Two Gates of Sleep (2010, Alistair Banks Griffin) (Patreon)

60/100

Second viewing, down from 72. Unfortunately, my sole record of that original high opinion is a single brief tweet: "Again, form-to-content ratio is out of whack, but this is exceptional filmmaking—rhythmically superb." ("Again" apparently refers to Aardvark, the film I'd seen right before this one at AFI Fest.) Didn't find it nearly as formally impressive this time, though Griffin—whose belated sophomore feature, The Wolf Hour, premiered at Sundance this year and opens commercially in December—commits to sensory maximalism in a way that probably plays better on the big screen than it does at home. (This film gave my tiny subwoofer the most strenuous workout it's had in months.) There's not a whole lot else to grab hold of, since the narrative amounts to a severely scaled-down version of Fitzcarraldo, with two equally taciturn backwoods brothers lugging their dead mom's coffin to some other location in the middle of nowhere, for reasons that are never quite made clear. (They don't want to turn her body over to the morgue, so I guess the idea is to bury her so far away that authorities won't find the grave?) The only significant development en route is left deliberately obscure, just like the film's title, but I still enjoy the second half's emphasis on raw physicality; both Brady Corbet and David Call go as elemental as they can, to the point where Corbet probably emits more loud grunts of exertion than he speaks recognizable words. Other visual elements, though, like a cut from swarming ants to the electromagnetic snow on an ancient TV set, may have once seemed less overdetermined to me than they do now. In any case, officially downgrading this from "excellent" to "of interest."