From the dark, lonely, and silent forests of the Surprising Pig, to the equally quiet metropolises of A Quiet Place: Day One, Michael Sarnoski directs a third and convincing spin-off chapter of John Krasinski's successful franchise, capable of tying together The War of the Worlds by Steven Spielberg, The End of the World and Wonderland by Haruki Murakami and Welcome to Zombieland by Ruben Fleischer. Twinkies? No, pizzas. But above all cats.
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| Image Credit: Paramount Pictures |
The distance that separates the dark and lonely forests of Oregon seen and told in Pig, the surprising directorial debut of the young Michael Sarnoski, from the post-apocalyptic New York of A Quiet Place – Day One is long, and yet we feel like we are returning there, and it's lucky. Sarnoski, an American filmmaker born within the independent film circuit, inherits the long-awaited prequel to the successful horror franchise A Quiet Place from John Krasinski and Jeff Nichols, who was supposed to direct this third chapter and then gave it up. A minor film, that's for sure, yet it is in the smallest moments that his soul lights up, revealing an extremely fascinating, acute, and personal idea of cinema. A Quiet Place – Day One is in cinemas from June 27, 2024, distributed by Eagle Pictures.
Cats, pizzas, and silences in A Quiet Place – Day One
How is it possible to make a film capable of convincing both fans of Steven Spielberg and those of Haruki Murakami? What do The War of the Worlds The End of the World and Wonderland have in common? Apparently nothing, yet Michael Sarnoski inextricably links two potentially irreconcilable souls together, showing how much and how a sci-fi and post-apocalyptic metropolitan dimension can be ferocious and fearsome, but also and above all sentimental, sweet and philosophical, without taking anything away from 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 of 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 a little for pizza. Sam's past is destined to reveal itself slowly, unlike Eric's (Joseph Quinn's performance does not go unnoticed), a mysterious young man who along the path, or rather, Sam's solitary wandering through the frightening and lethal occupied by aliens, becomes for the latter, initially 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.
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| Image Credit: Paramount Pictures |
Michael Sarnoski and the importance of silence
If for a long time we looked at silent films or the absence of sound in cinema, considering it as a narrative, stylistic, and communicative limit, Michael Sarnoski, since the time of his surprising debut Pig, has in all respects been 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. A concept further amplified by the excellent work done by Sarnoski for this minor yet interesting third chapter of A Quiet Place.
Day One, however, 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 in 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 crazy Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson) from Zombieland, who despite having survived a new world of the undead, never stops looking for his beloved Twinkies, the last reason of life.
As with the metaphysical, surreal, and poetic literature of Murakami, Sarnoski is the smallest and apparently insignificant moments of gaze, suspension, and waiting that deliver 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 One: evaluation and conclusion
Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds is relived, through a reflection on fatherhood, the troubled yet very solid and unbreakable relationship between fathers and children and so through the action dimension, here reduced to the bare bones, of alien aggression destined to cause a real hell on earth, which however will prove incapable of erasing humanity, in its most innocent, frightened, sweet and gentle form.
Michael Sarnoski grasps the message and, just 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 craftsman, or otherwise, to a well-known name on the Hollywood scene, but rather to a young filmmaker and cinephile, with a boundless love for cinema, who perhaps, thanks to it, finds himself - and there finds himself – even within a film like this, so distant from Pig and yet 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 One is in cinemas from June 27, 2024, distributed by Eagle Pictures.
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