It’s difficult to communicate to people what makes a movie worthwhile, because it is very rarely a sum of its list of ingredients. More often than not, it’s some indescribable spark of life and authenticity that sets it apart from a million other attempts at the same story. All I can say is that I know them when I see them, and Beeswax is one of those ‘alive’ movies, that you sort of walk into and feel instantly that the characters living in it are real. You get a sense of all sorts of unspoken details of their lives and corners of their world that are just barely suggested, where another less capable movie would bludgeon you with exposition and crude manipulation and leave you in a house made out of cardboard.
I’m excited that anyone in this country is still able to make a film like this, one that is quiet and full of life and will last on the strength of its texture and mood while a million prefab cookie-cutter hollywood ‘products’ go marching into obsolescence as soon as their same-faced replacement comes along. In Andrew’s films you always get the sense that you peeked into someone’s life, and that one day the film will become a sort of artifact that preserves that life like a chunk of amber.
Even if you already saw the movie while it was on its festival run, please come show your support as it screens here in Austin on the 9th, and in other parts of Texas on these dates:
OPENING OCTOBER 9
Austin
Alamo South Lamar
1120 S. LamarAndrew Bujalski (w/ whichever local castmembers he can muster) Q&A on Friday evening!
[but the movie keeps showing all week--none of this "sorry I missed your screening, dude" crap, there are many multiple screenings]OPENING OCTOBER 9
Houston
Angelika Houston
Bayou Place
510 Texas St. (@ Smith St.)*Tilly Hatcher* in person! And Andrew Bujalski too, Q&A on Saturday evening Oct 10!
[but the movie keeps showing all week]
