At this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, viewers waiting to see the premiere of In Your Eyes were shown a short video message from the film’s writer, Joss Whedon. He apologized for not being there (he was on the set of Age of Ultron in the video.) He hoped everyone enjoyed the film, and then casually mentioned that this wasn’t just the premiere of the film at Tribeca, it was the premiere of the film worldwide. It was available for anyone to rent from Vimeo for five dollars. Immediately.
The internet, of course, lost its collective mind.
I heard about it when BBC.com broke the news, and I didn’t even finish reading the article before I rented the video. I haven’t been able to shut up about it since.
Directed by Brin Hill, In Your Eyes is the story of Rebecca and Dylan. Rebecca is the shy, nervous wife of a New Hamshire doctor, and Dylan is a convict on parole in New Mexico. They have almost nothing in common except for the fact that they’re both quietly miserable, that kind of dragging unhappiness where you’re pretty sure what you need to do to change, but you keep talking yourself out of it. There’s always plenty of excuses to stay in a comfortable rut.
They get dumped out of that rut when a sudden shock opens up a connection between them; they can see out of each others eyes when they concentrate (and sometimes when they don’t concentrate) and feel what the other one is feeling. They can’t read each other’s minds, though they can pick up on emotions a little, so they have to talk out loud if they want the other one to hear them.
It turns out the connection has always been there, for at least twenty years, but it was just glimpses here and there, things they wrote off as dreams or mood swings. But they can have whole conversations now, and it’s probably not surprising that they don’t spend any time trying to figure out all the hows and whys of it. They’re having too much fun to really care.
Michael Stahl-David and Zoe Kazan, who play Dylan and Rebecca, were fantastic. Kazan broke my heart when she answered a compliment with an embarrassed “Don’t be ridiculous.” And Stahl-David is a master at playing a likeable guy who never grew out of hiding how smart he is from his friends. I forgot to think of them as actors, they’re so convincing as two people who are just delighted at the weirdness of their lives.
The supporting characters all have tons of depth, even if they’re only on the screen for a few minutes. And, in true Joss Whedon fashion, even the people you’re not supposed to like have something to redeem them. Dylan’s parole officer Giddons is a cynical hardass, but he only torments Dylan because he knows how smart he is, how much potential he’s already wasted and is probably going to keep wasting.
Donna, Dylan’s friend and possible date, is beautiful, shallow, and dumb. But she’s honest, and nice enough if she doesn’t have to work hard at it.
And Rebecca’s husband Phillip is controlling and spiteful, but you can see that in his manipulative way he loves her. Mark Feuerstein plays him with such a great balance of worry and condescension I almost liked him.
But in his first scene he looked at Rebecca, frowned, and said “Is that what you’re wearing?” and I knew it was okay to hate him.
The scenes are filmed beautifully. A lot of ideas came through without anybody needing to verbally explain them. Several times Rebecca or Dylan would stop to look at something beautiful or interesting, because they wanted to show it to the other one; in doing that, they’d really see it themselves for the first time. I loved how just camera angles and the actor’s expressions brought all that across, without it being trite or overblown.
It almost looks like Joss has stepped away from his usual “kickass female” character, because Rebecca is anything but strong or confident. But I think he’s just highlighting a different kind of strength; anything she does is in spite of massive insecurities, she has to work harder at everything because of them. It’s not a superhero strength, it’s an everyday one, which makes it more real and believable and impressive.
I loved Joss Whedon’s writing just as much as I always do; it doesn’t matter if he’s writing clever quips or heartfelt speeches, he’s got a beautiful command of the language.
Near the beginning of the movie, though, there were a few lines of dialogue that seemed a little, I don’t know, off. Like when Rebecca responds to teasing with “‘Ha, ha’ she said gamely.” Or when Phillip’s coworker says “Methinks the man doth protest too much.” There’s nothing technically wrong with the lines (and I appreciate a Shakespeare quote as much as the next book geek), and certainly all the actors in the movie do a great job. But a few lines seemed a little too self-aware somehow, like they were trying too hard.
I’m starting to think that was intentional. For one, “self-aware” is a huge hallmark of Whedon’s work, and I’ve always enjoyed how he’ll make a line of dialog almost wink at the viewer, a little elbow to the ribs that says “See what I did there?”
I think that “trying too hard” was one of the major plot points of the movie. Everyone’s doing it, everyone’s putting all this effort into being something or someone other than who they are.
One of the happier people in the movie is pretty, vapid Donna, because she’s not trying to be anything at all; I certainly didn’t respect her, or even like her, but in her few scenes I really envied how content and comfortable she was. I’m sure it helps that she’s gorgeous, but she honestly isn’t smart enough to try to be anything she’s not.
Dylan and Rebecca only started being happy when they forgot about all the people around them, forgot trying to impress husbands or bosses, forgot to even try and look “normal.” They stopped caring that people were looking at them sideways as they carried on conversations with invisible people.
I never like to watch people embarrass themselves, and I’m hyper-sensitive to scenes where someone acts like a crazy person and doesn’t know it, so I was really worried that the “talking to thin air” scenes would make me uncomfortable. Surprisingly, they didn’t bother me. I think it’s because of how much fun Dylan and Rebecca are having, how happy they are to hear from each other. They really don’t mind that they look crazy, even when it starts to have some pretty awful consequences.
It’s a film written by Joss Whedon, and that means you can never be sure any character is safe. During one scene I really did forget to breathe, the suspense was that intense.
Releasing In Your Eyes through vimeo immediately, and so inexpensively, was an experiment for Joss, and I hope it’s a successful one. At less than two hours it’s free of the “wretched excess” of the three-hour-long blockbusters we’ve seen lately, but there’s so much care taken with the story, filming, and acting, it’d be worth a twelve-dollar ticket at a theater. With any luck the tiny amount viewers pay to see it will add up to a huge paycheck, so Joss can continue turning out perfect little gems like this one.
I don’t know when the man manages to sleep, but I certainly appreciate the result.