Compound Eye — [Mill Valley Film Festival] — movie review

Despite the proliferation of cheap digital recording mechanisms, cinema verite is something you don’t really see attempted these days. Sure, you have your Dogme style independent films, with their handheld DV camerawork and natural lighting, but the realism provided by their adherence to one or more of the movement’s 10 simple rules more often than not comes across as manufactured, scripted and structured, in comparison to the almost purely documentarian leanings of verite. Maybe it’s due to apprehension on the part of potential cast and crewmembers when pitched a project with little more than a camera to provoke and reality to record. Or maybe filmmaker disinterest, given dreams of summer-film superstardom. Even today’s popular documentaries have gone the staged and scripted route of reality television. In fact, it may seem that the days of Cinema verite are long gone. That is, until you’ve seen the world through Yahn Soon’s Compound Eye.

Taking its name in equal parts from its fly on the wall perspective and the Oakland warehouse/art collective in which its action largely takes place, Compound Eye sees the lives of two artists, Jessee Reklaw and Fausto Caceras. The former, the author of a newspaper dream-comic, Slow Wave, finds himself in a heap of controversy after publishing a strip depicting a fantastical IHOP built at ground zero, staffed by Afghan refugees, and featuring twin stacks of pancakes rising into the sky. The latter, a pirate radio DJ and found-art aficionado, discovers a notebook containing years of written correspondence between a schizophrenic man and his family, which he then incorporates into his radio show. Aside from these two main events, and the occasional faux-news interstitial, the reality of the two men’s lives is allowed to play out in unfettered focus.

As the provided production notes relate, Yahn Soon didn’t know what he was setting out to make when he started Compound Eye. He knew the “players”, none of them professional actors, but simply the individuals you see on screen. Fausto Caceras is one half of Oakland’s Shirley and Spinoza internet radio, and Jessee really does write Slow Wave. Fausto happened to have a collection of letters from a schizophrenic, and the music you hear is Fausto’s. Aside from the most minor of narrative provocations, what you see on screen is these people being themselves. Without skilled cinematographic and editing talent, this could all have resulted in a mishmash of home movies destined for YouTube. Thankfully, Soon found a way to weave all the disparate elements together into a compelling and highly watchable film. It may only be 75 minutes long, but even then it seemed to fly by.

For now, I think I’ll leave it at that. Compound Eye proves that reality, in all its mundane detail, can be just as interesting and compelling as fantastical drama. Cinema verite is not dead, it’s just taken up residence across the bay.

Compound Eye screens at the Mill Valley Film Festival Sunday, October 7th (5:30 pm) and Saturday, October 13th (2:45 pm). You can learn more about the film at its official site, here.

About the Author

Chris Nelson has been a film fanatic since age six. A former film and English major, he is now a Software Engineer and contract Technical Writer living in the Silicon Valley.