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THIS VACUUM IS TOO LOUD

(***Winner of the Hammer To Nail Short Film Contest: June 2012!*** Visit the official website of filmmaker Gus Péwé to learn—and watch—more.)

In my personal experience, just about every director I’ve spoken to or read about has pretty much always looked back on his or her earliest work with cringing and embarrassment. Even at their best, these early films tend to fall short of their marks. The reasons for this are multitudinous and obvious—the primary one being that making movies is actually a very difficult thing to do. But in many cases, the problem starts before production. It begins with the basic concept. So many young filmmakers are too busy copycatting other filmmakers to forge a path of their own. While that’s understandable, it doesn’t make this work any less painful to sit through.

But here comes Gus Péwé from Denison University with This Vacuum Is Too Loud. Though this endearing just-under-six-minute short film is far from perfect, it manages to accomplish something that should have Péwé’s instructors feeling very optimistic. Made while a freshman undergraduate, Péwé’s film is a super-duper example of a class assignment made on a tiny budget that has something many professionally produced films at more widely heralded film schools are often missing: a truly distinct voice. Péwé’s film is as far from a “calling card” as you could possibly encounter—thank God for that—and though that makes it easier to forgive its shortcomings, as the film builds to its stirring conclusion, those shortcomings no longer even feel like shortcomings.

This Vacuum Is Too Loud tells the story of a non-earthling who has been stuck on our planet with no ability to return home. Only this non-earthling doesn’t look like an alien. He looks like a regular old Denison University undergrad. You might be thinking that this was lazy writing/casting on Péwé’s part, but I ask you, would you rather this alien look more like an alien in the silvery sci-fi sense? Especially if it meant breaking out the tin foil from the kitchen cupboard? Fortunately, Péwé doesn’t try to reach beyond his limited production means with this early class assignment. Had he done that, he would have lost this viewer immediately.

Our tender alien hero does like some things about living on Earth—orange soda in a big Dixie cup and “the part of the year when the trees fall apart”—and he even found himself falling for a pretty girl, but when she paid more attention to a kid who had no decent values or respect for other people, he decided that he was officially over Earth. Now he just has to build a homing device that will enable him to travel back to the land where he belongs.

To us, that life might seem less than ideal. Yet for this alien, that is his home. He goes on to wax defensively poetic about how misguided it is for people to talk smack about outer space, about how empty and boring it must be. “Some planets are empty as the emptiest parts of space,” he says, as the camera drives past an unflattering—and seemingly unending—strip of suburban American sprawl. Right you are, shunned alien.

Though This Vacuum Is Too Loud is ultimately about loneliness, it’s about homesickness too. Incorporating animation into his otherwise scrappy digital video aesthetic, Péwé transcends his limited production means and delivers a strangely affecting conclusion. Moments after the credits have rolled, This Vacuum Is Too Loud remains there hovering like a weird planet in the nighttime sky.

— Michael Tully

***WATCH IT RIGHT NOW***

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Michael Tully is an award-winning writer/director whose films have garnered widespread critical acclaim, his projects having premiered at some of the most renowned film festivals across the globe. He is also the former (and founding) editor of this site. In 2006, Michael's first feature, COCAINE ANGEL, chronicling a tragic week in the life of a young drug addict, world premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. The film immediately solidified the director as one of Filmmaker Magazine’s "25 New Faces of Independent Film,” a reputation that was reinforced a year later when his follow-up feature, SILVER JEW, a documentary capturing the late David Berman's rare musical performances in Tel Aviv, world-premiered at SXSW and landed distribution with cult indie-music label Drag City. In 2011, Michael wrote, directed, and starred in his third feature, SEPTIEN, which debuted at the 27th annual Sundance Film Festival before being acquired by IFC Films' Sundance Selects banner. A few years later, in 2014, Michael returned to Sundance with the world premiere of his fourth feature, PING PONG SUMMER, an ‘80s set coming-of-age tale that was quickly picked up for theatrical distribution by Gravitas Ventures. In 2018, Michael wrote and directed the dread-inducing genre film DON'T LEAVE HOME, which has been described as "Get Out with Catholic guilt in the Irish countryside" (IndieWire). The film premiered at SXSW and was subsequently acquired by Cranked Up Films and Shudder.

Comments
  • Although some
    people might consider chamber vacuum sealers as excessive for the
    requirements of the home, there are actually several convincing reasons
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    November 1, 2012
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