As a lover of cinema it's always exciting to watch a film and discover a promising new filmmaker, but when it's somebody you already know somewhat socially (in this case Letterboxd's own Frank Ritz) then it takes the viewing to a whole new joyous level. I started smiling about halfway through A Life in Our Times, and in the days since have smiled each time I've thought of it, if only inwardly.

As you can probably gather from my rating alone, I'm not saying it's perfection. But what I am perfectly sure of is that this is a film made by a young auteur who is quite clearly pouring themselves into their craft in order to make something stylish, meaningful, and reflective of a very distinct artistic vision. This may be an early entry in a director's filmography, but it is by no means a half-assed one; this is thoughtful, high-effort film-making.

Let's start with the technical wows: quality cinematography featuring a lot of high-quality shot composition; sharp editing that does a good job of modulating the mood; really phenomenal lighting, maybe some of the best I've seen so far this year and it would not look out of place in an A24 film; nice usage of familiar music… heck, I even liked the font choice for the opening and closing credits!

If I had to single out one noticeable area where the film falters, however, it would have to be in the writing and the way the film communicates story elements. There is a seemingly very unintentional unnaturalness in the way dialogue is delivered within the film that gives the production away as being the product of a beginning filmmaker. There's also one character in particular--an upset young man who spends the entire film chain-smoking in a garage--who we rarely see in close-up and never speaks at all, if I'm remembering right, but rather than being intrigued by his presence it instead feels distracting whenever the film cuts back to him, because we don't get nearly the handle on him as a character that we do with the other actors we're introduced to.

One of the pitfalls of trying to develop yourself as a writer-director is that invariably you end up concentrating more on one side of that equation than the other. But despite how much our increasingly illiterate & attention span-shrinking society undervalues it, good writing is both hard work and necessary to make something really work... and it requires you to be exercising your sense of thoughtfulness as it applies to your writing on a pretty much daily basis.

That can be a hard commitment to make it you're still finding your feet as a filmmaker too, and a big part of why some directors who are starting out will wisely sacrifice their right to claim "I wrote and directed this whole thing myself with my own two hands, dammit" and instead opt to bring someone else on board for the writing, someone who at the very least can act as a whetstone for the director to sharpen their ideas against. Unless you're just trying to capture a pure naturalism that grows out of a handful of filmed scenarios, the writing is going to be the heart of your project and make or break it. Even great film-making can only do so much to cover up weakness in that area.

I think perhaps part of why A Life in Our Times struggles with an unintentional unnatural feeling which emanates from the writing is because the director himself is not entirely sure yet if he should really be going more naturalistic or more high concept in execution. That's an understandable struggle, as both approaches have their merits. I would suggest something of a compromise. It seems to me that this filmmaker is much more comfortable when going for a deliberate, highly stylized, and frankly artsy approach, so I would say embrace that even more as a director, but as a writer to now focus on developing your ear for dialogue and finding ways to make your characters as distinctive and understandable as your environments come across, and then use them to tell the stories that feel really true to you and your voice. Like performing in a play, it takes a long time to find your voice as a writer, but once you find it and develop it, you'll be able to call on it the same way a stage actor can pull up a character they've performed dozens and dozens of times from out of their memory banks and wear them around like an old suit.

But while that voice for dialogue and storytelling is still being developed, this director might benefit from finding more subtle, nonverbal ways to communicate story information. The best moments that the lead actors have in A Life in Our Times are when they're non-verbally communicating; those are also the times when the film is best at evoking mood too.

That's another reason why I'm so excited about what I witnessed in A Life in Our Times: when this short is on, it's on. There are moments of such pure beauty and emotion throughout, they leave me eagerly anticipating what this filmmaker will be able to show us in the future. There's a great artistic voice at work here, it just needs to get more comfortable with public speaking.