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A sculptor plots to get revenge on his longtime rival by turning him into his final twisted masterpiece.
The story plays out much like the climactic third act of a full length film, but without the fluff. You're dropped in with just what you need to know to witness the final showdown between two artists with a long history. Where they come from is a story we all know; it's their future that has something for us. The two men of the film - Alex and Michael - at first seem like total opposites. A bumbling hack and a troubled artist. By the end, it's very clear that there's scant to be redeemed within the main character Alex. His rival Michael comes off more and more as a victim of envy... especially because he seems oblivious to the rivalry... repeatedly posturing himself as a friend to Alex. Things seem to take a biblical turn to invoke the story of Cain and Abel, but our two facsimiles are too similar to each other for things to be that simple. Alex and Michael are polar opposites, sure... but insofar as they are the two ultimate results of so-called modern art... In which refinement is supplanted by an endless strive for radicalism. In our times, increasingly insane ideas become the only way to make anything "new" or "daring" as such praise loses all meaning. Radicalism is generally bifurcated into things like left and right, or maximalist and minimalist. And we see that in "The Glass David". Michael is one ultimate end to the means of modern art, in that he makes art that is all material but has no meaning at all. The titular Glass David is purely material that begs for the audience to give it meaning, with nothing but its visceral existence to importune. Alex's final masterpiece is by nature entirely cerebral and immaterial. There is no artifice in the work (if you can call it that). Alex is merely using the gesture of suicide to make a notion that services only himself. We can't even call his murder-suicide a performance art, since there was no fabrication in the act of its creation... bearing in mind that the very word "art" is shorthand for artifact. That's why I say this film is about pretentiousness. It's a word used all too often as an artistic pejorative without measured context. In making it a reliable weapon of critique for all people, we've lost track of its rooting in the word "pretense". I like to think the story of this film helps to keep these ideas in focus while not being too pretentious itself. In production and story alike, I say this movie is the first mature work by DSME. While 2018 to 2020 saw us proffer a healthy sum of dramas, we still fell into the trappings of many film-school-isms and similar tropes. 2021 was a cooldown period for DSME and the culture at large. The last year had 5 releases and several films shot. I had moved out from Washington state after living there all 25 years of my life, becoming more reclusive than ever and having unceremoniously exited a two year relationship. Big ideas such as shootouts in the desert between larger-than life mobsters, vast political conspiracies between long lost twins, and police procedurals spanning multiple years and a half dozen locations had all lost favor. We wanted to make something more simple, more manageable. An actor-forward film revolving around a 15 minute conversation in an apartment was the most exciting thing to me after taking a stab at every subgenre I could afford to do - and went broke in the process. We emphasized professionalism more than ever; Requiring complete line and shot memorization before shooting began. Any aesthetics, color, editing, sound or effects in the film would be understated so as to be no more than what was needed. The five shoots to make the film saw an all-new approach to scheduling, on-set duties and logistics. Unfortunately, it worked and everything went to plan. This had been our only shoot with no problems. But it seemed we didn't know what to do with ourselves and came out uninspired without the typical trials of a younger filmmaker's folly. Michael Delisle famously went home and deleted all his scripts and production documents for his future films after getting a taste of what a professional film set might be. Alas, you can be depressively unfulfilled as an artist when the unattainable goes from an ideal to pursue, to yet another part of your workflow. Maybe this is what Alex felt like in his final moments. Writing this three years after we shot it, "The Glass David" still stands as our best short film (not counting Rip n' Run which at 43 minutes is a featurette). It was as good as we wanted, but also not the film we set out to make. Subsequently, the director took his name off the project. But I've learned art will take on its own identity no matter how much we sacrifice
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