The unfocused Latvian drama “The Pit” begins and stops with Markuss (Damirs Onackis), an alienated 10-year-old who’s developed a damaging repute amongst his neighbors following an incident with a neighborhood lady and a sunken pit. “The Pit” isn’t nearly Markuss, neither is it even this 12 months’ solely darkish coming of age story involving yard despair and an emotionally withdrawn pre-teen: there’s additionally “Don’t Inform a Soul” and “John and the Hole,” the latter of which is particularly good.
What’s uniquely underwhelming about “The Pit” is that it’s additionally concerning the different characters in its disturbed baby protagonist’s orbit, like Markuss’ gruff however attentive grandmother Solveiga (Dace Everss) and his mysterious loner buddy Sailor (Indra Burkovska). All of those morose-looking aspect characters have just a few subplot-worthy regrets which might be principally implied via incident-free dialogue and a few flashbacks. So why all this to-do about Markuss, and never everybody else? It’s exhausting to inform primarily based solely on “The Pit,” an adaptation of three quick tales from Jana Egle’s assortment Into the Gentle.
In the event you’re like me, you would possibly ask yourself: why am I attempting to see the humanity in Markuss, a fair-skinned child whose character is primarily outlined by an incident involving his blithely insensitive neighbor Emilija (Luize Birkenberga)? Particulars of this traumatic occasion are unclear—and slowly revealed via a sequence of flashbacks—however, Emilja’s mom Sandra (Inese Kucinska) is quietly main a conspiracy to punish Markuss. And whereas some issues about Markuss are supposed to appear ambiguous, you’ll be able to nonetheless inform that we’re (principally) meant to sympathize with him provided that he finds an inventive outlet with Sailor, a hermitic glazier. Markuss has a watch and a drive to make one thing with stained glass, and solely Sailor cares sufficient to encourage Markuss. Even Solveiga doesn’t see that a lot of Markuss.
Neither can we, for that matter. Some characters are extra attention-grabbing than others, however even essentially the most compelling aspect characters are decreased to a couple of token dialogue exchanges, the place they suggest lots, however, don’t actually clarify a lot about Markuss or his actions. In a single scene, Sailor reveals one thing that’s so upsetting and out of the blue that, if “The Pit” is your first publicity to Egle’s characters (and it was for me), you would possibly surprised why there’s not much more from wherever that got here from.
Till this level, Markuss’ pre-adolescent childhood has had a woozy, oversaturated look that over-stresses shadows and darkish traces to the purpose of distraction. You may type of perceiving why “The Pit” seems as darkish because it does as soon as Sailor tells (or actually hints at) his previous. A result of Markus’s story is mostly concerning the pervasive unhappiness and unresolved pressure that connects him along with his family members; it’s a couple of basic tempers, not any particular person characters. So that you’ll both really feel dutifully overwhelmed by an unfocused pile-on of subplots, which solely have an obscure connection to Markuss’ story, otherwise you received’t.
Viewers can even inform some issues about how we’re purported to really feel about Markuss by the sheer quantity of screentime devoted to Roberts (Egon’s Dombrovskis), Markuss’s unstable uncle. Roberts beats his shy spouse Smaida (Agata Buzek) and can be vulnerable to emotional outbursts; Roberts just isn’t very delicate, however, he does have sufficient of a mood to make you groan at any time when he re-appears on-screen. And never simply because Roberts is a much less attention-grabbing character than Sailor, Solveiga, or Markuss—Roberts’ scenes scale back him to his all-caps conduct. Nonetheless, Roberts is a sadly attribute a part of Markuss’ world, which can be doubtlessly revealing.
As I watched “The Pit,” I obtained the sense that I used to be a bold ethical story, however with solely a fraction of the data I’d want to return to my very own conclusions. As a result of once you start and finish a film with a younger man who in all probability did one thing rotten as a result of the felt slighted, and then you definitely spend most of that film constructing personality protection for this child, principally by pointing to his house life and artistic actions … it is best to in all probability develop the remainder of his world in order that extra important info can’t simply be selectively ignored.
I’m curious about fashionable Euro-dramas like “The Pit” as a result of they’re (principally) about how exhausting it may be to forgive our family members, whilst we see them working via their very own issues. However the extra provocative elements of this film are sometimes dealt with with an excessive amount of delicacy, and finally, all of the pseudo-humane subplots and tangents that take us away from Markuss really feel extra distracting than considerate. There are numerous concepts swimming around in “The Pit,” however most of them aren’t organized effectively sufficient to demand your consideration.