A man guards a mysterious hill.
YOU CAN GO HOME WHENEVER YOU WANT is used with permission from Matthew Paul Everitt. Learn more at https://snowyinaugust.com.
A recluse has been living off the grid for a number of years, isolated from society but for the people who seek him out. He lives at the base of a hill, which may or may not be a conduit to the next life. Those who want to ascend the hill check in with the recluse, and then when they walk to the other side, they disappear, never to be seen again.
The recluse has seen scores of people up the hill. But when he is visited by someone he used to be in a band with, the strange, somber terms of the exchange are destabilized, leading the recluse to remember his past life and question his role in the state of things.
Directed by Matthew Paul Everitt, this enigmatic, philosophically inclined sci-fi mystery muses over questions of transcendence, mortality and the role that human existence has in it all. Played out through an intriguing premise and strong visuals and direction that evokes the uncanny and the transcendent, it teases at dimensions that we can sense and even long for, but can never truly know with any certainty.
The most immediately striking aspect of the film is its visuals, which are mutedly cool and somber in color and light but almost abstract and formal in composition, creating a Tarkovsky-like transfixing quality. Shifting sometimes drastically between intimate close-ups and wide shots of the hill itself, the visuals conjure a sense of the recluse's sphere as being not quite of this world -- a liminal space that's neither here nor there but in-between, infused with feelings of unease and ambiguity.
That subtle disorientation is echoed in the washes of electronic sound in the film's musical score and the halting exchanges that the recluse has with his temporary charges. They sit with him at his makeshift shack, say their name and then both recite a kind of prayer. Portrayed with a poignant hauntedness by actor Michael B. Woods, the recluse is weighed down by his work. When people he knew in his past life arrive, he becomes discombobulated -- especially so when his old bandmate shows up with a cake for the recluse's birthday. The bandmate awakens memories of the recluse's old life, and both dance around the edges of their old camaraderie. Despite the callback to a simpler time, both men must reckon with where they are at, how they got there and where they are going in the future.
Introspective, off-kilter and not without its moments of levity, YOU CAN GO HOME WHENEVER YOU WANT tackles big questions of life, meaning and spirit, its thoughtful artistry creating an atmosphere that lingers with viewers well after watching. Beyond teasing at an existential mystery, it explores how life is a liminal space itself and how we fill it. We can fill it with meaning, pain, suffering, connection -- anything that keeps us from confronting its emptiness. But the other side of that hill awaits all of us, one way or another.