It took me a while to process this film before giving a review, and it's not a big surprise. To say that Whammy Alcazaren's Islands is an experimental film is an understatement: the plot has no conventional structure, many scenes are totally silent, and some linger on for far too long. After watching the film for the first time I was bored out of my mind, but later retrospection of the film's elements made me think a little bit more about what it was trying to say.
The film is a treatise on love, more specifically the type of love that tries to break out of the surface to try to reach someone else. The characters in the four segments are themselves islands, trapped within metaphorical islands either of their own creation, or beyond their own control. By the last segment things get meta as the movie reflects on its own actions so far.
There's a certain kind of giddiness in the way the film portrays its subject matter. It's kind of like your first ever confession of love: often awkward, hesitant, and most of the time it doesn't turn out the way we want it to. We try, like the filmmaker, to co-opt these other images and moments in time to make our own declarations of love. We post song lyrics, we make poems, we do whatever we can to express love. Bu does it reach the intended target the way we want it to?
There's dazzling poetry hidden in Islands, but it takes a lot of patience to slog through it all.
There's a certain kind of giddiness in the way the film portrays its subject matter. It's kind of like your first ever confession of love: often awkward, hesitant, and most of the time it doesn't turn out the way we want it to. We try, like the filmmaker, to co-opt these other images and moments in time to make our own declarations of love. We post song lyrics, we make poems, we do whatever we can to express love. Bu does it reach the intended target the way we want it to?
There's dazzling poetry hidden in Islands, but it takes a lot of patience to slog through it all.
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