Appearing in the sky for eleven minutes, a mysterious object has a significant impact on those who sight it in this offbeat drama from Jerzy Skolimowski. Best known as the director of 'Deep End', 'The Shout' and more recently 'Essential Killing', Skolimowski is a filmmaker who excels with unconventional narratives, a description that describes this film in spades. The movie consists of the same eleven minutes played out (a cataclysmic concluding event aside) from all different angles. The film has at least a dozen main characters and as the narrative constantly jumps around, never following one character for more than five minutes at a time, it becomes a tad hard to follow. It is also a movie in which it is difficult to become attached to any of the characters since none of them are fleshed out in depth, give or take a jealous husband and a hotdog vendor with a mysterious checkered past. Fortunately, the symbolism alone is sufficiently interesting; we never see what exactly the object in the sky is, nor do we need to as it represents fate. The film also opens innovatively, with footage from a smartphone camera, from a laptop camera and CCTV security camera all thrown our way before Skolimowski gives us 2.35:1 aspect ratio conventional film footage - for some reason that no doubt links to the mysterious sky object. With so much left deliberately unclear, this is a tricky film to recommend. It is thought-provoking though, if perhaps not as satisfying as earlier Skolimowski efforts such as 'King, Queen, Knave' and 'The Lightship' with Robert Duvall.
Review of 11 Minutes
