Following his penchant for explorations in real-time, but not necessarily realistic adventure films, writer/director Gregory Hatanaka delivers Sudden Light, a tense, lean, deeply weird action thriller. Martin (Chris Spinelli) and Kathleen (Lisa London) witness an act of violence that draws them into a situation they do not understand, and can’t escape. They are meeting in a music studio when a man they don’t know enters and collapses on the floor, dead. The two must survive an ever-increasing swirl of dangerous people and threats as the night goes on. Conspiracies abound as they navigate the situation.
When the film hits its pace, a series of bizarre events and thoughts explode into focus. We meet a military officer who can prognosticate future events by consuming licorice. There are intrigues and tense chases onboard a train. There is a mid-film music video break in which the characters dance, and Martin flashes back to happier times. Some narration occurs in Japanese with subtitles. There’s a fight sequence on the train that looks like a pantomime of a fight, slo-mo, with strange, repeated video game-style sound effects.
One wonders if the chaos is intentional, or perhaps Sudden Light was a film built in the edit? Either way, your head will spin trying to keep up with the action and the machine-gun stream of disconnected ideas and random dialogue. If one tried to watch a movie while waking up from anesthesia, this might be what you’d see. Spinelli proves himself up to the job of representing this madness, navigating his performance with as much cohesion as possible.
“… a man they don’t know enters the music studio and collapses on the floor, dead …”
Hatanaka is not interested in linear storytelling with omniscient observers explaining the script, favoring a first-person approach in which the viewer is experiencing events as the characters do, in real time, without understanding what is happening. It all happens in the context of magical realism, where events occur that are not possible in the real world. This makes for challenging viewing, as not only do we not know what’s going on, nor why, but once it’s clear that fanciful, unrealistic things can happen, the ability to grasp the flow of the narrative is severely curtailed. Characters seem to be speaking in nonsensical stream-of-consciousness musings. Hatanake is certainly capable of more conventional filmmaking. He directed Until the Night, starring Norman Reedus, but is also responsible for other strange cinematic excursions like Samurai Cop 2: Deadly Vengeance. Whatever mind-altering substances Hatanaka is using to achieve this dizzying derangement of the senses, it is a powerful mojo.
There’s an almost Lynchian aspect to Sudden Light, but it falls short of generating that level of dark, compelling fascination. This is, rather, pure mayhem. The viewer will need a great deal of patience to hang in for the whole film. As the credits roll, anyone insisting on cause-and-effect will certainly be wondering WTF just happened. This experience is more about tone and emotion than strictly hewing to reality. If one can relax into it, this is a fun ride through a surreal world.
Learn more at the official Sudden Light website.
"…a fun ride through a surreal world."
