Posted: Wed., Mar. 24, 2004, 1:01pm PT

Rotterdam

Sundance 2004

War

By Scott Foundas

Produced by Jake Mahaffy, Willard Weatherby. Directed by Jake Mahaffy. Screenplay, Jake Mahaffy, Paul Mahaffy.

Samuel Jenkins - Dustin Bertch Pastor Jack Master - Jeff Clark Jacob 'um-daddy' Jenkins - Andy Yurick Hanky the Junkman - Paul Mahaffy Radio Reverend Hiram Hill - Richard Kirkwood

A near-future that looks oddly reminiscent of Depression-era America provides the setting for "War," the striking debut feature by Jake Mahaffy, a virtual one-man-band filmmaker. Using a hand-cranked silent movie camera, Mahaffy wrote, directed, edited and shot this experimental epic over a two-year period in the rural farm country of Warren County, Pennsylvania. Focusing on the last surviving people in a violent, unforgiving universe, helmer leaves a good deal open to interpretation. Commercial prospects for such a work are understandably limited, but pic portends good things to come from its young creator and should garner a high profile in underground and avant-garde film showcases.

Made without a conventional script and cast with nonprofessional locals, pic shuttles back and forth between a few loosely interconnected characters. Among them: a dissolute pastor (Jeff Clark) who can hardly bring himself to leave the confines of his not-so-late-model automobile; a farmer (Andy Yurick) and his young son, Samuel (Dustin Bertch); and a junkman (Paul Mahaffy) who traverses the gray landscape salvaging scrap.

Mahaffy includes some bits of business involving the accidental death of Samuel's pet dog and the theft (by the junkman) of his radio. To a certain extent in those scenes, "War" is a dark fable about a heretofore innocent learning the mean, horrible truths of the world.

But pic is less appropriately viewed as a conventional narrative than as a dreamlike, sensory immersion into a bleak netherworld that looks something like "Night of the Living Dead" as it might be remade by Hungarian filmmaker Bela Tarr. (Where and exactly when pic takes place is never specified, although pastor opines "this is the world after the end of the world.")

Though Mahaffy claims to have used the hand-cranked camera because it was the only one he had, the resultant stuttering, degraded images possess both an oddly primitive quality and a riveting impermanence (as though they might fall from the screen if we don't give them our full attention). Likewise, his soundtrack, all created in post-production, is a densely layered collage of interior monologues, radio broadcasts and incongruous effects, employed to suggest a society in which people inhabit their own private spheres, but largely turn a blind eye to their fellow men.

Above all, pic is a reminder that necessity is the mother of invention and that a driven, talented filmmaker can say as much or more with minimal resources than he can with the world at his fingertips.

Camera (B&W), Jake Mahaffy; editor, Jake Mahaffy; sound, Jake Mahaffy. Reviewed at Rotterdam Film Festival (Homefront USA), Jan. 26, 2004. (Also in Sundance Film Festival -- Frontier.) Running time: 83 MIN.