Reflecting on 'The House of Mariana y Gabriel'

I rewatched the film a bit ago in order to jog my memory for this interview I'm about to do. I hadn't watched it in a good while, so it was good to watch it again. Like all of my films, it's certainly a timestamp of who I was and what I was going through at the time.

The party scene in particular still makes me cringe - for some reason I tend to write these big scenes but still don't really know how to time people dancing to eventually what the music ends up being. But for 'The Return' I was able to pull this off hopefully better, since the scene is a memory. 

Overall though I'm still fairly happy with THOMYG. I haven't had enough space from it still though in order for me to view it a bit more objectively. I do think the characters are solid, as well as the cinematography and production design - it was certainly my first fully envisioned film, which I can see onscreen. I still appreciate the completely non-verbal subtext of Mariana's struggle with her faith, which I hope that someone, somewhere, picked up on. It very much represents what I was going through myself at the time (once again), with Islam.  

I love that the film features some of my brother Fahad's music. It makes it even more personal. I don't think either of my bros have seen the film still. I want to watch it with them, though I know that they will act like my bros and probably drop annoying comments throughout, so perhaps it's better they watch without me and tell me later what they think :-D Let's see. It's too bad that we are all spread so far apart from each other, as they would've probably seen it by now otherwise perhaps, I like to think.

This also makes me think, that it's obviously a film about family, about siblings. A very different sibling situation from mine, but about siblings nonetheless, and to some extent all sibling dynamics do share some things in common perhaps. It's also a story about loss - which I would devastatingly experience myself, just some months after shooting the film and during it's editing. It's eerie, how much the grief and loss in THOMYG foreshadowed what I was about to experience myself - in a different way obviously, but again, grief and loss is extremely universal.

Rewatching the film does give me a lot of happy memories as its director. It's strange now that I look back, how much certain things were occupying my mind and thus the film. I'm glad I spilled it all in the film though, as I think it became stronger. But it took a lot out of me. And so did the next film, even more so. My editor on the current film told me that I make films in order to understand myself and the world, and she's completely right. It's why I have to keep making films, despite all of the difficulties - I have to get whatever I'm going through, out of me, and into this form. I just wonder if there's a way to do it where it doesn't have to be so draining each and every time.

Breaking

Documentaries can get away with almost anything. The form can be very loose. Fluid. Messy. Especially once you get in the arenas of hybrids, of exploring the grey space between what is supposedly fiction and non-fiction. "All stories are fiction", I have on a postcard near me. And at the same time, so much of fiction is based on truth, is grounded in reality. They really aren't that separate, or different - just like Democrats and Republicans, fiction films and documentaries have much more in common than they don't. 

But back to form itself. Doc films, hybrid films, are able to break form, and create new forms. They can almost do anything really. Fiction films on the other hand though, are much more limited. Much more straight and narrow. I see now that my previous film, a short fiction film "The House of Mariana y Gabriel", is my best example and attempt at making a so-called straight fictional film. 

What pushes it's edges are also though what makes it such a straight fiction film - the cinematography, sound, and production design, and the performances themselves, were all made to be as immersive as possible. Some of these elements lent themselves over to "enhanced realism" which me and my DP came up with, rather than just regular old realism - we tried to push it, to enhance it. And so the wide wide aspect ratio especially, which went hand in hand with the production design, with the use of colour. I'd say same with the sound design. Probably the most grounded element actually was the acting itself, coaxed by many rehearsals and discussions. All of this was part of my attempt to make the film as cinematic and immersive as possible, for the viewer to basically forget that they're even watching a film, for them to be completely sucked into the story and the lives of the characters.

I think I achieved that. That might sound cocky, but those were my goals, and I believe I achieved them.

However, I've since broken from that. "The Return" makes the viewer acutely aware that they are watching a film, of something that is created, and hopefully makes them wonder which parts may or may not be fabricated. The making of the film is in the film itself, and always has been, since day one. It had to be. Clearly then, I'm no longer going for complete immersion, or a perfection of cinema. The film is messy, fluid, and at times jarring, all purposefully so. I actively want the viewer to be jolted a bit, to be thrown off at times - not completely, just pushed a bit here and there.

And all of that is possible, since it isn't a conventional fictional film. Nor however, is it a conventional non-fiction film. Far from it, I hope. My goal was to break form, to basically do whatever the hell I want, thinking that eventually it will come together and work. I wouldn't call it experimental. It's not an experiment. It is still another example of controlled chaos.

So while doc films and hybrids are able to break form and create new forms - why can't fiction films? I believe that they can, and that's what I want to explore next. I hope that my next script and film, while being fiction, will still be able to break form in some way. I explored this a bit in a TV pilot that I wrote - why aren't multiple narratives possible? I believed they could be, and that's what I wrote. And that's what I hope to do for what I have in mind next, in some ways - showing how a fiction film doesn't have to stick to the straight and narrow. Non-linearity is now seen and accepted to some extent, but I want to go further than that. I want to continue to break things. And just do whatever the hell I want. Again, it's all purposeful, and isn't random. 

It's not even about what's this grey space, between non-fiction and fiction - maybe it is that, but furthering it. Thinking of time in different ways, but not just about non-linearity. How to examine a character, the same character, in more ways than one. I'm itching to write this thing. Which I will once "The Return" is finally in picture lock.

And the current film is what instigated all of this, this creative reset, completely triggered by a very upsetting, traumatic, and life-defining event. And when such an event happens again, I wonder if I'll be reset once more.