Roll up, roll up, and take your Clorox-wiped seat for Pandemic Cinema -- movies set in the time of plague. It's not just movies, mind you, as we're officially in the era of the Covid Narrative. In the United Kingdom, a new six-part television series starring Kenneth Branagh as a messy-haired Boris Johnson looks at the impact of Johnson's handling (or mishandling) of the coronavirus on the British people. Meanwhile, the United States has produced a slew of Covid storylines: Judd Apatow's "The Bubble" is about life inside a Covid bubble during a film shoot; Gary Shteyngart's "Our Country Friends: A Novel," tenderly explores love and friendship during isolation; there are Covid-19 stage plays, and even Borat (Sacha Baron Cohen) couldn't resist tackling the virus in his latest mockumentary.
Now, here in the Hamptons International Film Festival (in addition to some other related material) we have "The Same Storm," a feature film written and directed by Peter Hedges, offering a blockbuster cast in a simulacrum of life as we lived it over the past two years, which is to say, mostly through Zoom and FaceTime. Hence the entire movie was shot remotely on personal computers and phones, and in the homes of the 24 actors.
The first question that popped up for this writer before watching the movie was: Is it too soon or too late for this film? Too soon for us to want to relive those early days of 2020 in all its Rapture-like gory detail? Or, is it too late for us to care about such weird dystopian theater?
Perhaps the director could answer that, which, rather ironically, he did -- over Zoom.
"Here's what I've found. People are resistant when they hear about it. I've seen it three times in three different film festivals, so I got to speak with audiences. And the number of times that people said to me, 'When I heard about this, I didn't want to see it. But then after seeing it, I'm really glad I did,' " Mr. Hedges said from his home in Montauk.
We are in agreement on this. The idea of watching scenelets of real-life events that we are by now all horribly familiar with -- social isolation, home schooling, working from home, furloughed jobs, Cuomo news briefings, racial tension, the toll on essential workers, death, and universal suffering -- did not appeal. But then, watch it and you may experience a powerful detonation of a Proustian rush of memories and sensations from a unique moment in our lives. The 24 vignettes end up taking you on a sort of safari of human drama.
"Obviously it's pandemic-impacted because of how we shot it and when it's happening, but I hope that it transcends its moment and it becomes an exploration of people who have this ache to connect and what happens when we can't reach the people we most love," said the film's Oscar-nominated director, whose screenwriting credits include "What's Eating Gilbert Grape," "About a Boy," "The Odd Life of Timothy Green," and "Ben Is Back" -- all stories based on deeply human experiences.
The actors in "The Same Storm" really deliver as interconnected characters in vignettes that span the emotions from sorrow to hilarity. Mary-Louise Parker plays an online sex worker. Allison Pill is a schoolteacher with three brothers -- one gay and urbane, the other two MAGA-hat wearing Trump supporters. Sandra Oh stars as a mother isolating with her Covid-stricken husband in the Hamptons while their hyperactive adult son, who has clearly not taken his meds, is in their Brooklyn home. Noma Dumezweni, Judith Light, Moses Ingram, Danny Burstein, Ron Livingston, Rosemarie DeWitt, Raza Jaffrey, Daphne Rubin-Vega, and others are all superb, but none more than Elaine May, who, in her first acting role in 21 years, is stellar and heartbreakingly funny.
On a technical front, the film is a bold leap into the unknown. It was shot in the summer of 2020 via a videoconferencing platform (Webex by Cisco, a slightly higher form of Zoom), and the director said his primary concern was to ensure that everyone involved stayed safe. As such, actors had to be sent microphones, lighting, props, and makeup. Then they had to be instructed remotely by production designers, directors of photography, and prop supervisors on how to properly stage and light their homes, and by makeup artists on how to apply the stuff.
"There was such an ache to make something meaningful. And to make it in a meaningful way and have a meaningful experience," Mr. Hedges said of his cast and crew. "I was so surprised how game everyone was, how open and willing, how eager they were to just play along." He had met only six of the 24 actors before shooting -- "Either I went to school with them, or I'd worked with before," he said. He added that he's looking forward to meeting at least one more of the actors in person for the first time at the Hamptons Film Festival.
The idea to produce a lockdown film happened after Mr. Hedges watched a virtual reading by MCC Theater in New York City in April 2020 featuring Marisa Tomei and Oscar Isaac on Zoom. "They had no makeup, no lighting. They just were raw and real, and reacting to each other, and with each other. And it was one of the most cathartic experiences I've ever had in any art form," he explained. "I found myself weeping and inspired. That night I couldn't sleep so I got up and started writing what I thought would be a play."
Eventually, with the help of technology, he said he made "an untraditional film in an untraditional way. It was never going to look perfect or sound perfect. But it didn't have to be perfect, it just needed to be human."
Indeed, "The Same Storm" is a unique movie, like none other at this year's festival. There is a certain beauty in what the film reveals: that moviemaking happens not via some sort of magical telekinesis but by human communication and cooperation.
It will be screened on Monday at 2:30 p.m. at the East Hampton Cinema, with a discussion afterward.
