At the turn of the millennium, an ever-so-slight quake occurred. Its referred to as Chuck and it is Alex Turner’s debut film. As can be expected, Chuck is by no means perfect but, all things considered in respect to the genre of short film, the work is an outstanding effort on many levels. However, the most important facet of Turner’s outing is that it signaled a very quickly maturing cinematic talent.
Baltimore, 1966: A door-to-door salesman named Chuck (Harris Mann) offers his periodical wares to small town clients, oftentimes in lieu of their behest.
Unlike most freshmen ditties, Turner displays a ready and consistent patience with his work, beginning with the opening frame. We slowly, gradually pan back as the constraint of the camera gives way to our titular character. However, cinematic serenity is only one of many surprising, revealing points of interest in a work of alarming prowess.
Turner’s depiction of Chuck, a knee-jerk reaction and caricature of the clean-on-in-outside, impure-and-stagnant-on-the-inside decade, is sallied forth by the director’s stunningly conscientious attention to detail. In a medium in which the serial killer is the most frequent prototype, Turner manages not only to present us with a very realistic, disconcertingly authentic portrayal of the wavering mind, he does so with knowing control.
After Turner pauses to allow Chuck to engage in calisthenics before setting out to “work,” we travel down the road to the next potential customer on Chuck’s docket. Cleverly, in lieu of a big budget in which to peel back four decades, the director’s editorial sensibilities permit us to naturalistically travel down a 1960s Maryland township without pause. By the finale of Chuck, the innocence of a door-to-door salesmen and of elderly women in aprons making fresh baked brownies seems, not only genuine, but solely missed, thus creating a dichotomy of sorts given what we have just witnessed.
It is such instances as these that make Chuck so startling, both as a film and as a character, for–discreetly–the salesman prattles on nervously as he earnestly (or–the real gem–perhaps no) defends “linear culture.” For many, the sequence might appear arbitrary and overlong but Turner is mindful that, without his insane ramblings, the figure could be seen as being the mere victim to crunched scheduling via corporate greed in a field which was quickly dwindling. As such, in a scene in which Chuck unevenly, yet consistently, upholds vocal communication in an era of ever-increasing reliance upon electronic and print discourse, we come to realize that the salesman is in a world onto his own, created and sponsored by no one person or thing except the individual attempting to contend with the discrepancy of the world around him and the one in which he lives.
Almost overwhelmingly given the medium of short film, Chuck also evidences another talent: Peter Lopez’s sound. The aural engineer’s delightful implementation of repetition of waifs of noise, subtle resonations, and reverse fade-ins lend largely to the foreboding atmosphere and character which is Chuck.
Like a veteran filmmaker, Alex Turner offers no answers while posing several valuable, worthwhile questions over the course of (only) a quarter of an hour. Not only does he provide his audience with an eerie, Lynchian depiction of the era and the culture, but he posits the possibility that Chuck may or may not be in control of his senses. As such, though both potentialities offer differing verdicts upon the character, Turner forbids the haunting consequences to be nonetheless withstanding.
-Egregious Gurnow
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- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
