Meanwhile Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		4.0

Meanwhile Blu-ray Movie Review

What are we waiting for?

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman April 29, 2013

Can you name a label that has championed such disparate would be auteurs as John H. Auer and Hal Hartley? Well, it’s Olive Films of course, the “little label that could” and in fact does, bringing out an often mind boggling array of product that few if any would have ever dreamed would see the high definition light of day. The past few months have seen several releases of Auer films, a frankly second string director whom few remember and even fewer would probably count among their most prized filmmakers. And then there’s the case of Hal Hartley. Olive released Trust early in 2013 and now adds to that nascent collection with two new releases, Meanwhile and The Unbelievable Truth (the film that first brought Hartley something approaching mainstream acclaim). In a sign that this is not merely a coincidence based on these films being licensable, Olive is “branding” the Hartley films with a little “hh” logo on the spines, something that may indicate more Hartley films are in the offing. Meanwhile is a meandering Hartley entry from 2011 that I’m tempted to compare to the anime genre known as “slice of life”. Nothing seems to be happening, and yet quite a bit is as lead character Joseph (D.J. Mendel) wends his way through a day of attempting to get what would appear to be a simple task accomplished while interacting with a coterie of eccentric characters. The very title of Meanwhile is indicative of what might be thought of as a sort of Waiting for Godot-esque quality, where Joseph is “biding his time” until some undefined event occurs, but of course one of the film’s points is that there’s something happening every second even if we’re not particularly paying attention to it.

There’s a lyric by the late great Fred Ebb ( Chicago, Cabaret) from his musicalization of Zorba the Greek , entitled Zorba, that states:

Life is what you do
While you’re waiting to die.

Though that second line was later amended to till the moment you die for the revival, the first version probably better sums up a kind of underlying current that runs through Meanwhile, especially since one of the few recurring elements other than lead character Joseph is a suicide jump off of the Brooklyn Bridge, a victim that Joseph may have spoken briefly to in one of the film’s many interchanges.

The film in fact is divided into actual numbered segments that detail the various people with whom Joseph comes into contact. These include not just the perhaps distressed young woman staring over the edge of the Brooklyn Bridge, but Hal Hartley’s actual wife Miho Nikaido. In fact the “goal” that Joseph has for the bulk of the film is to try to get to uptown Manhattan to retrieve the keys for Miho’s apartment since she is out of town and offers her apartment for a week to the evidently peripatetic Joseph. In one of the film’s deadpan laugh lines, Joseph, on the Brooklyn Bridge and borrowing the doleful woman’s cell phone, calls Miho, waves manically and states he’s standing on the bridge in clear sight of her apartment. Miho calmly replies, “I can’t see you, I’m in Shanghai”. (This brings to mind a great laugh line from Stephen Sondheim’s Company where gigolo hero has slept with a stewardess who gets up early the next morning and starts dressing. “Where you going?” asks Bobby in song, obviously expecting a mundane answer like “to the bathroom” or “to work”. “Barcelona”, the stewardess answers.)

Hartley’s films are an acquired taste, but Meanwhile has a number of good things going for it, not the least is its brevity (the film clocks in at less than an hour). It’s anecdotal and obviously episodic as evidenced by the numbers defining the different segments, but there’s also a surprising amount of cohesion courtesy of Joseph himself. This is a weird and wacky character, certainly one of Hartley’s most distinctive if not ultimately one of his best defined. We first meet Joseph as he’s fixing a leaky pipe, and we initially assume he might be a plumber. But it turns out Joseph is truly a jack of all trades, one whose shiny metal briefcase holds all sorts of items that help get him through his day. Later in the film Joseph fixes and author’s aging typewriter and also helps a cleaning lady figure out a European model vacuum cleaner that needs to be plugged into a transformer. Joseph is a drummer (one segment has him auditioning for a band), as well as an author (Hal Hartley's supposed secretary is reading a huge tome called Meanwhile written by Joseph), but he also has dreams of importing European “green” windows for a huge new housing project.

Things meander fairly amiably along, with Joseph ultimately getting to the apartment, working out a problem that had frozen his bank accounts and credit cards, and, ultimately, seemingly having succeeded in his window scheme. Things suddenly lurch into what seems like melodrama, if only for a moment, very late in the film when Joseph thinks he’s spied the woman who may have jumped off the bridge and rushes out to talk to her. There’s a hint of disaster, but as with everything else in Meanwhile, life goes on.

Meanwhile Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Meanwhile is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Olive Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. This film was shot with a Canon 5D Mark II, a perhaps unlikely looking choice that has in fact become more and more popular for both series television and feature films, but the high definition presentation is for the most part exceptionally sharp and well defined. Colors are very accurate looking (and thankfully Hartley didn't bother to color grade in post), and the vistas of Manhattan are presented with beautiful depth of field. There are a couple of anomalies along the way, including a weird moment of inconsistent contrast early in the film as Joseph pauses by a streetcorner and suddenly seems to have sprouted blue light erupting around his head, but generally this is a vivid, crystal clear looking presentation that should easily please most videophiles.

Meanwhile Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Meanwhile features a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix that isn't overly showy but which offers fairly consistent surround activity, courtesy of quite a bit of music as well as some of the vibrant sonic cityscape in Manhattan. The bulk of this film is really very small dialogue moments, almost always between only two characters, and so the 5.1 track really doesn't have a lot of opportunity to really exploit surround activity in any over the top way. Fidelity is excellent, though dynamic range is fairly limited.

Meanwhile Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• The Everday (1080p; 15:19) is basically a little EPK with interviews and scenes from the film.


• Trailer (1080p; 3:17)

Meanwhile Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Hal Hartley's films can be a little too precious for their own good, but Meanwhile manages to drift through its two day timeframe with a notable lack of cutesy archness. While Joseph remains something of a cipher despite the wealth of information Hartley provides about the character, he is a rather fascinating lead character and easily knits the disparate elements of the film together. Is there something profound hidden within Meanwhile's minutiae? That will be up to individual viewers to decide for themselves, but even if some feel the film is a lot of picayune nonsense, it's still a breezy, enjoyable tour through a few of Manhattan's uniquely eccentric inhabitants. This Blu-ray features great looking video and nice sounding audio and unlike most Olive Films releases has some bonus content. Despite its shortness, Meanwhile comes Recommended.