Institute History
Description
Wayne has a job, a wife, two kids, and a house. He's living the American Dream. There’s a fine line, however, between a dream and nightmare, and Wayne finds himself at odds with the life he has and preoccupied by the life he thinks he wants. He floats passively in a swirling sea inhabited by his emotionally unpredictable wife, his out-of-control young children, and his embattled friends, who have demons of their own. As things change for others, Wayne's life takes emotional turns, which are sometimes subtle and sometimes violent but never enough to shake him off the track he doesn't remember choosing.
Writer/director Frazer Bradshaw returns to Sundance (his short, Every Day Here, played at the 2000 Festival) with an exquisitely rendered, but challengingly bleak, examination of daily life. He focuses the story in unique ways that draw attention more intently to the emotional and psychological interplay of ideas, rather than following a narrative arc. Bradshaw, an established cinematographer, frames the world in beautifully composed shots that emphasize Wayne's trapped existence. To underline the moral anomie of the disturbingly familiar universe, he utilizes a jarring, dissonant score at times and moments of silence in others.
Everything Strange and New is the kind of transcendent filmmaking that develops a cinematic language all its own, and in doing so opens viewers up to themselves.