Chris Knipp
08-15-2024, 11:17 AM
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PAUL RACI, GRAND ROSENMEYER IN THE SECRET ART OF HUMAN FLIGHT
H.P. MENDOZA: THE SECRET ART OF HUMAN FLIGHT (2023)
Quirky indie pic relates grieving and self-development
Here is a sweet little movie about a young man dealing with terrible grief that takes an appealing left turn. The idea comes up crabwise: a thirty-something man whose young wife and coauthor of children's books suddenly dies, and he is inconsolable. But then he gets onto the dark web following up on something he saw on a TikTok video and sends for an expensive guide to something implausible. The guide comes, it turns out, with a longhaired cove called Mealworm, Paul Raci of The Sound of Metal (https://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4561) and lately, Sing Sing. Mealworm travels in a Winnebago and knows what grieving a wife is like. Note: this movie does not endorse making purchases on the dark web or jumping off cliffs. It merely envisions these activities as possible.
Mealworm becomes a sort of sensei for Ben (Grant Rosenmeyer) and Raci is the main reason to watch this film: this preternaturally composed and precise nutcase is its oddball center. But movie making is a collective enterprise, and The Secret Art of Human Flight would not exist without other key contributors, particularly young Jesse Orenshein, the author of the screenplay, an Orthodox Jew who is recently married with two little girls and the self-published author of, at a recent count, fifteen children's books whose titles include The Storm, whose cover is held up by Ben in the movie, andMy Grandma Is a Spy. And from the videos you'll see on his IMDb page of his muscular and enthusiastic participation on the American Ninja Warrior reality show, Jesse is athletic and upbeat. Yes, Jesse's writing is scattershot and borderline twee, but it has charm, honesty and hope, and it is the movie. Peter Debruge in his Variety review (https://variety.com/2023/film/reviews/the-secret-art-of-human-flight-review-1235637476/)comments that this is the kind of movie "you can imagine Michel Gondry wanting to direct," but we're lucky that queer Filipino filmmaker H.P. Mendoza "holds the reins" instead so it doesn't go too far off the rails.
Ben isn't a Jewish superman like Jesse, whose Ninja Warrior team moniker is Mazal Tough. Ben is a bit of a schlub, and though he's a Jew it's somewhat downplayed. He says of himself - a sort of Orthodox joke, that he's "Jew-ish," i.e. low keyed about it. He has a worried sister, Gloria (Lucy DeVito) with a husband, Tom (Nican Robinson), who is black and a cop. There is another woman cop (Rosa Arredondo) who turns up implying that Ben may be suspected of homicide for insurance. There's a lovely neighbor lady, Wendy (Maggie Grace), who also knows about losing a spouse and she is the one who confirms the idea that finding some crazy project and following it through to completion is a way to combat grief.
A weakness of Orenshein's writing is that this is a two-hander that relies on the spice provided by secondary characters who gather around Ben without taking much shape.
Yet in a way this works because the point of Mealworm's crazy program to teach Ben how to fly is that it distracts him from absorption in himself and his unbearable, incomprehensible sorrow and helps him come through to the other side. And in order to do this he must deflect the conventional sympathizers who are really only well-meaning static who don't matter till he gets his head straight and goes through the testing hoops set up by Mealworm. In the role of Mealworm Raci has a calm and precision that cut through the silliness on screen like a gentle knife through butter.
And perhaps a more essential element than the people around Ben is this picture's mix of visuals. A stage for quirky ordinariness is provided by the use of academy ratio with curved corners. There are frequent videos of Ben and his late wife Sarah (Reina Hardesty, who is beautiful and, on tape, full of life) that they made for each other for just such a case as this, when one of them is gone. From these and from neighbors is comes clear that all was not perfect between Ben and Sarah, and he had been shut down for a whole before her sudden death.
The training program Ben has bought into from his guru calls for a revamping of his environment, his own body, and his mind. The psychic trip is aided by a tea brewed from a bag of Psilocybin mushrooms. At this point alarm bells are going off and it emerges from Ben's surrounding crew, well-meaning or not, that Mealworm, not his real name, has a questionable past. But that's the point. Ben must commit, he must take risks, he must trust even in the face of doubt.
All this is flavored with a dash of humor. The beauty of Flight is that we don't know quite where we are. The final moments, eased by the mushrooms scene, take a bold turn turn in the direction of fantasy and transformation. This is a film that asks us to laugh and dream and hope. It gets a little mushy at times. But there is deep irony too in the fact that both Mealworm and Ben wind up being punished by the powers that be for their spiritual explorations. It's been suggested, unfairly, that this is the kind of not-so-great indie picture that would have made its investment back at the box office before Landmark Theaters started to go bankrupt. It would be better if there was more of Ben and Mealworm's bizarre Karate Kid relationship and the secondary characters were sharpened up and cut back. The female cop, though the best irony, is also a bit of a downer and a red herring. But there's the strong thread of an original idea here, the linking of grieving and self-development, that works. The title may be one that lingers in the mind as well.
The Secret Art of Human Flight, 107 mins., debuted at Tribeca Jun. 8, 2023. A dozen other little US festivals. US theatrical release Jul. 5, 2024; further and internet Aug. 3, 2024.
PAUL RACI, GRAND ROSENMEYER IN THE SECRET ART OF HUMAN FLIGHT
H.P. MENDOZA: THE SECRET ART OF HUMAN FLIGHT (2023)
Quirky indie pic relates grieving and self-development
Here is a sweet little movie about a young man dealing with terrible grief that takes an appealing left turn. The idea comes up crabwise: a thirty-something man whose young wife and coauthor of children's books suddenly dies, and he is inconsolable. But then he gets onto the dark web following up on something he saw on a TikTok video and sends for an expensive guide to something implausible. The guide comes, it turns out, with a longhaired cove called Mealworm, Paul Raci of The Sound of Metal (https://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4561) and lately, Sing Sing. Mealworm travels in a Winnebago and knows what grieving a wife is like. Note: this movie does not endorse making purchases on the dark web or jumping off cliffs. It merely envisions these activities as possible.
Mealworm becomes a sort of sensei for Ben (Grant Rosenmeyer) and Raci is the main reason to watch this film: this preternaturally composed and precise nutcase is its oddball center. But movie making is a collective enterprise, and The Secret Art of Human Flight would not exist without other key contributors, particularly young Jesse Orenshein, the author of the screenplay, an Orthodox Jew who is recently married with two little girls and the self-published author of, at a recent count, fifteen children's books whose titles include The Storm, whose cover is held up by Ben in the movie, andMy Grandma Is a Spy. And from the videos you'll see on his IMDb page of his muscular and enthusiastic participation on the American Ninja Warrior reality show, Jesse is athletic and upbeat. Yes, Jesse's writing is scattershot and borderline twee, but it has charm, honesty and hope, and it is the movie. Peter Debruge in his Variety review (https://variety.com/2023/film/reviews/the-secret-art-of-human-flight-review-1235637476/)comments that this is the kind of movie "you can imagine Michel Gondry wanting to direct," but we're lucky that queer Filipino filmmaker H.P. Mendoza "holds the reins" instead so it doesn't go too far off the rails.
Ben isn't a Jewish superman like Jesse, whose Ninja Warrior team moniker is Mazal Tough. Ben is a bit of a schlub, and though he's a Jew it's somewhat downplayed. He says of himself - a sort of Orthodox joke, that he's "Jew-ish," i.e. low keyed about it. He has a worried sister, Gloria (Lucy DeVito) with a husband, Tom (Nican Robinson), who is black and a cop. There is another woman cop (Rosa Arredondo) who turns up implying that Ben may be suspected of homicide for insurance. There's a lovely neighbor lady, Wendy (Maggie Grace), who also knows about losing a spouse and she is the one who confirms the idea that finding some crazy project and following it through to completion is a way to combat grief.
A weakness of Orenshein's writing is that this is a two-hander that relies on the spice provided by secondary characters who gather around Ben without taking much shape.
Yet in a way this works because the point of Mealworm's crazy program to teach Ben how to fly is that it distracts him from absorption in himself and his unbearable, incomprehensible sorrow and helps him come through to the other side. And in order to do this he must deflect the conventional sympathizers who are really only well-meaning static who don't matter till he gets his head straight and goes through the testing hoops set up by Mealworm. In the role of Mealworm Raci has a calm and precision that cut through the silliness on screen like a gentle knife through butter.
And perhaps a more essential element than the people around Ben is this picture's mix of visuals. A stage for quirky ordinariness is provided by the use of academy ratio with curved corners. There are frequent videos of Ben and his late wife Sarah (Reina Hardesty, who is beautiful and, on tape, full of life) that they made for each other for just such a case as this, when one of them is gone. From these and from neighbors is comes clear that all was not perfect between Ben and Sarah, and he had been shut down for a whole before her sudden death.
The training program Ben has bought into from his guru calls for a revamping of his environment, his own body, and his mind. The psychic trip is aided by a tea brewed from a bag of Psilocybin mushrooms. At this point alarm bells are going off and it emerges from Ben's surrounding crew, well-meaning or not, that Mealworm, not his real name, has a questionable past. But that's the point. Ben must commit, he must take risks, he must trust even in the face of doubt.
All this is flavored with a dash of humor. The beauty of Flight is that we don't know quite where we are. The final moments, eased by the mushrooms scene, take a bold turn turn in the direction of fantasy and transformation. This is a film that asks us to laugh and dream and hope. It gets a little mushy at times. But there is deep irony too in the fact that both Mealworm and Ben wind up being punished by the powers that be for their spiritual explorations. It's been suggested, unfairly, that this is the kind of not-so-great indie picture that would have made its investment back at the box office before Landmark Theaters started to go bankrupt. It would be better if there was more of Ben and Mealworm's bizarre Karate Kid relationship and the secondary characters were sharpened up and cut back. The female cop, though the best irony, is also a bit of a downer and a red herring. But there's the strong thread of an original idea here, the linking of grieving and self-development, that works. The title may be one that lingers in the mind as well.
The Secret Art of Human Flight, 107 mins., debuted at Tribeca Jun. 8, 2023. A dozen other little US festivals. US theatrical release Jul. 5, 2024; further and internet Aug. 3, 2024.