Dual Review: 'My First Film' and 'Hundreds of Beavers'

by Mitchel Green - September 8, 2024

| mitchelgreen34@gmail.com source: The Movie Database

Does it make much sense to pair these films together, or did I just so happen to view them both this week? Admittedly, on the surface, Zia Anger’s metafictional self-portrait “My First Film” and Mike Cheslik’s silent action-comedy “Hundreds of Beavers” have nothing in common — not tone, not style, not theme, nothing. But they do make for a double-feature showcase of formally daring auteurist visions, one that looks to our past to mine comedic gold in Cheslik’s case and one that tries to forge a new path for the medium in Anger’s case.

“My First Film”

Where can Zia Anger even go as an artist from here? She has been shaping her new film, “My First Film,” for so long that her voice is already fully formed. As fictional autobiographies go, this feels like such a complete self-portrait that any other personal film from her seems pointless. And yet, “My First Film” is such an exciting formal use of the medium that even if she retreads the same ideas in future works, I have confidence that she will find unconventional, creative ways to express them.

Anger uses performance art, direct address, nonlinearity, and metafiction to tell a story of regret, self-doubt, love, and by the end self-actualization. It’s been a long road, but this is clearly what Anger was meant to do. It’s only now, after figuring out who she is, how her experiences — as an artist and a woman — have shaped her, and how to convey her message that she is ready to revisit the ideas that inspired her in her youth.

The film does occasionally slip into conventional drama, which as standalone scenes don’t work all that well — it’s mostly shot, written, and performed like your average personal indie film — but as part of the larger apparatus, they show why Anger must think outside the box in her presentation. Traditional methods of film drama are incapable of showing us her pain, frustration, and catharsis. It’s why she abandoned the project in the first place. She always knew the story she wanted to tell, she just had to figure out how to tell it.

“Hundreds of Beavers”

Mike Cheslik loves Looney Tunes. Really, who doesn’t? However, despite Looney Tunes' enduring influence on popular culture over the last 90 years, it’s difficult to see its stylistic influence on live-action filmmaking instead of merely a cartoonish sense of humor. In “Hundreds of Beavers” Cheslik has managed to capture cartoonish humor, timing, and composition in ways only a few filmmakers like Peter Bogdonovich (“What’s Up Doc?”) and Sam Raimi (“Evil Dead II”) have done before.

The film is a gag machine, almost two hours straight of joke after joke without rest. And the variety of joke styles keeps it from getting stale (for the most part). It bounces from overly violent slapstick to Keaton-esque deadpan reactions to sweet romantic melodrama to everything in between. Its non-verbal approach is a great tribute to the silent comics of several decades past but it also helps “Hundreds of Beavers” feel fresh in an age when cinematic comedy is almost exclusively dialogue-driven.

The humor is classically simple, as is the story (even if the details are comically convoluted), which makes it a great crowd-pleaser. Seeing this with a large audience is a joy few films this year have been able to match. It’s fascinating to see what parts make which groups of people laugh because it was rarely the same for the entire room. That just speaks to the breadth of styles Cheslik is working with, somehow never clashing and always connecting with somebody even if it doesn’t with you. It’s a wonderful communal experience.