FANTASIA FEST PREMIERE REVIEW: The Arbalest

- By Dave Dubrow

Fantasia International Film Festival premiere!

The tricky thing with magical realism in film is that if you use too much you end up with unwatchable fables like Winter’s Tale, and if you don’t use enough the movie comes off as jarring, as though the filmmakers can’t tell the difference between the miraculous and the credible. Adam Pinney’s The Arbalest works very hard at making a go of such a difficult theme, with mixed results. There’s a great deal to like, even love about the movie, but its uneven storytelling and budgetary constraints get in the way of the plot, making it a struggle to enjoy.

Mike Brune as Foster Kalt, the protagonist, shows extraordinary range. He makes Kalt very much a person uncomfortable in his own skin: someone bright but not sophisticated enough to succeed, classically handsome but socially inept, ego-driven but vulnerable. Brune’s transformation of Kalt throughout the various stages of his life works well; Kalt’s look, even his behavior changes over time, but he’s still the same fundamentally weak figure. What kept Kalt from being likeable was the script, which put today’s way of speaking in the mouths of characters who lived almost forty years ago. The anachronistic dialogue and behavior didn’t really fit, despite the great pains taken to make everything look consistent with the time period.

The film is set between 1968 and 1978, and with very few exceptions the sets and costumes matched the period perfectly. This was a joy to experience, a way of proving that television programs like Mad Men don’t own the 1960’s and 1970’s. From shag carpets to groovy wallpaper, from tube socks to rectangular orange couches, The Arbalest placed you right there, even when the dialogue sometimes took you out. Where it didn’t quite hold up was the isolation of the few sets used: a hotel room, a Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired house, a cabin in the woods. With everything so enclosed (not unlike a Kalt Cube), the passage of time was forced, constrained through a middling budget.

From Kalt’s original creation, an honest-to-God miracle, to his last invention, touches of magic were salted throughout the story, but they raised a number of pertinent questions that were left unanswered. With the bizarre goings-on, how seriously are we to take the events of the film, especially in light of the tragic, horrific last act?

The Arbalest is a detailed, entertaining, artfully-crafted film with flaws that can be charitably overlooked in light of the many things done right. It’s the kind of movie you want to talk about after you’ve seen it, so check it out and let us know what you think at The Slaughtered Bird.

The Arbalest premieres at Fantasia International Film Festival tonight (Friday 29th July 2016).

- By Dave Dubrow