New York, New York: the city so nice, they named it twice. “The world is a shithole.” The phrase so bleak, they also said it twice to open Just The Worst Time, a short film written and directed by Nihal Singh (who also provides the score). An English-accented narrator (Anthony Perry) delivers the very direct “shithole” statement in what will be a more visually poetic than story driven experience. And the visuals are quite nice and put together well, starting with a blue sky over what appears to be an industrial park.
The narrator is English but we orient ourselves in New York thanks to a trusty New York state lotto sign in a gas station window. The open blue sky over New York features prominently. The film is shot with what I would call either a 70s graininess or a 2000s flip phone camera quality, connecting the decade the World Trade Center was built and the decade it was destroyed.
That narrator speaks for the first three or four minutes before ceding control to a talented cast of actors (Sam Casey, Colton Caulfield, Rinzin Thonden, Josh Upadhyay). Before their dialogue starts, they get a couple of engaging physical things to do including a disappearing beard and zipping up a fly in the middle of the sidewalk.
The film is based on two poems by Leonard Cohen, Satan in Westmount and the inspiration for the title Just The Worst Time, both written when Cohen was 22. I looked up both poems and it might have flown over my head how they are reflected here, aside that one character appears to be the devil and there is discussion of selling souls.
The locations are selected and used well. Shooting from balconies and along long empty walls, filling up the empty spaces of New York. One scene has the same eerie energy as the behind the diner scare in Mulholland Drive.
We hear excerpt’s from George H.W. Bush’s “New World Order” speech from 1990. A spanish-speaking young man is guided along with unclear intentions. Our two main soul-stealing characters humourously attempt to calm his nerves by saying “abuela” at him. The last few decades of US history might be remembered mostly for drone strikes and throwing people in Guantanamo (and now El Salvador mega prisons) with no regard for due process.
The world inherited by the young is pretty bleak and Just The Worst Times manages to capture the strange position this generation finds themself in.
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