Heat and Sunlight (DVD)

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In film, sometimes the artifice is more interesting than the arc of character or narration. That's certainly the case with independent filmmaker Rob Nilsson's "Heat and Sunlight," a black-and-white entry which won the Grand Jury Prize at the 1988 Sundance Film Festival.

It's a film that Nilsson admitted would not have even made it into the festival now. "Today," the avant-garde filmmaker said, "the observation of all aspects of human contact, the suffering, the joys, and the sorrows of humanity, that's not particularly in vogue at Sundance." And that's what "Heat and Sunlight" is all about: observation, rather than narration.

It's quintessential Direct Action Cinema—an aesthetic and style of filmmaking advocated by Nilsson which deemphasizes story/narrative and the role of the director. The goal is to create drama from character and circumstance while seeking emotional depth and street-level authenticity. Rather than shooting from a detailed script and with imperious direction, Nilsson meets with his "players" (he refuses to call them actors, because he often uses real people, or "civilians") to discuss a core situation. Then it's up to the players to improvise while the camera rolls. The goal is to "build drama from this dynamic closer to the way life happens to us and we happen back."

Direct Action Cinema is pretty radical, insomuch as it challenges the assumption that narrative is important. For that reason alone, "Heat and Sunlight" won't appeal to a mainstream audience raised on stories and craving action. In a sense, because the players are assuming roles that they are familiar with, or which come close to their own experiences, Direct Action Cinema predates the idea of so-called reality television and filmmaking. It's fiction insomuch as there's a core script and situation that the players explore, but it's documentary to the degree that the filmmaker and his camera observe and document the players' improvisations rather than directing them.

Before there was "24," Nilsson was making "16." In "Heat and Sunlight," Nilsson cast himself as photojournalist Mel Hurley, who arrives home from a shoot days before his birthday expecting to see his lover at the airport. But she's apparently unsure about their relationship and has become infatuated with someone else. She's gone, and over the next 16 hours, a brooding and self-pitying Hurley wallows in misery while torturing himself with mental and emotional flashbacks of their relationship. "Why do the people we love the most cause us the most pain?" he asks. "Why does the praying mantis devour her mate in the middle of making love?" Yes, there's a certain amount of pretentiousness to Hurley's "STELL-A"-like rants.

He arranges erotic photos he took of her all over his apartment, as if to refill the emptiness with her. But—and here's where it gets strange—he also juxtaposes those images against shots of starving children that he took when he was hired to call the public's attention to the casualties and horrors of the Biafran War some 20 years ago. The juxtapositions invite interpretation, but ultimately serve only to underscore the fact that Hurley isn't a terribly likable character. If he's subconsciously likening the casualties of war and the suffering of those starving children to his own emotional devastation, and his own suddenly passion-starved life, he'll get no sympathy from many viewers. Then again, Nilsson would say that it's more important for a character to be honest than likable (click here for an exclusive DVD Town interview).

Hurley sulks and pouts and tries to interact and bond with friends (Don Bajema and Ernie Fosselius), but there's no denying the depth of his hurt, and no escaping it until he decides to track his lover down and confront her, to try to get her back. Actress Consuelo Faust takes on the difficult role of Carmen, Hurley's lover—difficult, because the improvisations turn torrid, with full-nudity lovemaking, as the pair explores the fine line between love and hate, and between sex and violence. Hence, we suspect, finally, the connection to those Biafran War photographs.

Nilsson is fond of harsh-angle close-ups and quick cuts from person to person and even body part to body part. It's a distinctive style that, in this case, is certainly compatible with the emotional fragmentation of the main character and the bits and pieces of the love affair that Hurley tries to reconstruct in his mind, and rebuild, albeit frantically. It's also a style that's compatible with the minnow-like darting of emotional tangents that swim throughout the narrative: laughter, depression, anger, jealousy, love, hate, sexual arousal, sexual pain.