The distance that separates the dark and lonely forests of Oregon seen and told in Pigthe surprising directorial debut of young Michael Sarnoski, from the post-apocalyptic New York of A Quiet Place – Day 1 it’s a lot, yet we feel like we’re going back there, and that’s lucky. Sarnoski, American filmmaker born within the independent film circuitinherits from John Krasinski and Jeff Nichols, who was supposed to direct this third chapter and then gave it up, the long-awaited prequel to the successful horror franchise A Quiet Place. A minor film, that’s for sure, yet it’s in the smallest moments that its soul lights up, revealing an extremely fascinating, acute and personal idea of cinema. A Quiet Place – Day 1 is in theaters from June 27, 2024, distributed by Eagle Pictures.
Cats, pizzas and silences in A Quiet Place – Day 1
How is it possible to make a film capable of convincing both Steven Spielberg and Haruki Murakami fans? What they have in common War of the Worlds And The end of the world and Wonderland? Apparently nothing, yet Michael Sarnoski inextricably links two potentially irreconcilable souls together, showing how much and how a metropolitan sci-fi and post-apocalyptic dimension can be ferocious and fearsome, but also and above all sentimental, sweet and philosophical, without taking anything away from the fear , to the drama of the end, to the anguish of a new beginning and all the symbolism that follows.
Sam (an excellent and revived Lupita Nyong’o) is a young patient in a treatment center for mentally unstable individuals, when it all begins, who despite having lost any reason to live, chooses to stay, partly for her adorable cat and partly for the pizza. Sam’s is a past destined to reveal itself slowly, unlike Eric (Joseph Quinn’s interpretative test does not go unnoticed), a mysterious young man who along the path, or rather, Sam’s solitary wandering through the frightening and lethal New York occupied by aliens, becomes for the latter, first an unwanted presence and then a sweet, protective and perhaps even lovable traveling companion.
Sam and Eric are not only united by the end of the world as they knew it before, but also by a cat. The latter, running here and there, seems to possess the gift of bringing together each unresolved soul in a single place and nucleus, allowing it to silently reveal itself and then collapse; Sam and Eric shout in fact on a stormy night, exploiting the power of thunder to hide the pain and thus the desperation; finally finding themselves welcomed into a new and truer bond than ever, which is familiar and at the same time one of survival, tenacity and tenderness.
Michael Sarnoski and the importance of silence
If for a long time we have looked at silent films or the absence of sound in cinema, considering it as a narrative, stylistic and communicative limit, Michael Sarnoski, since the days of his surprising debut Pig, to all intents and purposes an instant cult, reveals to us how silence is actually the exact opposite of a communication limit. Because it is precisely in silence that the truth is hidden, that love is hidden and thus the most ferocious instincts of man. Concept further amplified by the excellent work done by Sarnoski for this minor yet interesting third chapter of A Quiet Place.
Day 1 however, he is not exclusively interested in the instincts of violence and ferocity, typical of those who survive in no-man’s lands now frighteningly dominated by excruciating silences and streets strewn with bodies and rubble, but also to the sweetest and most childish ones. What is it that you want most when it’s all over? The answer is simple and immediate, what made us feel good at the beginning. In fact, Sam and Eric miss music terribly, but pizza even more. One might spot here an apparent reference to the hilarious and unhinged Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson) of Welcome to Zombielandwho despite having survived a new world of the undead, never stops looking for his beloved Twinkies, his last reason to live.
As with the metaphysical, surreal and poetic literature of Murakami, Sarnoski is the smallest and apparently insignificant moments of gaze, suspension and waiting that delivers the deepest meaning of the film, and it is good for each viewer to draw their own conclusions, perhaps opening up to even more questions, since the answers that remain, doing harm and good at the same time, slowly vanish, among the dust, the shouts, the verses and the pain.
A Quiet Place – Day 1: evaluation and conclusion
It lives again War of the Worlds by Steven Spielberg, between reflections on fatherhood, the troubled yet very solid and unbreakable relationship between fathers and children and thus through the action dimension, here reduced to the bare bones, of an alien aggression destined to cause a real hell on earth, which however, he will prove incapable of erasing humanity, in its most innocent, frightened, sweet and gentle form.
Michael Sarnoski gets the message and, like John Krasinski, manages to never lose his voice – in a new reality of great silences -, although distant from the origins of the independent, of the personal film, hidden here in the blockbuster for the general public, which however is not entrusted to just any professional, or otherwise, to a well-known name on the Hollywood scene , rather to a young filmmaker and cinephile, with a boundless love for cinema, who perhaps, thanks to it, finds himself – and finds himself – even within a film like this, so distant from Pig and at the same time so close.
Let yourself go to the silences, let yourself go to the pizzas, to the pain and to the poetic and supernatural beauty of cats, those who, better and more than any other individuals, prove capable of tracing love and life, the real one, even among the rubble , even in terror.
A Quiet Place: Day 1 is in theaters from June 27, 2024, distributed by Eagle Pictures.
