‘Soft in the Head’, the gritty new microbudget drama from director Nathan Silver, aggressively upends convention, and to great effect. The film doesn’t follow a textbook framework for generating narrative momentum. But because of the realism of its universe and the strength of its performances, it remains riveting throughout.The film follows Natalia (Sheila Etxeberría), a young alcoholic who, after splitting with her abusive boyfriend, winds up at a posh Brooklyn apartment-cum-homeless shelter with a group of men. Their unlikely benefactor is the kind-hearted Maury (Ed Ryan), whose raison d’être is helping the downtrodden. During the film we also meet Natalia’s friend Hannah (Melanie J. Scheiner), and her mildly autistic brother Nathan (Carl Kranz). Nathan frequently fights with his religious Jewish parents about his lack of a love life, and ultimately begins to fall for Natalia.
Natalia flirts with Nathan and continues to drink, the men at the homeless shelter get increasingly rowdy, and Maury tries to maintain order. But honestly, the plot is not the point. This film is all about the rhythm and texture of realistic characters staggering through difficult lives. (The actors worked from scene outlines instead of written dialogue.) Be it Natalia’s drunken interactions with Nathan or the crass rap sessions amongst the men at the shelter, nothing in “Soft in the Head” feels staged.
Natalia, who makes little effort toward self-improvement, comes off as aimlessly self-destructive. In a more traditional film about a troubled person trying to fit in amongst troubled people (“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” comes to mind), the characters might be more dynamic, or their actions suffused with heightened drama. Instead, “Soft in the Head” dwells on people who sabotage themselves and carelessly hurt others, digging themselves into deeper and deeper pits and making change impossible. It is convincing and it works.
Much credit for the gritty feel of “Soft in the Head” goes to cinematogropher/editor/co-writer Cody Stokes, who also edited Mr. Silver’s 2012 feature “Exit Elena”. Mr. Stokes’s handheld camerawork contributes to the hyper-realism of the universe. And his editing shows admirable patience. The film doesn’t rush from beat to beat – its conversations play out over long periods of time, and the film feels more realistic for it. It’s a style of storytelling that recalls Jonathan Demme’s “Rachel Getting Married”. That film, like this one, showed that troubled people don’t always move forward in life at a crisp, cinematic pace. Instead, they live in their problems, often unable to find – or even look for – a way out. One of the many great virtues of “Soft in the Head” is its willingness eschew traditional narrative momentum and simply linger on its characters’ lives.
Read the review at IndieNYC.com
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