Living on the outskirts of Area 51
I’ve been struggling with The Vast of Night, not the film, which is a solid if uneven debut from Andrew Patterson, and streaming now on Amazon Prime Video. Not the film… the title!
When was the last time you saw the word “vast” used as a noun? Adjective… sure, whatever, but a noun? “I’m going to the store, with my mask, to get some more vast.” “This glass of distilled vast sure tastes great.” See what I mean? In fact, from the time I first heard about the film, I struggled even to remember its title. Finally coming to my COVID-impaired senses, I consulted the vast (adjective… better) resources of the Internet. Merriam Webster curtly informs me that none other than John Milton used it as a noun… somewhere in his vast (yep) catalog. Maybe two months of sheltering in place produces these otherwise forgettable struggles, but these days, any distracting train of thought is welcome relief.
Which brings me to the film, an attempt to answer the question: What if one did actually live through an episode of The Twilight Zone? With references to great recent works about extraterrestrial aliens in your midst, The Vast of Night delivers satisfying entertainment, and a few exceptional scenes.
Cayuga, New Mexico, a sleepy town of 500 dusty souls on the edge of the desert in the mid 1950s. Friday night, and the Cayuga High basketball team drills before the big game. Local radio dj and town fixall Everett Sloan (Jake Horowitz) goes through his own pregame drills, prepping the sportscasting team, fixing the wiring, even helping to tune a marching band trombone. We follow him from the outside of the gym, through various stops and with various others needing his help, ’til back outside the gym he runs into Fay Crocker (Sierra McCormick), who shows him the Chekhov’s gun of the film: a magical new Westinghouse portable tape recorder.
There’s a connection, more than friendly, less than romantic, between them. Fay plays the wide-eyed ingenue to Everett’s impudent wiseacre. They’re also both outsiders. As the town settles into benches for the game, they go off to their respective night time jobs as radio dj and switchboard operator. This being a small town, Fay and Everett are never far from what’s going on, or from each other. As she connects housewives and babysitters, she stays in touch with him over a phone line from the switchboard to the radio station.
James Montague and Craig W. Sanger’s script allows ample space for atmosphere, texture, and opportunities for us to really feel how the basketball game serves as the town’s civic center, ever present drama, and weekly water-cooler chat. Yet Fay would rather talk about the far off future of the 1990s, a place where, as Fay says, they’ll have cars that drive themselves, and phones with TV screens that one can use to call anyone in the world.
The cinematographer, Miguel I. Littin Menz, is fascinated with the long, slow, tracking shot, which pairs nicely with director Patterson’s need to let the back and forth of his actors’ dialog develop naturally, a clear nod to the great Robert Altman films of the ’70s.
As Fay settles into switchboard duties, a line lights up, but there’s no voice on the other end. Instead, a cold, menacing, and very alien sound that could be from anywhere… even the future.
Patterson has cited the 2014 Yann Demange film ‘71 as an aesthetic influence, but, for my money, the better parallel is the masterful air traffic controller scene from the otherwise wildly uneven Close Encounters of the Third Kind. (Don’t bother with the “deleted scene” from the YouTube clip, which was wisely left out of the film’s 1980 theatrical release). Both scenes utilize characters who are desperate for knowledge, but who vainly attempt to use what they know to grasp at the unknown. And, cinematically, the audience and the characters are kept in the dark. As an audience, we must use our imaginations to fill in wide gaps in our — and their — knowledge.
I’ll give a slight nod to Spielberg for efficiency and economy, but Patterson’s scene takes advantage of a very slow push-in, along with Fay’s ever more frantic attempts to use her switchboard to check on the town. The scene impressively moves along narrative and character development, and highlights McCormick’s acting chops as a teenager dealing with equal parts fear, excitement, and puzzlement.
Fay eventually calls the smartest person she knows — Everett, who promptly plays the sound over the air, both for aid and because “it’s just good radio.”
What follows is clearly the film’s high point, when the disembodied voice of Billy (Bruce Davis), after hearing the sound on the air, tells a skin-rippling tale about his time in the Air Force, just after the War, and what he had to do, what he saw, and what he heard. Incredibly, the scene runs to eight minutes, with nearly an entire minute of a completely black screen!
As the plot unfolds, and the film runs its course, the narrative speed quickens, but never becomes a full-bore thriller. Tension is maintained until the very final shot, and the ending, while somewhat predictable and abrupt, is in keeping with the idea of us slipping into a real-life episode of the Twilight Zone.
The Vast of Night is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video
