Ryan McNeil
Note: TIFF 2018 marks the first time I’m taking in selections from the TIFF Short Cuts Programme. In lieu of a full reaction piece that I usually post for a festival selection, I plan to underline what the film is about, and offer a brief thought or two on where the experience of watching the film took me. Enjoy! – RM
In EXIT, Maria Bello plays a woman who has come to difficult decision after a great deal of introspection. The film is written and directed by Claire Edmondson.
Adults should play more.
What would a perfect day look like in your eyes? Would it involve wild adventures? Perhaps every person you have ever met or cared about? Would it require solitude? Maybe a return to a singular place from your own history?
Claire Edmondson isn’t challenging her viewers to contemplate perfection with EXIT, but it’s fair to say that she is challenging them to understand the value of time and energy. We float along as if we have infinite amounts of both, when the bald facts are so very much the opposite.
Doesn’t it benefit us all to consider time and energy as commodities; non-renewable resources that we will regret depleting when we are left with none?
True, we may not want to consider the point where time and energy are taken away from us – but to deny their finite nature is to fool ourselves into complacency. It opens the door to wasted opportunity and regret. That should scare us more than anything.
EXIT doesn’t demand perfection from our days, or from us. It does however want us to reach understanding and gratitude for the gifts this life affords us – be that a sunrise, a perfect apple, or the ability to say “Okay – now.”
EXIT plays TIFF 2018 as part of Short Cuts Programme 7