An open letter to Sarah Polley
by Michael Restaino
Dear Sarah, My name's Mike and I'm a big fan... I still
remember it: The Piedmont Theater in Oakland, California. A few of my
friends and I hadn't gotten around to seeing The Sweet Hereafter after
its release about a month before, so we made the trek from UC
Berkeley's campus over to this charming hole-in-the-wall theatre to
check out the Canadian film that had been so acclaimed and
admired.
I was blown away. The labyrinthine mobius strip of a
story structure, the infinitely complicated human emotions that forced
the characters into cataclysmic and marvelously detailed states of
psychological duress - it was a film unlike any I'd ever seen. But
above all this was your performance. 
Director and screenwriter
Atom Egoyan deserves a bit of the credit, I'm sure - but your
understanding of the character is almost subconscious, a portrait of
an earnest, undeservedly martyred young girl's inner light being
forced inward due to physical and societal tragedy. For me, you
embodied the very essence of the film - the investigation of tragedy
and the reparations that have to be made in order for people to
survive it - with an ease and confidence that remains
unparalleled.
After The Sweet Hereafter, I caught everything
you starred in. My friend Marmor and I even caught Guinevere at a
second-run theatre in Pasadena - I thought the world of your
performance, but found the film a bit precious and heavy-handed - and
I relished your cameo at the end of Cronenberg's eXistenZ. Then there
was Go, and even something that light and frenetic is given heft with
your presence.
All right - enough ass-kissing. My point for
writing is to talk about the review I have to write for this new DVD
release of No Such Thing, your collaboration with the notorious and
sublimely talky Hal Hartley. As embarrassing as it may be, seeing as I
spent the first part of this letter speaking so intensely of your past
work, I missed No Such Thing during its slight Los Angeles release
last fall - it seemed to come and go pretty quick.
But I was
infinitely curious: Hal Hartley teamed not only with you (which was an
inspired actor/director combo, to be sure), but with Francis Ford
Coppola and the newly reformed American Zoetrope, and not to be
outdone, with the Icelandic film commission to make a movie about a
reclusive monster who gets thrust into a New York City media
spotlight. These seemed like fascinating pieces to an art-film puzzle
that would come together with a glorious POW! of kinetic wordplay and
stunning, desolate emotional and physical geography. Yet I didn't get
it, Sarah. 
Your performance is fine, an amalgam of assistant-
on-the-rise ambition and earnest naivete. And the interactions between
your character and Robert John Burke's “Monster” are loaded
with that typically reserved and effective Hartley technique of having
two characters share an intimate physical proximity yet be miles and
miles apart in their hearts and minds. Always interesting. But No Such
Thing's story and its over-the-top sentiments came off as being heavy-
handed and clunky. Perhaps this was an attempt to draw a bit of humor
out of the situation of the movie, but I had trouble keeping
emotionally entwined with it all...
Yet now that I get my
feelings about No Such Thing out in the open, I don't feel any better,
nor do I understand exactly why Y I write to you now. I'm a fan and I
applaud you, but I have no intention of placating you - I can't
promise I'll like all your films. But I guess it's just that I wanted
to like this one so much that its relative mediocrity comes as a grim
shrug to my expectant eyes and ears.
Anyhow, I apologize for
drawing your attention to a letter that pretty much says your film was
bad, but I'm still of the mind that you're one of the greatest
actresses we've got out there, and I look forward to seeing you
experiment and explore different characters and situations. I can't
wait to see what you do next, just hopefully it won't be No Such Thing
2.
Video: How Does The Disc Look?
Presented in
1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, this is a fine transfer. The cool,
steely gray of Iceland is represented gloriously here, with the nicely
subdued colors coming across nice and clean with accurate fleshtones.
Black levels are quite solid and detail impressive, often lending the
image a striking three-dimensional quality up there with the best DVD
transfers. There also doesn't appear to be any signs of edge
enhancement or compression artifacting. Very nice.
Audio:
How Does The Disc Sound?
The English 5.1 Dolby Digital mix
included here is also pretty strong. Dynamic range is above average,
especially as this was not really a big-budget production, fidelity is
natural and pleasing across the entire range. Stereo and surround
separation is quite pronounced and well-defined, with nice imaging.
However, sometimes the music and effects overwhelm the dialogue which
gets a bit murky - the score is mixed especially loud here - but all
in all, this is a fine representation of Hartley's notoriously sparse
sound design.
Also included are English, French and Spanish
subtitles and English Closed Captions.
Supplements: What
Goodies Are There?
Nothing has been included at all, not even
the trailer.
DVD-ROM Exclusives: What do you get when you
pop the disc in your PC?
No ROM extras have been included.
Parting Thoughts
No Such Thing isn't such a bad
film, it's just not as good as it could have been. With a director
like Hartley and an actress like Polley, it should have been a slam
dunk, but somewhere between concept and execution, it just never fully
comes together. But this transfer is nice enough to merit a quick-look
rental or even a purchase for diehard Hartley fans.
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