can I do it?
