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Trailer
Official Site
Showtimes
Director: Benjamin Morgan
Producer: Kevin Heverin, Darrell M. Lee, Benjamin
Morgan, Meika Rouda, Brant Smith, Jennifer Stewart
Screenwriter: Brian Burnam, Benjamin Morgan Stars: Lane
Garrison, Brian Burnam MPAA Rating: unrated
Year of Release: 2005 (limited)
| A film review by
Sara Schieron
Shot on Super 16, Quality of Life,
tells the story of two graffiti artists in San Francisco's Mission
District. Longtime friends Mike and Curtis spend their nights dodging
police cars and spray painting art on (usually) public surfaces. By
day, they paint houses, often covering up the work of other public
painters. Written by Benjamin Morgan and the film's co-star Brian
Burnam, Quality of Life explores the conflicts emerging from
these character's involvement with this illegal art and the tensions
that drive them towards and away from their medium of expression.
Found
painting on what appear to be abandoned freight trucks, Mike (aka
"Heir") and Curtis (aka "Vain") are penalized according to the "Quality
of Life" statues that enforces the persecution of graffiti as a felony
(along with drug trafficking, prostitution and vagrancy). After missing
a week of work, Mike's father, the head of the house painting company,
fires Curtis. Though Curtis is the more defiant of the two, his
involvement with a young single mother and her son make his rebellion
seem particularly poignant: as compulsory as it is irresponsible. Much
like the art they create, these characters comprise a study of the
motivations that drive people to graffiti art. Mike's often played
quote: "we paint graffiti, that's what we do", stands as a kind of
anti-explanation for the work that drives them.
Formally, the film isn't far from other independent, verite revisions like Manito or Piecesof April,
but this films constructs some gentle, almost expressionistic
conventions that distinguish it from the pack. Careful focal distance
is executed almost consistently - it's this degree of uncertainty that
lends the out of focus moments their tension. Mike, the film's
protagonist, is introduced in his bed: his slightly paint stained right
hand, the only part of him in focus. When Mike fights with his loved
ones, he's always a solid blur, and these fights end with his movement
away into a wider haze.
The grain
of the films, which is always palpable if even subtly, adds a fantastic
dimension to the film's themes. Ideas such as impermanence, defiance,
risk, and instability play out in sequences shot in varying degrees of
low light where the grain, sometimes literally, overshadows the images.
The seeming Rorschach of images plays into the expressive quality of
the film. Moments of great intensity necessarily happen in the dark:
painting in BART tunnels, hiding in alleys; hooded, these characters
wait where the streetlight doesn't reach.
It
can't be ignored the film has an incredible soundtrack. Music is a
constant element and the songs, ranging from hip-hop to techno to
modern, bleed together and work to portray the arcs of the characters
as they form a sort of compendium storyline. Graffiti's ability to
cross cultures like punk and hip hop make the film an easy play to a
wide audience and this dexterity, which can be felt in every scene of
the film, comes across loud and clear.
And EVERYTHING is available! The soundtrack, the dvd, and all kinds of merch.
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