One phrase I hate these days is "originality is dead". I understand the sentiment, especially nowadays where half the films and shows that come out are either remakes, reboots, or revivals of old properties, spinning the nostalgia cynically into dollars and cents every other week. It is a belief that comes from a very real place, provoked by big studios spending massive swaths of money on advertising for broad appeal stories that everyone has heard a thousand times before, but what the phrase means to me when I hear it is that people aren't looking for the same thing I am. The concept of originality being the core idea of a thing, the literal plot of a film or show, is preposterous to me. This is, it should be said, coming from the same crowd that loves everything Quentin Tarantino has ever done. Originality is about ideas themselves, something fresh that we either haven't seen or have hardly seen before. It is about the approach, about the details, about the emotional core or perspective of a story as much as the story itself.
The Vast of Night proves an interesting approach can be just as original as a new plot, perhaps even more so. The Vast of Night follows one night in a small town in New Mexico in the 50s, where a switch board operator and a local radio show host experience an odd disturbance on the air waves while most of the town is watching the local high school basketball game. It is a slow burn type of movie, with lingering shots and a plot that moves forward by the inch. What it is that disturbs the air waves is hardly original and hardly unexpected, it is the approach to this plot that makes the story work. You can go in blind if you want, but this is one spoiler that doesn't hurt the film if you know it before hand (this is your last warning).
The Vast of Night, in a more honest summary, is about a night in a small town in which aliens invade. It is a plot done so many times before as to pass beyond the world of cliche into camp, but here is given a serious and realistic eye. Faye, the switchboard operator, and Everett, the local radio host, are young people living in a dead end small town where everyone knows everyone. This is skillfully shown in the early part of the movie when Faye and Everett walk around running into people, talking to them about this or that and constantly being interrupted by local gossip and questions about their family. There is a fly-on-the-wall sense you get from these character's interactions, the way they occasionally talk over one other, references to things we don't get proper context to, and the way the camera hovers a bit low and far away to give us that "grounded" feeling, sure to get enough of the town in frame so we always know where we are. The lighting is sparse, using street lamps and the glow from buildings to fill out the backgrounds and the foregrounds of a given shot, cutting shapes out of the dark night surrounding the town. The feeling of place is just as important as the feeling of normalcy early on. The entire first thirty minutes or so is essentially just Everett and Faye walking from the gymnasium in which the game is about to be played all the way to Faye's work at the switchboard around the main street, talking about gossip, what she's read in her science magazines, and testing out Faye's new tape recorder while Everett shows her how to use it (and how to act like an interviewer, which allows them to bond over Everett's confidence and Faye's shyness). It is all very small scale stuff, building characters through interactions while simultaneously giving you the scope of the film, because we hardly get far away from everywhere they walk in this early scene.
After the early part of the film is over, you've not only gotten comfortable with the characters, but have also learned the rough layout of at least part of the town and have been gently lulled into the comfort of this small town setting. There is certain warmth to it, which quickly gets contrasted when Faye gets to her job at the switchboard. They hold on her for 9 whole minutes as she takes calls, hears the radio cut to a strange noise, hears that strange noise on one of her lines, investigates with other people she knows, and finally calls Everett to ask if he noticed anything at all. It is the sort of scene I can see people getting frustrated with if they are more plot oriented than character oriented. The plot of this scene comes relatively early when she realizes there is a strange disturbance happening on the air waves, but doesn't move to the next step until much later when she finally calls Everett who makes an announcement on the radio for anyone to call if they know what it is all about. In that time in between, there is just Faye by herself, calling people and inquiring, just trying to process it herself. It's a humbling sense of realism, for her to start curious and then excited, to not overdramatize the situation but slowly let it draw out in the characters own time.
Like I said, this film is a slow burn. It is about small moments collecting into realization, of feeling what is something supernatural from an extremely natural point of view. It's something that could easily be fucked up by a lesser director, but newcomer Andrew Patterson shows incredible skill and restraint throughout. The camera makes some pretty insane moves - with one particular one shot that had me relatively floored, even after looking up how they did it - but is never distracting. It is always for some storytelling purpose. Shots linger for a long time in several places, letting characters do their work on the screen, investing you in this world as a real place rather than a fantastical adventure. If ever there was the perfect film version of Orson Wells' War of the Worlds, this just may be it, because largely what Patterson's direction accomplishes is a feeling of believability in something that could easily be seen as outlandish. He took no shortcuts either - there are hardly any handheld shots and they are always to serve the characters themselves moving quickly, mimicking their emotional state, not trying to ground us into a world with a real camera.
The Vast of Night is about the experience more than it is the plot, and that takes a tremendous amount of craft in order to pull off. It collects moments, expressions, and silence to make an atmosphere that tells the story best. I've taken the film apart a bit here in this review, so it can feel as though the film is for analytical types like myself, but that is not the case. It is a film made to be watched, not necessarily talked about. People can rave up and down that they love movies or that they think movies should be about story or complexities that keep the film on their minds for days on end, but The Vast of Night wants you to simply feel what is happening. No flash, no conspiracies. Just a small town, two kids, and a flying saucer.
8.5
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