Caesura is a film created by a biola alum named Andy Brewster. The film is advertised by its own creators as a "male metoo story set in the classical music world." In his director's statement on his website, Brewster claims he made the film to "bring us behind the doors of the private lesson and allow us into the emotions and questions of the victim." He wants to raise awareness, get inside a victim's head, tell his story. It's a flip of the script on the usual perception of the #metoo movement being predominantly female. I don't doubt that there are indeed true stories this is based on.
I would now like to say that Caesura is a mediocre film that fails on a character and structural level, and it is manipulative rather than provocative and fails to bring any new ideas to this subject.
But don't take my word for it. Let's break it down.
Our opening image is a gorgeous shot of a piano in the middle of somewhere with some text reading "inspired by true stories." There's nothing inherently wrong with this, but it is an attempt to add gravitas to the film. It's true, therefore it is important, so you should appreciate it.
Our protagonist, who we later learn is named Nathan, plays the piano, and he's pretty fantastic at it. And what's more, he LOVES the piano. Then suddenly a student comes in and waves the senior superiority card, booting Nathan out. We now know Nathan loves the piano but is getting pushed around and he has nowhere to exercise his passion. This gives Nathan his first goal, to find a spot to practice. And then Dr. C appears and fulfill the goal without any conflict whatsoever.
Dr. C approaches Nathan and essentially says he's a great player and offers him private lessons, which Nathan gladly accepts. With our foreknowledge that Dr. C is a groomer, this makes sense, so this easy win is allowed. Nathan celebrates and goes to his dorm where his roommate hypes up Dr. C as like... the greatest piano teacher of all time. Good things are gonna happen for sure.
Nathan has his first lesson with Dr. C and he's pretty nervous. Dr. C uses the lesson to get his hand on Nathan. It clearly makes Nathan uncomfortable and Dr. C continues staring at him throughout, moving his hand up Nathan's leg. Dr. C tells Nathan he'd like to mentor him and Nathan is enthusiastic.
Nathan's roommate refers to some locker room talk and asks if Dr. C is kinda weird, which Nathan denies, though he's clearly uncomfortable. We then get a montage of Nathan looking for a spot to practice, doing lessons with Dr. C, and getting felt up by Dr. C. Nathan learns that he's a finalist for the international competition. We never saw him audition but I guess it's implied.
Then Nathan goes into the hotel room with Dr. C and he reveals what we've all known from the title of this film that he's a nasty groomer. He says some weird stuff and kisses Nathan. (The knowledge that this is a Biola film makes this all the more weird).
Anyways. It's implied nasty stuff happens and Nathan goes to the piano thing and storms out 'cause his enjoyment of the piano is now tarnished. The thing he loved is ruined by Dr. C. He later makes a report to the Dean of Music who makes the most retarded reply you can imagine: "Are you sure you didn't do anything to bring this on?" This is, first of all, unbelievably on the nose, and second, not something that makes logical sense for this woman to say. It literally shouldn't matter to her. It's no less a crime or a breach of conduct if he did. We'll come back to this.
The last shot is back in the middle of somewhere and the piano is burning. We've come full circle except now his career and all the joy are irreparably damaged.
Okay. First things first. From the subject matter of the film and the text at the beginning, this movie wants to be understood as true. Not a true story but true to life. A completely made up story can be true to life, such as The Lord of the Rings. The men, elves, hobbits, and dwarves in Lord of the Rings make decisions that can be understood given the rules of the world they live in. They reason, make decisions driven by emotion, etc. There's a flip side to this where movies can be not true to life and still enjoyed as such. Like Hot Rod. Dave and Rico are not particularly true to life for the most part. The way they talk, the things they do and say are often absurd and on the nose, but given the fact that Hot Rod is a comedy and its tone is absurd, it works, and they are consistent.
Caesura is neither a comedy nor is its tone absurd. It's mean to be taken as a real drama. So what is the problem? Well nobody acts or reasons like real people. The Dean as mentioned before seems to embody every victim blamer and asks if Nathan brought this on himself. Again. Why would she ask this? In her position and given what she's doing, the only reason I can think of is she's trying to gaslight him and she's covering this up, which given the shot of Dr. C and the other student is a possibility, but since that shot is before this one, it's possible that something was done afterwards. We simply don't know. Dr. C himself is not handled with any sort of nuance. He's clearly a predator from his second if not first scene, notwithstanding the fact that it literally tells you in the title exactly what's going to happen so we already know then anyway. His actions make sense given that he's a groomer, but he's so over the top in what he does it comes across as fake.
So then there's Nathan, the protagonist. He loves the piano, he's timid, and he wants to be a part of the international competition. He's willing to go to great lengths to achieve this goal, including tolerating insane levels of abuse, right up until the moment he runs off. The levels of gaslighting HIMSELF Nathan has to do to not notice is insane. What I mean isn't that he hasn't noticed WHAT Dr. C is doing but he doesn't notice or chooses to ignore the implications of it. An argument could be made that this is simply the story of an abuse victim, bargaining, reasoning, rationalizing, but this short does not give us the time to flesh out that idea. In his second interaction with this man, Nathan is assaulted. Given a strong, slow building relationship leading up to it, a case could be made, but the speed with which this comes about as well as the lead up to it, and how clearly disturbed Nathan is by it, make it unbelievable for him to tolerate it. It feels less like a character driven by his desire to reach this goal of the international competition, which is mentioned once in passing and we see one poster of it, and more like a character who is forced to endure this abuse by the plot.
Nathan is led to each of his goals by the manipulative Dr. C, which makes him seem like a very passive protagonist. He doesn't actively work towards anything unless prompted to do so by another character. He's also bland and he seems unbelievably oblivious to the absurdly exaggerated Dr. C. Nathan is a mediocre character with little to make him interesting. His purpose is to receive abuse at the hands of Dr. C and to have his love of music destroyed while the system does him dirty. His arc would be going from a naive and hopeful student to a beaten ruined one.
Now let's talk structure. This film is a plodding mess. The scenes go on about twice as long as they need to given the exaggerated nature of the characters. If they don't speak with any nuance or subtext (with the exception of Dr. C who has an enormous amount of subtext, though his body language feels extremely on the nose) then there is no reason for the scenes to go on as long as they do. There are no revelations in the dialogue and few significant conflicts. We learn nothing about the characters in their dialogue except for about Dr. C. All the dialogue that isn't pointless is about developing Dr. C. He talks to Nathan, revealing sinister attributes about himself. Other characters talk about him. But that all falls flat because the title of the movie (at least the title on Vimeo) already told us exactly what's happening. So we know all of this already and the characters are just taking the long way 'round. If you're saying you can't factor the title into the plot, I'm gonna just have to disagree with you on that. The reason we don't factor it into the movie is because it's usually irrelevant. But if the main revelation and plot is laid out in the title, that changes our whole perception of the film. If Avengers Endgame was called "Avengers: Death of Iron man." you could not reasonably expect me to go into that movie and forget the title and just enjoy the buildup. On IMDB the subtitle (A #metoo film) is removed, but it still says it in the description. And given that vimeo is the only place you can watch this film to my knowledge, I'm going to say that despite its omission on IMDB, this is still an applicable criticism. Given the choice to put that information in the title and/or plot summary, most of these scenes could be cut in half and the pacing tightened up immensely. In fact, some of the dialogue could be removed entirely, opting for the silent rout. Obviously this is to the director's taste, but when you devote two entire minutes to some uninteresting dialogue about piano playing and the only takeaways are: Nathan is nervous, Dr. C is a dirty pervert, and Nathan noticed, you could communicate all of that in a few shots and save two minutes of your viewer's valuable time. And we know this movie knows how to do this because there's a montage about it later. The only point would be the revelation and buildup but this movie went and blew that right out of the gate.
Caesura tries to be provocative and bring awareness to this movement, but it does it in such a way that it doesn't come across as true to life or particularly moving, it simply feels manipulative, evidenced by such things as the "inspired by true events" or "are you sure you didn't do anything to bring this on?"
I would now like to say that Caesura is a mediocre film that fails on a character and structural level, and it is manipulative rather than provocative and fails to bring any new ideas to this subject.
But don't take my word for it. Let's break it down.
Our opening image is a gorgeous shot of a piano in the middle of somewhere with some text reading "inspired by true stories." There's nothing inherently wrong with this, but it is an attempt to add gravitas to the film. It's true, therefore it is important, so you should appreciate it.
Our protagonist, who we later learn is named Nathan, plays the piano, and he's pretty fantastic at it. And what's more, he LOVES the piano. Then suddenly a student comes in and waves the senior superiority card, booting Nathan out. We now know Nathan loves the piano but is getting pushed around and he has nowhere to exercise his passion. This gives Nathan his first goal, to find a spot to practice. And then Dr. C appears and fulfill the goal without any conflict whatsoever.
Dr. C approaches Nathan and essentially says he's a great player and offers him private lessons, which Nathan gladly accepts. With our foreknowledge that Dr. C is a groomer, this makes sense, so this easy win is allowed. Nathan celebrates and goes to his dorm where his roommate hypes up Dr. C as like... the greatest piano teacher of all time. Good things are gonna happen for sure.
Nathan has his first lesson with Dr. C and he's pretty nervous. Dr. C uses the lesson to get his hand on Nathan. It clearly makes Nathan uncomfortable and Dr. C continues staring at him throughout, moving his hand up Nathan's leg. Dr. C tells Nathan he'd like to mentor him and Nathan is enthusiastic.
Nathan's roommate refers to some locker room talk and asks if Dr. C is kinda weird, which Nathan denies, though he's clearly uncomfortable. We then get a montage of Nathan looking for a spot to practice, doing lessons with Dr. C, and getting felt up by Dr. C. Nathan learns that he's a finalist for the international competition. We never saw him audition but I guess it's implied.
Then Nathan goes into the hotel room with Dr. C and he reveals what we've all known from the title of this film that he's a nasty groomer. He says some weird stuff and kisses Nathan. (The knowledge that this is a Biola film makes this all the more weird).
Anyways. It's implied nasty stuff happens and Nathan goes to the piano thing and storms out 'cause his enjoyment of the piano is now tarnished. The thing he loved is ruined by Dr. C. He later makes a report to the Dean of Music who makes the most retarded reply you can imagine: "Are you sure you didn't do anything to bring this on?" This is, first of all, unbelievably on the nose, and second, not something that makes logical sense for this woman to say. It literally shouldn't matter to her. It's no less a crime or a breach of conduct if he did. We'll come back to this.
The last shot is back in the middle of somewhere and the piano is burning. We've come full circle except now his career and all the joy are irreparably damaged.
Okay. First things first. From the subject matter of the film and the text at the beginning, this movie wants to be understood as true. Not a true story but true to life. A completely made up story can be true to life, such as The Lord of the Rings. The men, elves, hobbits, and dwarves in Lord of the Rings make decisions that can be understood given the rules of the world they live in. They reason, make decisions driven by emotion, etc. There's a flip side to this where movies can be not true to life and still enjoyed as such. Like Hot Rod. Dave and Rico are not particularly true to life for the most part. The way they talk, the things they do and say are often absurd and on the nose, but given the fact that Hot Rod is a comedy and its tone is absurd, it works, and they are consistent.
Caesura is neither a comedy nor is its tone absurd. It's mean to be taken as a real drama. So what is the problem? Well nobody acts or reasons like real people. The Dean as mentioned before seems to embody every victim blamer and asks if Nathan brought this on himself. Again. Why would she ask this? In her position and given what she's doing, the only reason I can think of is she's trying to gaslight him and she's covering this up, which given the shot of Dr. C and the other student is a possibility, but since that shot is before this one, it's possible that something was done afterwards. We simply don't know. Dr. C himself is not handled with any sort of nuance. He's clearly a predator from his second if not first scene, notwithstanding the fact that it literally tells you in the title exactly what's going to happen so we already know then anyway. His actions make sense given that he's a groomer, but he's so over the top in what he does it comes across as fake.
So then there's Nathan, the protagonist. He loves the piano, he's timid, and he wants to be a part of the international competition. He's willing to go to great lengths to achieve this goal, including tolerating insane levels of abuse, right up until the moment he runs off. The levels of gaslighting HIMSELF Nathan has to do to not notice is insane. What I mean isn't that he hasn't noticed WHAT Dr. C is doing but he doesn't notice or chooses to ignore the implications of it. An argument could be made that this is simply the story of an abuse victim, bargaining, reasoning, rationalizing, but this short does not give us the time to flesh out that idea. In his second interaction with this man, Nathan is assaulted. Given a strong, slow building relationship leading up to it, a case could be made, but the speed with which this comes about as well as the lead up to it, and how clearly disturbed Nathan is by it, make it unbelievable for him to tolerate it. It feels less like a character driven by his desire to reach this goal of the international competition, which is mentioned once in passing and we see one poster of it, and more like a character who is forced to endure this abuse by the plot.
Nathan is led to each of his goals by the manipulative Dr. C, which makes him seem like a very passive protagonist. He doesn't actively work towards anything unless prompted to do so by another character. He's also bland and he seems unbelievably oblivious to the absurdly exaggerated Dr. C. Nathan is a mediocre character with little to make him interesting. His purpose is to receive abuse at the hands of Dr. C and to have his love of music destroyed while the system does him dirty. His arc would be going from a naive and hopeful student to a beaten ruined one.
Now let's talk structure. This film is a plodding mess. The scenes go on about twice as long as they need to given the exaggerated nature of the characters. If they don't speak with any nuance or subtext (with the exception of Dr. C who has an enormous amount of subtext, though his body language feels extremely on the nose) then there is no reason for the scenes to go on as long as they do. There are no revelations in the dialogue and few significant conflicts. We learn nothing about the characters in their dialogue except for about Dr. C. All the dialogue that isn't pointless is about developing Dr. C. He talks to Nathan, revealing sinister attributes about himself. Other characters talk about him. But that all falls flat because the title of the movie (at least the title on Vimeo) already told us exactly what's happening. So we know all of this already and the characters are just taking the long way 'round. If you're saying you can't factor the title into the plot, I'm gonna just have to disagree with you on that. The reason we don't factor it into the movie is because it's usually irrelevant. But if the main revelation and plot is laid out in the title, that changes our whole perception of the film. If Avengers Endgame was called "Avengers: Death of Iron man." you could not reasonably expect me to go into that movie and forget the title and just enjoy the buildup. On IMDB the subtitle (A #metoo film) is removed, but it still says it in the description. And given that vimeo is the only place you can watch this film to my knowledge, I'm going to say that despite its omission on IMDB, this is still an applicable criticism. Given the choice to put that information in the title and/or plot summary, most of these scenes could be cut in half and the pacing tightened up immensely. In fact, some of the dialogue could be removed entirely, opting for the silent rout. Obviously this is to the director's taste, but when you devote two entire minutes to some uninteresting dialogue about piano playing and the only takeaways are: Nathan is nervous, Dr. C is a dirty pervert, and Nathan noticed, you could communicate all of that in a few shots and save two minutes of your viewer's valuable time. And we know this movie knows how to do this because there's a montage about it later. The only point would be the revelation and buildup but this movie went and blew that right out of the gate.
Caesura tries to be provocative and bring awareness to this movement, but it does it in such a way that it doesn't come across as true to life or particularly moving, it simply feels manipulative, evidenced by such things as the "inspired by true events" or "are you sure you didn't do anything to bring this on?"
