Bright Future review - CALLING by Marcin Dudziak

Father and son take a walk into the wild in Marcin Dudziak's feature debut Calling, which had its international premiere in the Bright Future programme of the 44th International Film Festival Rotterdam.
 
The father and son relationship has been one of great interest in cinema and explored prominently by numerous filmmakers. Nevertheless, it is a theme that is equally as abused and exaggerated as it is explored rewardingly. Nevertheless, it is a different kind of quiet and solemn exploration in Marcin Dudziak's film Calling - the filmmaker's feature debut. The plot is simplistic and wafer thin and portrays a father and his preteen boy going on a camping trip into the wild.
There is very little dialogue spoken, and overall the acting is very restrained - a perfect example of anti-acting that does not seek to seduce the camera but rather aims to ignore it. On top of that, the camera is very still, the shots have a tendency to be quite lengthy, but they are rather carefully composed and really treasure and glorify the beauty of the landscape of the woods in which the two characters find themselves. In fact, the way Dudziak presents his film adds an element of the eternal, being represented by forest, and its contrast with the temporary, represented by the characters themselves. And this contrast is quite engaging and focused also stylistically. The film develops at a slow pace, it is the characters that enter the frame, as opposed to the camera following their movements.
 
The slow pace of the film is meditative and adds a psychological layer of depth to the film that makes the viewing experience all the more subjective. But this does not mean that nothing happens in the film and more importantly, it does not mean that character development is disregarded. The whole film, in fact, seems like a naturalistic capturing of a distinctive coming of age moment in a young boy's life. It is slightly melancholic and perhaps even a little pessimistic, focusing in fact thematically on a sort of loss of innocence more than positive events. But it is also this honesty that fills Calling with meaning.