THE VAST OF NIGHT (2019)
I'm glad that I decided to spend an evening with this quiet, minimalist sci-fi film. An Amazon Original, The Vast of Night is set in 1958 in the fictional town of Cayuga, New Mexico. A switchboard operator and her disc jockey buddy are faced with a strange signal, a dismaying frequency that obstructs radio transmissions. They labor to get to the bottom of it, and they do, but very little actually happens until we make it to the resolution. By hook or by crook (or perhaps by gobbledygook), that isn't a bad thing. I was so immersed in the arcane plot and nimble dialogue, that I wasn't nonplussed by the lack of action.
First-time director Andrew Patterson must be a wunderkind. Vast is visually sublime, especially those night-time exteriors. The long takes are flipping brilliant. I loved the "scene" where the camera roves around all of Cayuga. Apparently, it was accomplished by sewing four shots together with CGI, but what do I care? The cast is terrific. Almost everything is terrific. I'm raving, but this isn't a perfect picture. The bits with the elderly woman feel pointless in hindsight. She didn't add layers of intrigue to the storyline, and that's what the inclusion of her character seemed to promise. Eh, you can't win 'em all. You can watch The Vast of Night, though!
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