An Unfinished Film Review (2024 Toronto Film Festival)
Looking back over the last ten years, I realize there are many projects I started but never finished. I feel this is a part of life. There are only so many minutes in a day and so many days in a year. With everything competing for our time, it’s only natural that some things fall by the wayside.
At the start of An Unfinished Film, the story is about completing those unfinished works. It’s 2019, and we see a group of filmmakers loading up an old Apple Mac computer. On the computer is a film from ten years ago that was never completed. The director wants to finish the project and successfully gets everyone on board. We then jump to January 2020, as they are wrapping up the reshoots. Everything changes when they hear reports of Wuhan going into lockdown and the spread of a virus that could potentially infect the crew.
An Unfinished Film is a docufiction film that blends documentary filmmaking with narrative elements. The camera, in a way, becomes a character. We witness events unfold as if we are flies on the wall—always present but never able to interfere.
From the moment An Unfinished Film begins, we immediately sense that finishing the film in January 2020 is bound to end in disaster. We already know what the onset of COVID-19 was like and how our normal lives changed in an instant. Watching the cast go from the stress of trying to catch the next flight home as rumours begin to spread, to eventually being trapped in their hotel, is both gripping and terrifying.
Though not a horror film, An Unfinished Film is the scariest movie I’ve seen this year.
The documentary style of filmmaking enhances the experience. It adopts a street-level approach, and as things start to go wrong, the harsh camera whips and shaky aesthetics mirror the chaos unfolding. This adds a layer of realism to the film but also highlights one of my biggest issues: the documentary approach, in my opinion, is not consistently followed. It feels more like a regular narrative feature shot and presented in a documentary style. This may seem nit-picky, but if it’s meant to look like a documentary, why am I questioning the inclusion of screen-recorded video calls?
This transition occurs in the narrative as well. We witness the horrors of the pandemic and how many people died, but only two members of the crew contract COVID, and we either never hear about them again or they turn out fine. The tragedy is visible, yet it never directly affects the main characters. What does impact them, however, is the isolation. We see them miss their loved ones, eat terrible hotel food, and struggle with the fact that they can’t even visit someone just one room away. The isolation grinds them down, making them feel like prisoners. It’s harrowing and incredibly effective.
We also see real footage of people during the pandemic. The use of this footage serves as a powerful reminder of how deeply the pandemic affected everyone. The film offers a compelling portrayal of how the pandemic shaped our lives, though it has some presentation issues. However, I feel this is a minor concern that likely only bothers me. Overall, An Unfinished Film is a haunting reflection on a significant moment in modern history.
★★★★
Drama | China/Singapore, 2024 | NC | Toronto Film Festival 2024 | Dir. Lou Ye | Hao Qin, Xiaorui Mao, Xi Qi, Xuan Huang, Ming Liang
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