Underrated Gems: Living in Oblivion

 

        This film is the ideal representation of making a movie. Including all the pains and struggles that come with it when you’re dealing with a variety of personalities on the set. Living in Oblivion represents that and amplifies it where you probably don’t want to be a film director. Or be involve in any artistic medium. SPOILERS will appear. 

1. Nick Reve

        Steve Buscemi steals the movie and plays director Nick Reve. He’s making the movie Living in Oblivion, what is it about, well we’re not told. Mostly it involves actress Nicole played by Catherine Keener in the three scenes that we see. As we delve into the scene, usually they end up in disaster. This is where we see Nick as a Jekyll and Hyde kind of person. With any inconvenience, he tries to prep the actors. As more problems progress he just absolutely loses it. 

        I don’t blame him since the scenes that the crew are shooting are intimate and the set is really not that big. None of that matters since Nick is constantly hounded by a boom mic getting in the frame to his mom walking into the set by accident. One thing that makes him likeable though is that he is open to changing how the scene is shot to the line exchange. Although, he is very specific on what camera technique to use. 

        One thing that makes him grey is him being honest with the actors he’s working with, For instance, when shooting with eccentric actor Chad Palomino, Nick tries to calm him down by agreeing with him that working with Nicole is a pain. It mostly paints him as a kiss-ass to his actors and not really being honest. I can understand since he wants everybody to be cooperative, but what makes it worse is that Nicole overhears the conversation between Nick and Chad through a boom mic that is live. 

2. 3 Scenes and Frustration

        Aside from Nick’s flip flopping in anger levels, the three scenes in the movie acts like the usual dramatic three act structure. I honestly thought that the whole film was in black and white. Then when the scene is shooting, it’s in color. It has a jarring effect when one inconvenience from the film crew makes Nick to shout cut and we’re back in the monotone view. What I love is that with each error, the anger grows not with Nick but with the producer Wanda. She has just this dictator vibe since when there’s outside interference, she is cussing to the outside crew to ensure silence. 

        Nothing is worse than an actor who constantly offers the director changes in shot direction and just be an overall jackass. Chad Palomino is that guy, full of ego that it can fill up a hot air balloon. Compounding the situation is that he slept with Nicole before the shooting of an intimate scene. Every time the scene is cut, he wants his character to wear an eye patch. Since he saw the camera man Wolf wear one. Overall, he is just insufferable and gets his comeuppance when Nicole offers a suggestion that they shoot the scene and have the dialogue be improv. It’s satisfying what happens to him. 

        The basic idea of the whole film centers on this one thing Nick learns how to deal with the constant drama as we see the last scene being shot. Just roll with it is the quote. He tells it to Nicole since both of them have dreams where the shooting just go south. That saying is applicable since with what we seen and pretty much what we do gets frustrating. It’s more or less a moral to how to handle the little things that set us off. Eventually, Nick decides to not just be pestered by the actor’s ego and to really just let things happen. 

        One scene is really interesting and it occurs after they shoot the final scene we see. The camera dollies the characters, to probably symbolize what they seen and went through to shoot a movie. We get small moments where we see Nick getting an award, Nicole being a waitress, and Nick’s mom who was visiting the set, in a hospital. The shot messed me up since it appears that she goes through a door. It’s pretty morbid considering what she did in Nick’s film shoot. 

3. Overall

        This is an enjoyable film from the 90s. It captures what a tortured director goes through when shooting a movie. One thing that can’t be overstated is that it came out during the boom of independent movies that were coming out during that decade. This was probably a look into a hypothetical one but seeing everything and anything going wrong is just a sight to see. 

        Living in Oblivion gets a four out of five.