The Hottest August

I love documentaries. The artsier the better - beautiful shots, sound design, etc. This was, hands down, the WORST docu I've ever seen in my many decades of watching. Almost nothing about global climate change or the environment. There is less than 5 minutes where interviewees discuss Hurricane Sandy. No rhyme, no reason, and no flow. Superhero movies are better than this - now that says alot. Save your $.

I created my account just so I could express how boring this movie is. I could have done a similar work just by walking around downtown and ask random questions to strangers (such as "What do you think of the future?), filming and jumbling those answers together. Most people interviewed were ordinary people.

The movie could have been engaging and interesting if it followed 2 or 3 people with radically different values and lifestyles and went deeper in their thoughts and everyday life, instead of juxtaposing dozens of people and featuring them for 2 to 20 minutes each.

You may as well just lay in bed for 1h30 and think about the future or just scroll through your Facebook newsfeed and you'll get a similar result / sentiment as this film would give you.

The Hottest August was received with confusion and bewilderment at SXSW Film Festival. It is an incoherent film and the director should find another line of work. It was supposed to be about climate change, but it wasn't. Basically, the director walked around Brooklyn (mostly along the beach) during the month of August 2017 and asked ordinary people what they thought about the future. The various individuals (who are all unnamed until the credits) talked about their anxiety about economics, race, and occasionally about the climate. Some gave sophisticated intellectual answers, some gave vaguely racist answers, and some offered total incoherent nonsense. Some just talked about ordinary challenges that they were facing in their daily lives. The film could be called a slice of life, but mostly it is bad film-making. The interviews are directionless, and the film is poorly edited. While some of the individual interviewee are interesting and insightful, there is no argument tying together the different interviews or any apparent order to the order in which they were edited together. A film requires a narrative and this one doesn't have one. Frankly, I'm surprised that the SXSW staff accepted the film. I've seen hundreds of documentaries and this is among the worst that I've encountered.

So one summer in one North American city is Scientific proof of climate change??? DUMB!

After premiering at numerous festivals around the world, such as Camden International Film Festival, Milwaukee Film Festival; and winning a special mention award at Dokufest International Documentary and Short Film Festival, for "crafting a delicate portrait of a city in a given moment, offering a shared feeling of uncertainty and threat arising from the climate crisis.", Brett Story's The Hottest August is ready for its Australian premiere here in Sydney, at Antenna.

The first thing I noticed, was Troy Herion's haunting score companying Story's aesthetic lens on New York City. We see houses and streets from different point of views and multiple corners of the city. The director roams the streets asking random people from contrasting backgrounds, ethnicities, age or gender, one (not so) simple question: "What are your hopes for the future?". This all takes place during the month of August in 2017. A country completely divided since the election of a new president, The Hottest August looks back at society and dares to discuss some more controversial topics. Controversial in New York City, that is.

Global warming is one of the topics Story discusses with a middle aged Zumba-instructor, who believes fitness is about being healthy and how important it is to give your heart a bit of a workout. Many disparate opinions, that didn't necessarily connect with me. These are normal middle class people, just like you and me, who I'd probably have a normal conversation with in real life, yet nothing being said is particularly memorable. The entire documentary loses momentum after a few guests have been asked similar questions. There are some standouts, such as a lady at the beach, once a property manager now a school bus driver. Every viewer will connect with another person being questioned, though we always stay on the surface of these people's concerns. A missed opportunity, if you ask me.

Derek Howard's cinematography works wonders on the entire film, capturing the tranquility and commotion of The Big Apple. But just like a feature film, a documentary should have some sort of narrative to build up towards a bigger picture and ending. Brett Story focuses too much on making sure she documents as many individuals who are willing to talk to her, than actually finding those who are in ways captivating and linger in your mind, even after you walk out of the cinema. Nothing is sadder than feeling as if you've just wasted your time.

The Hottest August is somehow poetic, with the right amount of melancholia and longing for a better future. The economic crisis and relationship between the people and politics always linger in the background, yet it feels like these individuals are defeated by those particular problems in today's world. Brett Story's film lacks direction, seemingly wanting to make this spellbinding. Confronting what we now call 'The New Normal', The Hottest August never reaches out far enough to become more than a modern art installation at your local gallery.