Sitting Idle: TFFF Review
Welcome back to our coverage of The Final Film Festival “In Competition”.
Today, Alonso Aguilar matches the vibe of Luke Olutunmogun’s Sitting Idle.
If you missed our “Totally Spies” magazine launch, there will be another chance to pick up a copy on 1st September at The Carousel, where we will be screening The Mole Agent.
Then on 4th September, we are back at The Cinema Museum for the penultimate edition of NOT BY LYNCH: Under The Silver Lake. There might just be a few copies of the issue available there too.
Sitting Idle (Luke Olutunmogun, UK, 2021)
I’ve been here before i’ve been here before…
It could be anywhere. It is everywhere. Wrinkled blankets on the floor, greyish hues coming through the window, a body in stasis, as ingrained to the claustrophobic tableau as the pop culture posters on the wall. Numbers fluctuate on the digital calendar, to no visible effect. Sometimes other bodies appear on screen, also nameless, also transient, coexisting momentarily in collective loitering, before disappearing into their own intimate lethargy. It’s all the same. Until it isn’t. And then it is again.
I’m just wastin’ away…
Luke Olutunmogun’s Sitting Idle presents the humble festival programme peruser with a logline: A [meandering], [meditative] visual [poem]. Beyond the plot(less) description, the film’s ethos can be understood through the intentionality of its descriptive phrase.
Meandering: Refers to a lack of purpose. Aimless, directionless, pointless. Can only be described through absence, as a derogatory opposition to “how things should be”. But meandering is also indicative of something even more fundamental: a certain pace.
To meander is inherently sluggish, it’s sloth-like, in hazy slow motion; an affront to the official discourse of “modernity”. Therefore, the one who meanders is an outcast. As Sitting Idle’s nameless central character (Olutunmogun) traverses unhurriedly across spaces, he’s passively defying convention. Ephemeral snapshots of connection with others appear unannounced, linger, and suddenly vanish when getting too comfortable. The bus journey is no more (or less) than the non-descript destination. No durational hierarchies to be spoken of here. The warmth of an intimate embrace and the aseptic front of a Sainsbury’s are equal in standing.
If it’s like that the whole time, we’ll be alright…
Meditative: Carries the weight of melancholy, even if it simply alludes to deep focus and thoughtfulness. It’s a state of being more than an adjective, an affect that directs to musings and pondering; the quest for inner discovery, regardless of any findings. To meditate is a mood, a tonal atmosphere.
Sitting Idle’s meditation is all-encompassing in the sense that it is experienced actively. It’s shared with the character when he sits for minutes swinging in an empty park, when he looks out the window to miles and miles of interchangeable urban landscapes, when he’s loafing in his room to the shared spiritual reverberations of self-professed anti-social rappers. Its deliberate flow is never confused for being carefree or leisurely, it is the visceral result of jadedness and alienation, it is reluctant stasis as survival.
Stay gettin’ in, alright... (Faded, I stink)...
Poem: is the composition, the suggestion of expressiveness and lyricism, but more importantly, the pillars of formal grace. The poem is first and foremost the literary mode of verse. It relinquishes the tools and forms that don’t serve the inner world, the so-called realm of subjectivity.
Sitting Idle’s poetry is stealthy at first, yet unavoidable. It’s present in its harsh pixelated textures and diaristic intimacy, it’s never underlined or even vocalised, because it can only be felt. In the meandering sequences and meditative frames, through the elusive and jagged rhythms of late capitalist estrangement, the shrinking global stage implodes into itself. Everywhere feels liminal and uncanny. The universal sights of Western sorrow. The universal sounds of internet-age isolation.
If ya soul intact, let me know…
Yes, there’s the looming spectre of COVID shadowing Sitting Idle. Its existence might come as a scream into the Vimeo void during pandemic era disaffection, but its cinematic introspection is evergreen, a sort of found-object of millennial hopelessness, and a testament to the affective networks built to keep going, even if the reason why is never really clear.
Adriftness as healing.
Alonso Aguilar