SXSW 2023 Review:
"Monolith"
Release Date: Feb. 16, 2024
Rating: R Running Time: 95 minutes Lilly Sullivan is well-known to film and television audiences in her native Australia. But this year’s SXSW Film & TV Festival offered Sullivan an invaluable opportunity to make her mark in the United States with two-high profile selections, Evil Dead Rise and the haunting one-hander Monolith. Evil Dead Rise will probably garner Sullivan the most attention for obvious reasons, and deservedly so as she is divinely wicked as a Deadite-possessed mother on a murderous rampage. But it is the SXSW Midnighter Monolith that showcases Sullivan’s ability to capture our attention in a film that requires her to be on screen in almost every scene. Directed by Matt Vesely from a unsettling script by Lucy Campball, Monolith stars Sutherland as an unnamed disgraced journalist and interviewer forced to make ends meet as a podcaster investigating unsolved mysteries. This is all beneath Sutherland’s interviewer—until she receives an unsolicited email from an unidentified source about a mysterious black brick. The brick so intrigues Sutherland that the once-respected reporter finds herself diving down one rabbit hole after another to learn the truth behind this strange object of unknown origin. But as Sutherland obsession with the brick grows, the more fragile her state of mind becomes. On the surface, Monolith unfolds as a cautionary story about an journalist getting too close to a story that they can no longer separate fact from fiction, that the only way forward to is either inject themselves into the story or see themselves as part of the story. For the interviewer, her fixation with the brick stems from an overwhelming need to take control of her own narrative. To uncover the truth behind the brick represents the opportunity the interviewer has sought to restart an acclaimed career stalled by controversy. Whether or not the interviewer learns the truth behind the brick makes no difference. The brick is either a symbol of potential redemption or false hope, depending upon how you view the interviewer’s desperate quest. Sutherland is front and center at all times in Monolith, either recording podcast entries or talking on the phone to sources and interview subjects. Most of the time she is confined to a single location, a lovely, spacious house close to a lake that Vesely metaphorically employs as the interviewer’s place of exile. We rarely see who Sullivan is speaking to on the other of her mic or phone. Sutherland takes on the burden of carrying a film that is heavy on dialogue and light on action with strength and determination. She starts in a place of despair and dejection, which she temporarily allows the interviewer to break free from when she sees salvation in an object that remains out of grasp. The mental decline displayed by Sutherland is quiet and gradual, matching Vesely’s effective build-up toward a tense climax that perhaps asks more questions than it answers about self and identity. “I want to tell you a story. All you have to do is listen,” Sutherland says at the beginning of Monolith. And for 94 minutes, we hang on Sutherland’s every word. Robert Sims Posted: March 23, 2023. Web sites: https://schedule.sxsw.com/2023/events/FS16309 https://wellgousa.com/films/monolith |
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