That Evening Sun (Scott Teems, 2009)

That Evening Sun (Teems, 2009)

Isn’t it interesting that sometimes you can watch a movie, and imagine if only the director shifted his camera and POV a bit, from one character to another, or from one moment of the film’s story to another, and suddenly you have a complete different perspective on the story?

It’s easy to side with the old man, at first. He “escapes” from his old folks home and returns to his farm. But he suddenly realizes that his lawyer son, due to having power of attorney, has rented out his house and farm to a young family. The young family, headed by a lazy, rude, bastard, drunk all the time, and incapable of running the farm.

The old man, angry and hurt by his son’s action, refuses to accept the legal document, and wants to challenge the new home owners. His big-shot lawyer son just wants to put the man back in the house.

But just like the home conflict in "House of Sand and Fog”, who do we really side with when both parties seem to have the same right, if not legal, at least moral, to the same home. The new homeowner beats his daughter in one scene, but at another scene, the wife tells the old man, how he has been trying to change, and this home is like a new start for them. So, even if he is a bastard, if the camera shifts its POV to only him, can we not applaud his attempt at changing himself for the better, but his efforts are undermined by a grumpy old man who refuses to leave the land he has legally rented? Or how about the son, when he mentions to his father, that he used to be mean to both his mother (now dead) and him? What if the story was about him, couldn’t we better understand his attempt to not indulge his old father’s every whim?

Every story has so many angles, that when we complain that movies repeat the same story, you think, so what? What if they even repeat the exact same story, but from a different perspective, how easily would we have a brand new film.

4/5