Fest Track On Sirk TV Film Review: A SIMPLE MACHINE [Dances With Films NY - New York, New York]

The consequence of the lead character Nick in "A Simple Machine" is showing how a life-changing shift can alter a sense of being in a person. Richard Blackmon plays Nick, a guy who, while not having everything together, seems like he is on a considerate path. He has a loving girlfriend in Marie (Gabriela Quezada) and is looking to get a new place and maybe start a family. When his mother dies (this might have been an aftermath of COVID), Nick begins to examine how complicated his life has become. He begins streamlining but the first thing he does is quit his job which tends to complicate things off the bat. The story is about him deconstructing his life, first selling off all of his stuff in his apartment, then his car, then his phone and then his actual apartment. He sets up a tandem landline in the garage of the house that his mother left behind which is in foreclosure because of the lapse of mortgage payments. Meanwhile he still has to pay student loans (this is one of the more dooming financial burdens for him). But by disconnecting from everything, he seems to lose touch with everything though he believes it has made him more pure. In fact as time goes on, even though he seems to think he is doing it to better himself, it seems to be isolating himself more.

There is interesting enlightenment to what he is doing but it is very much a reaction to his mother. When another life event starts happening with Marie that is mostly out of his control, it becomes his own undoing but people make mistakes that they can't bring or walk back. Nick speaks of everything being transitionary and that everything involves a transaction. This is true but there can be a happy medium but it is a matter whether or not it can be found. A homeless guy who fixes bicycles is actually the best functional mirror for Nick in the film to look against, though every situation is one's own. Their interactions start to flip and transfer in their personality the more the film goes on which allows for an introspective progression to what we are seeing. This also happens with a car salesman that Nick visits. That works as a kind of pay it forward but Nick only realizes it because he decides to buy another car just as a transactional idea to get him to the coast to reconnect with his girlfriend. Things take a turn when he realizes that his disconnection cost him his chance when he simply needed to have some patience. This adds another layer of sadness. Nick is an everyman who tried to take a difference path. "A Simple Machine", filmed in black and white in Portland, is a simple tale of a not-so-simple man. But even towards the end, through a simple line and a later look at a supermarket, everything will be fine and even if not, life will go on. "A Simple Machine" shows that path, imperfections and all. B+

By Tim Wassberg