Int. Hallway/Night is a much better film after learning how it came to be. It’s the story of a director Billy Zane who is asked to take over a film production in which his wife, Janet (Helena Mattsson), is staring. He is fully aware that his wife is having a rather common tryst with leading man Bryan (Matthew Jacob) yet he is attempting to go through the motions and get their little project finished. The director begins to see parallels in the shooting script and his own situation. We are then pulled into a wild meta film journey where life is dictating art and art becomes subject to the tidal whims of a teeming ocean of chaos supporting it.
The director is suddenly dropped into his own film. Here he wakes up on the first floor of a Georgia mansion in a tuxedo and a bullet wound in his temple. Playing one of the actors that he is essentially directing, we watch as the directer plods through an arthouse script first person. He finds Bryan upstairs and Janet in the closet. The three try to solve the mystery behind their inpricsonment in a massive house while questioning the weird voices outside. The voices outside are, of course the crew shooting the film who are simply earning a paycheck.
Would anyone in the film within a film find a way out of the location to real life? Will the director ultimately be able to sort out the problems with his wife and family? I will leave that for the viewer to discover. Suffice it to say that I wanted to love Int. Hallway/Night but simply ended up enjoying it for the sheer audacity of it all.
Watching the film there was a certain, well, uncertainty. Conventions and rules were applied then immediately toyed with. We watch as conventional cinematic language tells us we are seeing a movie about movies. Then we are watching a movie about movies that becomes a movie about movies. Then the rules get changed again when actors break the “fourth wall” in asking for another take. It’s weird but there are more layers to this than a piece of baklava and at a certain point we, as the audience, have lost a point of reference.
The real story behind this film is just as fascinating as the movie itself. According to director Zane, he showed up on a movie set in Georgia that had suddenly lost a director. Originally assigned a part that would take 10 days to shoot, Zane found himself at the helm of a production that needed to be completed in as much time. The cast and crew gamely jumped in and used the shooting script of the original project to create something new. It’s not a great film but Int. Hallway/Night it is an exciting example of artistic invention.
What I will say is this. Int. Hallway/Night is a fun watch. It will keep you guessing. But that is because the cast and crew were in the same boat. Zane relies far too much on musical montages to push through exposition. The music is great but far too much. To me the real revelation is that Zane is actually funny.
If you are a film fanatic, aspiring writer/director, or just a lover of film, you might want to watch Int. Hallway/Night.
