MOVIES

Editor: Bennett Campbell Ferguson

Contact:

bennett@wweek.com

Columbus (2017)

With all due respect to the alluring beauty of Before Sunrise’s Vienna and Certified Copy’s Tuscany, no walkand-talk movie has a setting quite like Columbus (2017).

The breakout feature from Kogonada (After Yang) makes a feast of the titular city’s unlikelihood. After all, why would a 50,000-population community in South Central Indiana feature a rich backdrop of modernist architecture—from banks to bridges to parks—to rival an over-endowed art museum campus?

It’s only right that two strangers would find each other in such a place. Jin (John Cho), the embittered adult son of a famous architect, and Casey (Haley Lu Richardson), a young townie obsessed with art and unwilling to leave Columbus, spend the week chain-smoking and musing on the emotional weight of design.

A longtime video essayist on other directors’ work, Kogonada obsessively shoots Jin and Casey’s strolls. They’re always posing at some striking angle beneath the massive structures that frame their diminutive, temporary existence, but this ambitious formalism is leveled by Columbus’ calm, melancholy flow.

As with any good walk and talk, time crawls through a suspended, analog moment. Heart rates slow, ideas sharpen, change beckons. 5th Avenue, Aug. 4-6.

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