21 Below (2009) Reviews

• Ordinary Misery

  paul2001sw-12010-01-03

  Samantha Buck's film '21 Below' tells the story of an ordinary family with extraordinary problems: a daughter who takes up with a terminally useless man, falls out with her mother (a woman who cannot let go of problems she does not own), and has a child of her own who is diagnosed with a terminal disease. Both mother and daughter also appear to be suffering from signs of depression. All of this is very tragic (albeit in a low-key, unpoetic sort of way); why the protagonists wanted to be shown on film is anybody's guess. The narrative follows the ostensibly sensible older sister as she tries to mediate between the different wings of her family. But while she does come across as sensible, she lacks any special insight and when, as the end of the film, she talks about having gone on some kind of internal journey, it's not clear what that is supposed to have been - her own tale lacks the substance to give structure to the film as a whole (which appears to have been the directors' plan). This film is not awful, but it is painful, and there's not much more I could draw from it than the familiar lesson that people are often simply bad at life.