While most indie filmmakers shoot on film simply as a flex or to satisfy some weird romanticized nostalgia for a bygone format they never used, rarely does this choice of format actually make sense to the narrative or story. But that’s not the case for A Grand Mockery, which just premiered at Fantasia, a film shot on 8mm, no less, instead of the standard and more costly 35mm theatrical format. For a quick size comparison – you can fit 21(!)8mm frames into one 35mm frame. What this does aesthetically is, it not only makes the image super grainy and somewhat muddy, but it’s used to help illustrate the distorted outlook of someone suffering from both mental illness and addiction.
A Grand Mockery directed by Adam C. Briggs and Sam Dixon follows Josie (Sam Dixon), who spends his nights working in an independent theater and his days wandering the graveyard and drinking copious amounts of wine from a coffee cup. The film’s first act feels almost like an extended montage that illustrates how rinse and repeat the young man’s life is. It’s not bad, it’s just monotonous , thankless and there’s something dark waiting out in the distance for him to let it in. As the nightly grind begins to take its toll, he begins to retreat further and further into his everpresent mug and the darkness soon takes full possession.
That first act perfectly captures the indie boom of the 90s, with its slice of life, slacker vibe. As Josie begins to lose control, the film falls into this more surreal stream of consciousness dynamic with the grain not only distorting the world around Josie, but working to keep the audience at arms length, helpless to watch as this all plays out. We also see addiction take its toll on Josie’s face in an interesting way to easily communicate how those around choose to ignore the addiction peeking through his day to day visage as it literally deforms him.
The film slowly yet assuredly crafts its thesis that the real ‘Grand Mockery’ is calling it living in this day and age, and the best you can do sometimes is get by. Along with the film’s take on addiction, there’s also a deep seated rage baked in that never really finds its outlet for our protagonist. A Grand Mockery is bleak, unforgiving and at times nightmarish, but it’s a life many call reality today. This is something that works hand and hand with its grainy image that both acts as a visual filter and to further drive home its take that there’s no clear way out, for those trapped in this same existance.
