Written by Anna Harrison
85/100
SYNOPSIS: In ‘You Wouldn’t Understand’, one man’s elegant picnic is shattered when a stranger approaches, leaving nothing but churning questions. Is it ever okay to interrupt someone at peace with a picnic? What motives lay beneath a seemingly mundane ask? What does decadence look like when locked in a time loop of horseradish and death? Ultimately, we’re reminded never to believe in the promise of a perfect day. the comfort of a blue sky, or the serenity of a beautiful setting. Because when a slow wave of Hitchcock smashes against the rocks of Monty Python, the result is a film and a world that you wouldn’t understand. But you should certainly try.
REVIEW: Time travel, time loops, destiny, free will. These are all very serious topics that typically get explored in very serious and often lengthy forms of media. You Wouldn’t Understand takes these topics, adds a dash of absurdism, and crunches them into a film that lasts less than ten minutes. The end result is a wonderfully bizarre short that packs a lot of fun into that time frame.
You Wouldn’t Understand immediately sets its tone as it opens on a man (Anthony Arkin) in a pretentious gray-toned outfit chuckling to himself as he eats at his picnic for one—complete with horseradish sauce (delicious, I guess?). He’s having a jolly good time guffawing at his book and looking out over the fields until another man (Jacob A. Ware) shows up. The second man seemingly murders someone who looks an awful lot like himself before jogging up to the first man, and jovially asking for the horseradish sauce, as one does. Things quickly snowball into a time travel conspiracy from there. As one does.
Director (and co-writer with Ware) Trish Harnetiaux manages to keep the film suspenseful while never losing the absurdly comedic tone, pulling off a tricky balancing act with deftness. Arkin and Ware give delightful performances, Arkin playing the ignorant straight man to Ware’s slightly unhinged time traveler(s) with a penchant for exaggeration. The script is clever and zany, the music is wonderful, and the nine minutes fly by in the best way possible. You Wouldn’t Understand does leave us with more questions than answers, but over-explaining would sap the life out of it—and, honestly, when you’re having this much fun watching a movie, who cares?
VIDEO INTERVIEW WITH WRITER/DIRECTOR Trish Harnetiaux
You Wouldn’t Understand is currently playing the Sundance 2021 Film Festival.
You can also read Anna’s capsule review of White Eye or you can follow more of Anna’s work on Letterboxd and her website