Malcolm Talks Movies:
KRISHA
Directed By: Trey Edward Shults
"Krisha was the directorial debut of Trey Shults, who also stars as one of the leads. The reason I chose to start with this film is because if you are a filmmaker less successful than Trey Shults, then there is ABSOLUTELY at least one thing you can take away from this movie and apply to your craft.
Krisha is the story of a middle aged addict who is reuniting with her family after a prolonged absence. Supposedly sobered up, she is hoping to make amends. The film takes place over a single thanksgiving day.
The film was Produced for around 30k, and features primarily non-actors. Shults mostly used members of his family, with the exception of a few actors he personally knew. The sole location is a family members house. Shults took very, very little and was able to build an engaging feature length narrative.
He does this by focusing on character, and the relationships between characters. He withholds each and every piece of expository information from the audience, keeping our attention on the minutia. The way someone cocks their head during a conversation, or the proximity with which two characters stand becomes not only important, but tantamount to understand the relationships at the core of this story. By creating this tension beneath the surface, Shults is capable of exploring the mundane with a renewed sense of intrigue. This movie works because Shults is more interested in the characters, and their relationships than he is in filmmaking, and what he is capable of doing within the medium. If you want to direct a successful indie feature, this is a critical decision.
This isn’t to say that Shults is lacking in proficiency when it comes to communicating in the language of cinema. To say that would be a massive disservice to what Shults achieves here. It is simply that his focus is always on conveying the inner state of his characters through the barebones use of cinematic devices.
Style never silences a performance, it augments it.
He flawlessly weaves peaks and valleys with editing, sound design and cinematography, even often toying even toying with subjectivity in the use of various aspect ratios. Every tool that is at his disposal he utilizes in order to bring us into Krisha’s world, and make the audience feel what she is feeling.
You will not find a single flourish in this films style or technique that is not grounded in character. That is what makes it memorable, and absolutely worth watching.
If you are thinking of taking a crack at writing or directing a feature for the first time, I would be hard pressed to think of a better film to examine where they did everything right."
Krisha is available to stream on Amazon Prime.