A young man goes missing in Brooklyn after researching a controversial writer in Ricky D’Ambrose’s peculiar feature film “Notes on an Appearance,” which premiered this year at the Berlin Film Festival and is part of the New Directors/New Films Festival. Despite D’Ambrose’s unique storytelling style, the film never fully presents a coherent narrative.
A young man, David (Bingham Bryant) moves from Chappaqua to Brooklyn to help his college friend Todd (Keith Poulson) in a research project on the controversial political writer Stephen Taubes. Taubes, a fictional character, is presented as an important political and philosophical thinker who even gets his obituary in the New York Times. David’s job is, among other things, to categorize Taubes’ home movies and as the film progresses, Taubes’ papers reveal a highly controversial figure who had anti-semitic leanings. Taubes’ family, obviously, wants this information excised from Todd’s project, suggesting what could resemble a conspiracy, but the film is played in such a minimalist that we can’t be sure.
Letters, journals, maps, pictures, and newspaper articles are the dominant mode of communication in the film, presented as static images to the audience, suggesting an almost Wes Anderson-like influence without the quirk. To grapple with the minimal plot, be prepared to read through a number of these objects. Ambrose, also, is keen to let the mundane inhabit every scene, as the sounds of the city are muted, with only occasional narration by David. The camera almost never moves, except for the occasional home videos recorded by Taubes, including, in a strange interlude, the Twin Towers. An odd choice considering how removed D’Ambrose’s Brooklyn is from any type of periodization.
D’Ambrose’s film works best when he’s focusing on Brooklyn as a sterile and static environment, existing outside of time and unburdened by plot. Yet the introduction of a mystery element, halfway through, as David disappears and Todd tries to find him, feels off. The film seems unable to straddle the ironic distance presented and, also, want us to care about David as a character.
The juxtaposition of Todd’s search and the vapid conversational scenes with other characters never quite gel. Further, the film is too short (running a scant 60 minutes) to fully develop these two conflicted strands. Despite these flaws, “Notes on an Appearance” illustrates a confident director who leans heavily on his own idiosyncratic style, something that can’t be faulted too much. [B-]