You have no idea what shock is in store for you when you watch the unexpectedly cosmic short Utility Poles, written and directed by Oner Macit. Rose Ham (Julia Rose) speaks on a voiceover about a recurring dream of a vision she doesn’t allow herself to see. Onscreen are images of Rose lying in a truck bed surrounded by lemons or standing between sheets hanging on clotheslines. The film then cuts to an interview with the police at the house of a professor (Rafy Sabry) over the disappearance of his wife, Rose. He tells the chief inspector (Juliette Malykh) and her rookie (Charlotte Bonn) that when his wife disappeared, she had started watching utility poles.
The chief inspector asked the professor why he had waited five days before reporting his wife’s absence. He told the two officers a story that took place a thousand years ago in Mesopotamia. Back then, a woman had started watching the stars. She told everyone that one night, there was a huge brightness that came from behind the sky. No one believed her, so she drew a picture of it on a cave wall…
“…a recurring dream of a vision she doesn’t allow herself to see.”
I watched this one twice, which isn’t usual. Utility Poles was confounding me with where it began versus where it ended up. Macit’s intentional minimalist styling of the first part of the short totally fooled me. The simple, slow tap of a piano key, while people sat in a living room talking, made my bloodstream slow down to the pace of still life. I openly wondered why Macit was keeping everything so simple and understated. By the time the camera was back with the clotheslines, I wished Macit would just go for it and reach for the stars.
The instant I gave up was when Macit ripped back the curtain and showed us the brightness behind the sky. It was everything I had just been wishing for. In the cosmic sequences of Utility Poles, Macit goes for it at a level very few others than Kubrick get. The music gets a lot more fantastic as well. I don’t think I would have appreciated the celestial panorama of the finale without the mundane diving board during the setup.
This is the kind of filmmaking that sets my eyelids on fire. Utility Poles have some of the best manipulations of expectation I have run into in a long time. Yes, it will infuriate you before it ignites, but that is all part of the grand design Macit has made in the stars.
"…the kind of filmmaking that sets my eyelids on fire."
