The title of the film refers to an expression the character Malissa hears on an audiotape made in the London Underground. Not having a visual for what she is listening to, she comes to the conclusion that the phrase is how the British say goodbye. There is a moment late in the film when she suddenly realizes just what the phrase really means and with that understanding the world makes just a hair more sense to her. You can almost see the light bulb turning on over her head. The movie itself feels the same way. Confusion from not seeing the whole image suddenly gives way to instant understanding.
The movie is a series of five stories that seem disconnected for most of the running time, only to suddenly snap into focus and find connections in the very end. In one story Herb Schweitzer (Alan King in his final role) decides that he is going to walk the length of Manhattan to a place he used to swim as a child. Another story has the quirky Malissa (Elizabeth Reaser) caring for her equally ill and evil mother in North Carolina. In Vermont, single dad Sam (writer/director Eric Shaeffer) is devoted entirely to his son Rocky (Christopher Kovaleski) but a cancer scare pushes him to broaden his horizons a bit. In Arizona, John (Charles Parnell) suffers in solitude after an affair costs him his wife and son, who have moved to New York. Finally, singer Jody (Jill Sobule) is afraid to take any chances in life with love or enter Manhattan until she gets a real job playing her music.
The movie rotates through each of these stories in order, giving us just a bit more detail with each turn. Slowly, as we get to know the characters, details emerge and their stories start to make sense. And then they start to resonate and later it becomes clear that each of these people have become stalled in life, but for wildly different reasons. Their lives are static, with no momentum at all, making them anywhere from grouchy like Herb to suicidal like John. When the impetus for change appears in their lives they are resistant to it. A lot of moss has grown on these folks over the years. But when they give in to change and start to move forward in their lives again, the pleasure and satisfaction that brings for them and us is huge. It also becomes apparent that their will exist some connections between these people’s lives although they can be minor or tangential. It reminds me of when my wife and I moved to Charlottesville, Virginia and discovered that our new neighbors were from Potsdam, New York where we had attended college. It’s not a life changing connection but it is an odd coincidence that would seem unbelievable if it hadn’t actually happened.
The actors, while not necessarily very familiar to most people right now, turn in a great set of performances. Elizabeth Reaser stands out being so charmingly quirky but also able to mask the character’s unpleasant history. It peeks through in her actions, although just what it means is not immediately obvious. She makes odd hats, exchanges audio tapes with pen pals and has a real knack for getting people to smile. The only person she can't get a smile out of is her own mother, who she is trying to nurse back to help from some illness. Then there is Charles Parnell as the accountant John who is torturing himself over the affair that shattered his family. His misery is so intense you can almost see it choking the life out of him. A scene where he buys a shotgun with the intent of putting an end to the suffering, it is an extremely powerful moment. Alan King at first just seems like a cliched curmudgeon but it quickly becomes apparent that his crankiness is more a matter of his venting frustration at the constant change in life that he seems incapable of keeping up with. Shaeffer and Kovaleski have an amazing chemistry that makes them feel very natural as father and son. Kovaleski has a well of energy to draw from that makes any crazy idea his character comes up with seem very sensible. Shaeffer plays a dad so devoted to his son that he shaves both their heads so they can look more like Michael Jordan. Just for fun.
I've heard this film compared frequently to Magnolia, mostly for the story structure of multiple seemingly unrelated storylines converging. Personally, I'll take Mind the Gap any day over P.T. Anderson's three hour self-indulgent monstrosity. It is a much more heartfelt movie and never once did I have the feeling watching it that the director was so in love with his movie that he couldn't bear to say cut or actually trim a scene in editing. Better yet, Mind the Gap featured a cast I was largely unfamiliar with, providing the pleasure of discovering great new performers. Unknowns don't carry a long history that color our perceptions of them. So when they turn in a great performance it really stands out in our memory because we have nothing else to compare it to.
The movie looks great, which makes the fact that it cost a paltry $600,000 to produce shocking. Sadly it never caught on with a distributer and thus had virtually no theatrical run. But it is available on DVD so make a point of looking for it at the video store. It is simply depressing that a movie this good could make so little impact at the box office. If there is any justice it will turn into a sleeper hit on video.
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