Old Man Forever (Short)
**Seen at the 2020 Women in Horror Film Festival**
Nickolas Duarte doing a horror movie is almost exactly what I would expect of him doing a horror movie. But “Old Man Forever” is almost as genre-less as any of his other films, with the experience being at the forefront over any narrative. That’s part of why his films resonate with me so much; they are the work of an artist who makes films without compromise, and more interested in how we react to his films over telling us what he wants us to react to.
The film follows a man (Joseph Lopez) walking around what looks like a Chinatown district. He is walking, and we also see him screaming. There is not much more to see in this brief experience, but I would expect there might be much to think about. There is a victim involved, but our focus is on the man.
“Old Man Forever” is based on a feature script by Sonia Campbell, and I’m curious to see how this short amount of action fits into the larger framework of a narrative. Just upon viewing this, we get a haunting meditation on loneliness in life, and the pain it can bring. Some of my favorite films of Duarte’s are tone poems about the sad isolation we can feel in life, whether we are actually, physically alone, or whether we have people around us, trapped in the same situation of life. Duarte’s work is lyrical and painful, and seeing it on the big screen finally only adds to that feeling.
