What do the 2008 Presidential Election, Jamaica, indie music, American tourism, and break ups have in common? We don’t know, and neither do film-makers Ben Chace and Sam Fleischner. All are touched upon in their first feature film “Wah Do Dem,” but any insight on any of the above topics is completely ignored.
The film follows Max (played by indie song writer Sean Bones) as he takes a solo trip onto a Jamaican cruise liner following his break up with long time girlfriend Willow (Norah Jones, for a grand total of 3 minutes). Max finds himself killing time by himself on a ship full of old, greyed couples. He hits on an employee to no avail, is found and creeped by another loner, and is soon left behind when he decides to explore Jamaica. Robbed and stranded, Max begins his journey to the American embassy in Kingston while the 2008 Presidential Election looms in the background.
The plot is loose and the style is very minimal, which some directors such as Apichatpong Weerasethakul or Zhang Ke Jia use to their advantage. Both have much to say about love, humanity, nature, city, government, etc, and they spend plenty of time in scenes to crack open everything they could possibly say. They are particularly slow, but those who are willing to give will find plenty of beautiful things to take. “Wah Do Dem” disregards the looming camera style that’s typical of the of the aforementioned directors and opts for the tiresome handheld cut-cut-cut style of many American independent films today. It’s certainly no “Bourne” movie, but it’s again one of those times where it’s apparent that the film-makers were shooting improv, shot a lot of angles to cover their asses, and then did just that in the editing room. Maybe you could argue that the shooting style follows the narrative, as Max is always on the go (especially when trekking to Kingston), but it comes off as a lazy rather than aesthetic choice.
It would be fine if there was some sort of beauty or comedy or something that came out of these improvised scenes, but there’s nothing. The film moves along briskly, but we’re never given a chance to really spend time with any of the interesting people Max meets along the way. A normal sequence would be Max meeting someone, they introduce him to someone else, and he either he or they leave. There’s nothing in between, ever, and there’s nothing in these scenes that make them worth anything. There’s absolutely no focus, and anything the film-makers wanted to portray (be it American tourism, Jamaican culture, mending a broken heart, or loneliness) is never given proper time to sink in because of the brisk pace. We guess Max got something out of this trip, though it honestly can’t be argued for either side. Sure, when we see him on the cruise liner we know it’s awkward, and when we see him dancing during the victory of Barack Obama, we know he’s happy, but is that really it? There were plenty of opportunities to do something interesting here, to capture some sort of truth or reality, and they were all completely ignored for whatever reason.
There’s the point where Max’s ship leaves without him, and there’s also a point where the road to Kingston is blocked by a river of rain water, but we never feel like he is actually in trouble. The insistence on giving up small, beautiful moments to get on with the narrative is a huge mistake, because there’s little there to work with and Max’s obstacles and problems are solved in less than a minute. By the time he crosses the river and meets a man that takes him into a ruddy house and speaks in haikus, it’s too late. The obligatory “weird scene” can’t pull the film out of its empty well, and all the close up shots of spider webs won’t do anything for anyone.
If anything, this writer certainly admires the ambition of the filmmakers. How often do you meet people who have won a cruise to Jamaica and take it up as an opportunity to make a film? While the results weren’t very good, the drive to make a film is apparent even upon first viewing. The directing duo have a good movie in them, and if they would trust their scenes and embrace the more beautiful things of improvisation (and maybe even drop the whole moving-camera-at-all-times shtick) then they can definitely conjure up a good movie. [D]