 | MOVIE DETAILS • Name: Without Name • Year: 2016 • Country: Ireland • Director: Lorcan Finnegan • Main cast: Alan McKenna, Niamh Algar, James Browne • Runtime: 93 minutes • Production company: Irish Film Board, Lovely Productions • TRAILER |
Director Lorcan Finnegan visited the Sitges Film Festival this year to present his debut in a feature film, Without Name, after a handful of short films that got more or less impact (his previous work Foxes (2012) won some awards as best direction and best short film in a few festivals). And his theme of choice was a simple but deep story about relationships. Relationships between humans, but also between a human being and nature. Always with a halo of mysticism, Lorcan Finnegan’s story takes us to a terrain where the line between imagination and reality is very thin. And always with the company of a beautiful green forest of Ireland. But let’s go step by step.
In matters of audiovisual displays, Without Name is a very good movie. Unless with other titles seen at the festival like Las tinieblas (aka The Darkness) (2016) (-read the review here-), the forest here is very alive. But not in a pretentious way, the forest is alive because one has the feeling of being in it, between its trees and feeling its cold night. A great treatment of photography and sound give the movie the perfect scenario to start to build the story, to try to take us wherever we are headed.
But where is Lorcan Finnegan trying to take us? He only wants to push us to think whatever we want. The film plays with us, lets us choose what to believe. No evidences of foul play are here. The main character takes the path of madness but we don’t have to follow him if we don’t want to. We always have the choice to think, is everything in his head? Or is there really something going on here in the woods?
In Without Name, everything seems to have a reason. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the main character is land surveyor taking measures of an ancient forest hired by a mysterious business man. The metaphor of the man trying to take control over nature is patent here. Also, a man with a dysfunctional love/family background, who is lost in his middle age, has a strong importance here whenever he decides for the forest to take control of his mind. After all, it’s us the audience who are suposed to be there, in that forest, in that situation, in front of that bonefire staring at the infinite firmament, and then decide what is that we want to know, we to feel, we want to fear. Nothing or everything, that is all up to us. And here is where the mystery in this movie lives on.
At the presentation speech for the film, director Lorcan Finnegan told us to be patient. Told us Without Name takes a little bit to start into subject but when it does things eventually will happen. Well, that is up to the audience, really. I can imagine some people didn’t enjoy this film much. Other might had been absolutely fascinated by it. Myself, I liked it, I like what it offers, doesn’t matter if it’s much or it is up to me. It’s an interesting film to think free, to open your mind to your own opinions, and to assume we were not here first. First this world was a huge forest and we humans turned the planet into what it is now. But the spirit lives in.
RATE: 6/10
IMDB URL: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4708346
