45365 movie review & film summary (2010)

In my midwestern town, I knew these people, their homes, their friendliness, the trouble some of them got into, and I knew why after the high school football game some of the kids hung out under the arc lamps and others were in the shade of the bleachers with the hoods pulled up on their sweatshirts. I even recognized, because I once covered the police beat, exactly the tone of voice a policeman will use after stopping a drunk driver he's known for ten years.

The film is privileged. No one is filmed with a hidden camera. The camera must have been right there, in the living room, the river bank, the barber shop, the back seat, the football practice, the front lawn when a man agrees to put up a sign supporting a judge running for reelection. The Rosses must have filmed so much they became both trusted and invisible. They know this town without even thinking about it.

There is a beautiful shot during a church service which pans slowly to the right over the congregation and pauses looking into a door to a stairwell. A woman and small girl come up the stairs. The camera follows them back to the left until the girl is deposited back in her pew, having obviously just been taken to the potty. Were those two people cued? Obviously not. I suggest the cameraman, Bill or Turner, observed them getting up, intuited where they were going and why, and composed the camera movement instinctively. A brief shot you may not even consciously notice, but a perfect shot, reading the room as our minds do. All human life is in it.

I've never seen a barber shop like the one in the film. All three barbers are surprisingly young; one seems to be a teenager. Yet there is the order and routine of a small-town barber shop with barbers as old as Moses. Do these kids own the shop? Well, why not? It would cost less than a Supercuts franchise. What do they talk about? What all barbers talk about, the Friday night football game.

Sidney has what can only be described as a great radio station. Local human beings sit before the mikes and run the boards. This station isn't a robot from Los Angeles. They play hits of the 80s and 90s, they make announcements, they have a sports talk show about the Sidney Yellowjackets. The team has a chicken dinner benefit coming up. Adults $7, kids $3.

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