Willie Nelson

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Photo by Angelina Gervasi

Paul Booth sent us an advance copy of his short film Empty Streets on DVD. He told us it was about peace. I wondered what kind of statement a 28-year-old filmmaker would make about peace.

This film became for me the most brutal expression of existentialism I have ever seen. Empty Streets strongly evokes the psychological costs We The People pay for the military aggression commanded by our leaders.

Empty Streets relentlessly develops a claustrophobic atmosphere even though most of it takes place out of doors. This accomplishment does not rely upon crowding the camera or a dense urban environment. Rather, it all takes place in a suburban landscape during a long night. An all too familiar landscape, bland and mundane during the day, becomes a ubiquitous existential void during the night sucking all meaning from a desolate life.

The characters in Empty Streets have No Exit.

Empty Streets is a film about life in limbo, a meaningless purgatory devoid of cause and effect suspended in a vacuous space between heaven and hell. The camera follows Johnny, played by Anthony Haviland, as he wanders lost somewhere between the comforts of home and the horrors of war.

Johnny crosses paths with Carol, played by Desiree Duclayan-Parsonson, another lost soul trapped in the pointless nightmare. Together they make an attempt to create a meaningful event but even that is impossible.

A war veteran and the child of a war veteran both cast adrift in a vague scenario without a hope of rescue.

Desiree Duclayan-Parsonson delivers her lines with a flawless reduction of personality. No faux fauve emotionalism. Emotionally flat with no pretense of perceived risk. Desiree accurately portrays Carol as resigned to her fate, whatever it may be.

Anthony Haviland has Johnny feebly attempt to evoke human concerns, as if something once mattered or should still matter and effectively blunts the effort. Desiree and Anthony admirably resist the urge to inappropriately emote for the camera.

The few other characters they encounter, equally pathetically lost, betray no consciousness of their state.

Empty Streets shows us the world our leaders create for us if we let them. If we, like Johnny, believe the lies. The world our children, like Carol, will inherit to aimlessly wander around in the darkness until inevitably picked up and used by the authorities.

A good deal of the mood owes itself to the editing. The lack of traditional Hollywood style cuts on action builds anticipation, broodiness, and a tension never quite becoming suspenseful. Additionally it never pays off with a Hollywood resolution.

This banal melodrama and lack of closure parallels the condition of too many returning veterans.

Johnny and Carol momentarily question it all but end up resigning themselves to the tedious pacing of their world. Alone among all the characters in the film they dare to raise up their heads for a moment before once again succumbing to hopelessness.

But this effort also results in nothing, with no affect and to no effect.

Empty Streets owes more to the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre and Gilles Deleuze than any pretty piece of artwork claiming to represent existentialism.

The chasm created in the opening between the text from the diary of Veteran Cpl. Ely Kalilikane U.S.M.C. and the U.S. Marine Corps Hymn becomes a wound that never heals.

Johnny and Carol exist as unremarkable and insignificant amoeba in this festering wound upon the body of humanity. They merely exist in the septic darkness. The absurd lack of gritty urbanity and their clean clothes beg the question of the location of the disease. We can sense the decay but cannot see it.

The disease lives in the mind.

Empty Streets does not suffer for its lack of Hollywood production values. It makes the audience participate in the suffering of existential angst. No happy ending, not even narrative closure, waits to reward the audience for watching.

No fight scenes, no car chases and no explosions to entertain you.

But you will experience the feelings of dyspeptic amoeba floundering in a nondescript unidentifiable location that appears strangely sanitized yet reeks of an all-pervasive rot.

This is what Paul Booth tells us the United States of America has become. This makes Empty Streets an important film.

Empty Streets has no call to action. No Übermensch shows up to save the world. We The People have allowed The United States of America to become the home of the Last Man.

This land of enforced sameness has forsaken all values.

This bleak film becomes a warning not of what is to be but of what now exists. Everyone in the United States should see Empty Streets and then painfully look upon their country with open eyes.

We interviewed Paul Booth.

Why are you passionate about creating peace?
The human race has no reason to not love each other. I don’t see color, race, politics, financial status or religion. Once we get rid of all the things humans fight about, we will have peace. I don’t like violence, so peace keeps me going.

I don’t care to do films anymore (producing/directing) unless they have a point or examine something about the human condition.

But it didn’t give me the satisfaction Empty Streets does being invited to a peace convention. It’s all about the human spirit to me.
Nothing else.

How long have you been working for peace?
I’ve always wanted to use film for peace, but never got the chance to until the past year of my life. I’ve lived peace my entire life.

What motivates you to work for peace and the environment?
I was taught to be peaceful by my parents. As humans we need let our light shine in all positive ways. Love others and ourselves. There is way too much hatred and violence on this planet; I want to better the world for future generations.

Why have you chosen the path of Art for Peace?
It’s my responsibility as an artist to use art for the greater good.

What are your ideas for peaceful solutions?
Stop making bombs; teach world leaders to control their egos and stop letting money be what we live for. Create small revolutions in our own. Community and ensure people spend more time learning about who they vote for. This would keep warmongers from running the world.

Artist’s Statement

It was purely a project of passion. No one received a salary. Everyone worked for travel costs and food. We worked from 7pm-8am almost everyday. A few mornings we worked until 9am. Everyone on the crew was a professional with industry experience.

We did what we could do with 1-week, no crew and $3,000. I’m very proud of it.

The film is based on events in the life of a Marine veteran who served six years in the military. When he returned home, he had to come to terms with the transition back into society after war. From losing his Veteran benefits to losing his home and even most of his friends due to his PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder).

Share This

Tags: Arts, Peace

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.