For the two decades I've known filmmaker Bryan Enk (so, no, this will not be an impartial review), I've been impressed by, among other things, the sinister energies he finds inside everyday spaces. This is something he shares with a number of filmmakers whose influence is apparent, but the energies Bryan has mined are very specific. His earlier work was informed a kind of perception that imaginative suburban kids seem particularly able to cultivate. Happily this perception remains a key part of Bryan's aesthetic; though it shares aspects with the territory charted by other filmmakers, the surreal world just a little right turn from our own is informed in Bryan's work by a particular Bowling-Green-after-dark vibe that is all his own.
That it resonates so thickly in THE PASSION OF PAUL ROSS is hardly surprising. This decades-later sequel to
the four-part surreal horror opus PINK COFFINS sees Bryan returning to Bowling Green, taking stock of where he came from and chasing that familiar vibration into deeper territory. That energy is colored by the growth and depth of the intervening years, and Bryan's process has grown and sharpened as well. Low-budget though it is, PASSION is a work of confidence and assurance. If turning a Days Inn hotel room into a set for a third of the movie was an action borne out of necessity, it doesn't even register thanks to the ingenuity with which it's placed in the story, and how disorienting a place it is as rendered thru Bryan's lens.
About a third of the way thru the doomed singer Natalie (an effectively world weary Amy Beth Coup) relates her experience of "a place, a place that shows you things. Things that might seem nice but aren't really there. The place lies. It lets you think everything is okay but it isn't." The passage feels like a summing up of The Story So Far, and feels like a description of the setting for every movie Bryan has made, from the delightful dorm room Draculas of his college days to his immensely powerful
Manhattan-set corporate MacBETH. (It's also as concise and poetic a definition of Cinema as I can recall Bryan offering in his work.)
But even inside such a fraught liminal zone, mapped throughout by the dreams and stories related by its inhabitants, we feel a storyteller taking stock of life and work so far. It is the work of an older, wiser person returned, weighing options, held down by the past and learning what he should (indeed, must) let go and finding, in the process, that some things are best held tightly. Much of this process happens before our eyes, as the title character (a mainly slowburning, but intently perceptive, Steve Bishop) navigates a purgatory built as much by his own estrangement as by the otherworldly people passing through it.
It's an intricate and surreal head-trip with heavier things on its mind: aging, misspent youth, the pressure to wake up and act before it (whatever it is) is too late. Happily, it's also as playful as many of Bryan's other works, his sense of humor manifesting in references to GHOSTBUSTERS, EVIL DEAD, DISTURBING BEHAVIOR (and even 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, for chrissakes). A number of familiar faces and voices play thru, echoing back to PINK COFFINS. Among the new faces Becky Byers strikes the most powerful impression as Amity; she has both the otherworldly intensity and unique physiognomy particularly favored among many of Bryan's most indelible characters, and brings a new darkly playful (and completely appropriate) spirit to the table.
Given the resonance that my years with PINK COFFINS brings to the movie, I'm curious to imagine how it plays as one's first exposure to Bryan's work.
That body of work continues to grow - I'm curious to see what form BLOOD DAUGHTER will take, and where Bryan goes after the sublime resolution to THE PASSION OF PAUL ROSS. Take the trip. Treat yourself.
