Author: Esme Betamax

The Historian is the first feature film by Miles Doleac.

Who is Miles Doleac? You may recognise him from such TV shows as American Horror Story (2014), Containment (2016), or The Astronaut Wives Club (2015). Writer, actor, producer, and director, he is also a history professor in real life, and he really wants you to know it. He named his production company Historia, so we won’t forget. 

Starting with The Historian, it looks like he’s cycling through genres until he hits upon one that fits. Romantic drama wasn’t an inspiring start, but perhaps he needed to get the history lessons out of his system first. Following on from his debut feature, are a handful of short films, and the crime/mystery drama The Hollow (2016).

Then the 2017 horror Demons, and a second horror, Hallowed Ground, in 2019. That one includes lesbians, so expect them to be well written characters. In 2020 he teams up with Michael Donovan Horn for a horror/thriller The Dinner Party, so it looks like he has found his niche. Plenty of special effects, and room for corny acting.

His films include regular appearances from William Sadler, best known for roles in Die Hard 2 (1990), The Shawshank Redemption (1994), and of course, as the Grim Reaper in Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991). Sadler is returning as the Grim Reaper in the upcoming Bill & Ted Face the Music. Side note: I wholeheartedly agree with Hannah Ines Flint on the matter of Keanu’s beard (or lack thereof). 

So back to The Historian. Originally released in 2014, it is just over two hours long. If you have time to fill, other films clocking in at two hours plus change include Serpico (1973), Raging Bull (1980), and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975). 

The Historian drags—I had to watch it in two sittings, tired from all the eye-rolling. The script is littered with such profundities as “I hate death. It sucks balls”. And the combination of too many close-ups, and odd editing choices make for awkward viewing.

Then there is a horribly handled case of sexual assault, in which our hero repeatedly shouts “What did he do to you?!” in the face of the victim under the guise of protecting her. A little later, he interrupts her in the middle of her sit-down-cry-shower in order to give her a history lecture. Seriously dude, you’re not even going to pass her a towel? 

Doleac places himself front and centre as Professor Ben Rhodes, with hot young grad students swooning as he enters the room. There’s some Very Big Acting from minor characters, and painful attempts to give said characters depth: The sidekick, a zany professor guy (Colin Cunningham), is high energy. He smokes lots of cigarettes, see. And he dresses as a cowboy. And he likes guns. Every time Professor Rhodes gets stressed out he takes a swig from the handy bottle of pepto bismol. At this point I could be describing a Neil Breen picture. The Historian is not as bad as, say, Fateful Findings, but it certainly shares some of the Breen markers.

Doleac has the makings of a Breen type cult filmmaker. He’s no match for Tommy Wiseau, but it might not be such a terrible thing if he gave his ego free rein.

Bittersweet and whimsical, a story in the same vein as those told by Ivor Cutler, or  Jean-Pierre Jeunet  (Amelie, 2001). This ten minute short is, as the title suggests, a tale about a Poet and a Plant.

The Poet and the Plant is narrated by Sarah Snook (Steve Jobs, 2015; Black Mirror, 2016). It is Written and directed by Tom Basis and Robert Summerlin, who also plays the eponymous Poet.

It plays as though Jonathan Richman is in one of Aesop’s Fables. He is a man struggling to breathe life into his writing and his house plants alike. Basis and Summerlin describe it as “A meditation on true love, loneliness, and listening.”

If you’d like to make it a struggling-artist-short double bill, try Victor in Paradise by Brendan McHugh

A poet loves his new houseplant so much he kills it. A meditation on true love, loneliness, and listening. And an allegory for modern man’s relationship with nature, and how it can heal.

ROBERT SUMMERLIN is a French-American poet, artist, and environmentalist. His hope is that his creative projects play a part in creating a more peaceful and happy planet. In 2017 he was accepted into The Aspen Institute’s Poetry Workshop.

TOM BASIS is an Israeli-American writer and director. He has put his name to several major campaigns in fashion, design, and technology, and has collaborated with top-tier companies at the forefront of their fields, such as Marchesa and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Tom’s most recent projects include a series of 360° films for IBM Watson.

Disclosure. Not the 1994 erotic thriller starring Michael Douglas and Demi Moore. Nor the 2020 documentary on Hollywood’s depiction of Transgender people. This Disclosure, directed by Michael Bentham, is a drama set in an affluent suburb somewhere in Australia. 

Danny and Emily Bowman (Mark Leonard Winter and Matilda Ridgway) are journalists trying to figure out the next steps following a sexual assault on their four year old daughter. Politician Joel Chalmers (Tom Wren) and his wife Bek (Geraldine Hakewill) are the parents of the boy involved, and would like nothing more than to sweep this whole thing under the carpet. As the couples are long standing friends, a friendly chat might be all it would take to make this whole thing go away. For, you see, Joel is a good politician. His career could be in jeopardy if this got out etc etc, you see where this is going.

Disclosure shows how quickly this delicate situation can become encumbered by the baggage and agendas of the surrounding adults. They work quickly to discredit the accounts given by the children, then throw in blame and blackmail when that doesn’t work. The film uses Bek’s historic rape to explore the concept of victim blaming, and the way society can convince sexual assault victims that somehow they asked for it or could have prevented it.

The tagline “There are two sides to every story, and then there is the truth” refers to the two couples, building their own narratives to rationalise what has happened, erasing the voice of the child as they wrestle to have the upper hand. Disclosure utilises the relationship between politicians and journalists to illustrate a fluctuating power-dynamic. In doing so, it also illustrates the complexity of the relationship between government and the press.

Bentham takes a pressing matter (child-on-child violence; #metoo) and tries to illustrate it earnestly. However, Disclosure plays like a soap opera storyline and leans heavily on  slow-motion as a way to create gravitas. It adds nothing for the most part, except perhaps the flower smashing segment, which echoes a scene from that 2011 Polanski dreck Carnage. Disclosure has many parallels with Carnage, though the trailer is more than enough to see this, so don’t bother with the whole of Carnage—it’s a bore. Essentially, both films see the parents take something that has happened between their children, and make it all about themselves.

For similar themes and more complex storylines see Rewind (2019) and The Slap (2015).