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THE WINDOW
Directed and Photographed by Chris FrieriStaring:
Joesph JamesIn his great review for Woody Allen's "Manhattan", Roger Ebert talks about how the use of Gershwin's music to underscore the films' black & white look at the city was a stroke of genius. Ebert's thoughts are as romanticized as Allen's movie. It's easy to fall in love with a city, especially your hometown. But what you hate your city? Supposed the oppression is too much for you? Those are the questions asked by Chris Frieri in his unflinching view of the darker side of New York.
One of the city's nameless daily-grinders sits in his apartment, by the window, watching the world pass him by. In his miserable existence, the only preoccupations he gets are watching the pigeons fly by his window, and chasing down the sound of rats in his kitchen. It's easy to understand loneliness in New York, a city where Bozo the clown could whip out his dick on a street corner and no one would blink an eye let alone glance in his direction. Your life could be over in the split-second that it takes to turn your head. Bozo's dick just isn't worth it…
A somber melancholy drama, the film explodes into the bleakest, most disturbing ending I've ever seen. I have a hard time thinking the savage brutality I saw wasn't real. I can't explain what happened, you honestly have to see it. It's a logical conclusion to an illogical film. When people are pushed to the edgy, sometimes they cross it willingly.
Freiri is a director who relishes the underbelly of existence. Instead of Gershwin, Freiri uses wild sound. The result is wholly organic and unsettling. Direct, yet fragmented and isolated, he uses his uncovering camera to take stills which perfectly captures his subjects' distress. It just so happens that his stills move at 24 frames per second. Any single frame would be the perfect summation of everything he's trying to say with his work. Beauty is only skin deep, it's all ugly on the inside.