It’s a grand time for indie film.Film production has become more and more democratized in recent years thanks to the rise of digital and good, relatively cheap equipment. (I know, I know. There are some out there who will go to the grave clutching reels of 35mm.) With potential costs of production getting lower and lower, it’s easier to take creative risks without sacrificing the possibility of some sort of return.
Enter projects like Dayveon, the feature debut of multi-hyphenate writer-director-composer Amman Abbasi. Now, I’m not saying this film wouldn’t have been made in the more exclusive era of film (creativity always finds a way). I am saying it’s another good example of an even better trend of exciting filmmaking.
Dayveon (Devin Blackman) is a thirteen-year-old kid living in a rural Arkansas town. (Or so the magic of cinema would tell us. It was shot in and around Little Rock, with the town of Wrightsville where Dayveon lives — indeed rural-ish — being about 15-20 minutes south of the city. As a native, I’m a stickler for these things. Sorry.) We learn fast that his older brother was murdered recently, and the grief is still fresh. The opening frames are so truthful and sincere in their portrayal of a boy’s incomprehension of the tragic and absurd that they are almost disarming: Dayveon is riding around town on his bike, cataloging everything in the world that is stupid (hint: everything).
What follows is Dayveon’s attempt to reconcile brother’s absence and the loss of a lifelong companion. In what is very probably an attempt fill in that fraternal gap, he gets himself jumped into the Bloods. Of course, he doesn’t quite know what he’s getting himself into, and trouble is sure to follow.
I’ll admit, the basic plot is familiar. So is the stylistic approach: a dreamy, linear-but-not-straightforward mode of storytelling, where plot developments largely happen in fits and starts between laconic sequences of mood-setting and character suggestion. That’s not a knock. It’s a style that can be very effective and intoxicating when done well, telling us more about the world and its characters in ten minutes than latter-day Mamet can in two hours of monologue. (Now that is a knock.) I’m happy to say that, for the most part, co-writer/director Amman Abbasi does it right. That David Gordon Green is attached to this film as an executive producer should come as no surprise.
Abbasi, in using this approach, allows his characters to live and breathe in a world of compelling mundanity. There’s nothing quite like watching people live, and that’s where Dayveon, for all its familiarity in story and tone, really excels, despite a few hiccups along the way.
It’s with films like these where I always wonder about the casting. I imagine most of the actors are unknowns local to the area (as is often the case). But I can’t for the life of me determine if they’re professionals or non-actors the filmmakers auditioned and asked to take a part. It’s a sort of a little paradoxical brain teaser. They’re too good not to be trained actors. But they’re also so good that they seem hardly to be acting at all. Instead, they seem to be living a fictional tangent of their everyday truth. With any luck, we’ll be seeing some of these faces pop up again in future films. Especially young Devin Blackman, who deftly navigates his role with subtlety and grace. Although Dayveon strikes so many traditional chords as to echo a standard, the melody is sweet, and there is never a sour note played.
I can’t sit here and say that Dayveon is a perfect film. Indeed, there were moments where my internal radar pinged approaching clichés. But the truth Abbasi and his performers instill into every second of the compact run time excuses most of the faults.
Opens in New York and Los Angeles on Wed., September 13.
