[yasr_overall_rating]
On a romantic getaway to Iceland, a young American couple wake up one morning to discover every person on earth has disappeared. Their struggle to survive and to reconcile the mysterious event lead them to reconsider everything they know about themselves and the world.
In “Bokeh,” the “last man on earth” genre comes to Iceland, or to be precise, two men and one woman. The film is wise to never really explain why Jenai (Maika Monroe) and Riley (Matt O’Leary), wake one morning to discover the rest of the world is missing and for a while, lingers on the beauty of abandoned city shots. But ultimately, “Bokeh” has too little commentary to make about the end of the world or the relationship between the film’s two characters, to make the film great. It’s a very beautiful film but ultimately very empty.
The film’s plot resembles something more like an opening. On a romantic getaway to Iceland, Riley and Jenai struggle to exist after finding the world’s population is missing. But struggle is too severe a word. Instead, the film lingers on the couple having conversations that try too hard to be poetic or meaningful. It’s often said among screenwriters that screenwriting is a very different craft from fiction or poetry. The dialogue and scenery in “Bokeh” would work much better in a purely written realm. As it is, the movie became very easy to tune out after the opening hour when the film stopped developing its story.
“Bokeh” introduces the third character of Nils (Arnar Jónsson) but by this point in time, it is too little too late to be saved by such a twist. In this entire structure, the film resembles the much better composed and more engaging New Zealand end of the world film, “Quiet Earth,” which also involves two men and a woman but has much more to offer in terms of commentary, poetry, and spark.
There just aren’t enough surprises, twists, or turns in “Bokeh” to keep the viewer engaged about what’s happened to the world or what will happen to the couple. Less patient viewers will even find themselves tested by this one, which is unfortunate because, in its strongest moments, the film does have glimpses of a tone film like Ozu’s “Floating Weeds.”
“Bokeh” is a photography term for the aesthetic quality of the blur produced in out-of-focus parts of an image. It’s a very pretty film and I wanted so very much to like it because I’m often a fan of apocalyptic settings. But, in the end, the film never became more than an exercise by the film’s co-writing and co-directing team of Geoffrey Orthwein and Andrew Sullivan, stuck on muses about what an abandoned Iceland looks like. That being said, this is a very well-shot and well-acted first film by the duo and I’ll certainly be interested to see what happens with their subsequent efforts.
Now in theaters and on VOD
