Set between 2014 and 2021, when this FaceTime dependent “aesthetic” was still forming, It Doesn’t Matter appears to be composed entirely of first person, to camera narration that could be drawn from reels, which makes it a feat of liquid montage storytelling by Josh Mond. A surrogate filmmaker played by Christopher Abbott (Poor Things) knits together “staged” video diary entries by his childhood friend Alvaro (Jay Will) into a single coherent documentary feature or maybe it’s all staged, in which case this is a fiction film about a documentary. It premiered yesterday at Cannes’ ACID section, which specialises in authentically independent work like this.
Two things make It Doesn’t Matter tick, one of them putting some necessary pressure on the other. Like iPhone movies or first person POV shot films or films set in a sole claustrophobic location, the first reason it succeeds is because it proves they can be made at all. The second is the power dynamic between the unnamed filmmaker (let’s call him Chris it’s one syllable with an s sound toward its end), an archetypal white NYC hipster creative, and Alvaro himself, a young African American man of Honduran descent living in precarious employment and almost-homelessness. Chris loves Alvaro as a friend but uses his troubles and magnetism as creative grist can he treat him as an ethical subject for documentary making purposes who has helped shape much if not most of what takes place here with him or will he further victimize/otherize him? Ditto Mond vis a vis privileging different looks than his own via project initiation.
Typically exchanged from separate poles across America, with Chris buzzing around Brooklyn while Alvaro might be as far west as Hawaii (which is reachable without passport by air obviously), or Portland where he has recently taken up another round of crappy work, with occasional in-person visits by Chris out West, where their interactions are filmed in two shot, thus an atmospherically captured trip to Jackson Hole, Wyoming becomes an opportunity for a real heart to heart bonding session. Where Alvaro sharing his background as a child of immigrants and then estrangement from parents can be co-opted as backstory “exposition” to assist flow of Chris’ movie.
It’s both auto-critique showing Mond’s working and a legitimate swing at a certain kind of indie filmmaker (say, the Safdies and their ilk) who trawl through a rolodex of colourful “characters” that can be employed as non-pro on-screen participants in their movies is it friend or employee? Collaborator or coerced? But Alvaro’s story of second-gen immigrant drifting and eventual self pulling together is cathartic and touching, and deserves a platform even if it’s only media savvy building skills that bring it.
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