Look Both Ways

This sincere but ultimately empty indie film plays like Australia’s answer to ensemble pieces like Magnolia and Short Cuts. Beyond that, it’s director Watt’s answers to humanity’s questions about life, love, and death. Problem is, Look Both Ways isn’t as artfully done as either aforementioned film, and Watt has little to say that hasn’t been said better before. The film focuses on Meryl (Clarke), a single, slightly neurotic artist who constantly imagines her own death in a series of playful, animated fantasies. When Meryl witnesses the real death of a man by train, her life becomes interwoven with a series of other characters, specifically Nick, a photographer who has been recently diagnosed with cancer. A relationship begins to develop between Nick and Meryl as they both struggle to cope with life and, more importantly, death, which seems to menace them at every corner. In addition to examining every character related to the accident, from the newspaper writer who covered the crash to the train driver, Watt's film also introduces several characters who are related to these primary characters. It’s a lot of ground for a 100-minute film to cover, especially when its underlying purpose is to find insight about a topic as weighty and complex as death, and not surprisingly, it ends up too overstuffed to find any new meaning in its subject. However, while the film falls short when addressing big questions, it finds some charm in the details. Watt directs with an emphasis on characters’ observations, often cutting from a character’s face to passersby and small events normally reserved for the background. The technique illustrates each character’s developing awareness of the world around them and leaves it up to the audience to decide what meaning the character might take from each observation. Unfortunately, this is about all that Look Both Ways leaves up to the audience. Most of the dialogue feels like a forced vocalization of Watt’s personal thoughts on life and death. It’s the type of film in which a character sits next to his work acquaintance for a few moments, then asks, “Do you believe in God?” Add to this at least four plodding montages of every character looking sad and accompanied by bland pop music. By the end, it’s hard to decide what is more disappointing: the clichéd and overwrought attempts to force a message on the audience or the fact that the extent of the message is something as obvious as “carpe diem.”