Everything Beautiful is Far Away (2017) poster

Everything Beautiful is Far Away (2017)

Rating:


USA. 2017.

Crew

Directors – Pete Ohs & Andrea Sisson, Screenplay – Pete Ohs, Producers – Saul Germaine, Pete Ohs & Andrea Sisson, Photography – Christian Sorenson Hansen & Pete Ohs, Music – Alan Palomo, Visual Effects – Electric Theatre Collective (Supervisor – Adam Watson), Special Effects Designer – Sean Genrich, Production Design – Andrea Sisson. Production Company – Manali Pictures.

Cast

Joseph Cross (Lenert Stedman), Julia Garner (Rola), Jilliam Layer (Voice of Susan), C.S. Lee (The Stranger)


Plot

Following the collapse of civilisation, Lenert walks through the desert. He encounters Rola, a girl who has been poisoned after eating the wrong plant, and is able to save her. Among his things, she finds a story he has illustrated telling of the crystal lake. She tells him she knows the way to the crystal lake. They set out through the desert, all the time searching for food, water and supplies. Lenert also carries Susan, a robot head. After finding a long-life power source, he is able to bring Susan back online and use it to guide their journey.


Everything Beautiful is Far Away was a debut feature film for filmmakers Pete Ohs and artist Andrea Sisson, a real-life husband and wife from Ohio. The two had previously made the documentary I Send You This Place (2012). The film premiered at the Los Angeles Film Festival and played a number of other festivals.

The setting is in the middle of a desert. In actuality, the location was the Algodones Dunes in the Sonora Desert in the south-eastern corner of California, which has also served as location for the likes of Return of the Jedi (1983) and Stargate (1994).

The film takes place sometime after an unspecified holocaust where you get the impression civilisation has collapsed – the opening scenes show a montage of abandoned buildings, while the characters are constantly scavenging for junk – although we get no more than a handful of hints. At the end, it does say that people relocated from the cities, which suggests that some form of civilisation still exists. The lack of detail is frustratingly vague.

Joseph Cross and Julia Garner with robot head in Everything Beautiful is Far Away (2017)
Joseph Cross and Julia Garner with she wearing the robot head around her neck

The plot with the young couple on a quest across a wasteland in the aftermath of civilisation reminds of Glen and Randa (1971), a Free Love generation film with two young people on a journey trying to make sense of the cultural detritus they find. The same idea has influenced other films such as the weirdly arty We’ve Forgotten More Than We Ever Knew (2016) that came out the year before this. The setting here is somewhat earlier than either of these films – the couple still remember civilisation rather than it being a forgotten memory.

The film does an okay, although nothing standout job of telling this story. The main problem is that there is nothing that particularly drives it. There is the quest for the crystal lake, while occasionally the two characters get back to looking for parts to build the robot a body but nothing else that drives the story. The only other thing to fall back on in these cases is usually the attraction and building of a relationship between the two leads. And while Joseph Cross and Julia Garner are okay leads, he better than her – she seems too much of a manic pixie dream child in training – this is a side of the story that never takes place.


Trailer here


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