Portland Oregon, 2006.
A long shot with a kind of grunge music hovering over it of a distraught man's face.
A young man sits in a coffee house observing. A few people talk with a French man about politics. A businessman gets a call and must go away on urgent business. A woman closes her notebook and takes her coffee cup to the counter. The young man deftly moves and steals her computer.
On a Saturday morning a business executive sits listening to sports and gets a call canceling a game; his associate sits in a cubicle typing distractedly. The two have a conversation about the webpage, about a young man the worker has picked up "to help." The boss is revealed to be a Vietnam vet, and tells his associate he's a copyrighter, not a social worker and to get the young man out of his house.
The young man lounges around in a nice house, drinking whiskey and watching to TV. His host makes coffee and frets in the kitchen. He then comes to ask the young man to look harder for a job, to help keep the house clean, and he asks where his telephone card and I-pod are. The young man is angered. Later while the young man is on a massage lounger the copyrighter comes to tell him a long family story and then says he's missing an heirloom and he can no longer trust the man. The young man attacks, strangling him on the floor while cursing "fucking hadji" and leaves the man, perhaps dead.
The young man visits his home, sitting silently with his inarticulate parents. In a triptych reminiscent of a religious altar piece, the young man breaks down while his parents look incomprehendingly on offering a mute love, but the young man leaves.
The young man is seen under an overpass, homeless, with a young woman sleeping in his lap; he looks guardedly around, and then directly to the viewer.
Like its companion piece, HOMECOMING, this film is not a "plot" film, but rather a work of tonalities, its effects rise from more elemental qualities, akin to music or poetry, and while oblique in its methods the end effect is powerfully emotional.
2007 | Digital Video | Color | Sound | 76 minutes
Producer, Director, Camera: Jon Jost
Editing and Sound Recording: Jon Jost and Marcella Di Palo Jost
Music: Jost
With: Ryan Harper Gray, Stephen Taylor, Greg Tozian, Bibi Walton, Jerry Carlton, Karen Stockert, Jean Luc Boucherot, Matt Kayser, Marcella Di Palo Jost, Lauren Sands
Premiered: Rotterdam Film Festival 2008, Buenos Aires Indipendent Film Festival 2008, JIFF 2008
