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A BREAD FACTORY, PART TWO: A Sobering Reality Check and Why We Still Create Art Anyway

A BREAD FACTORY, PART TWO: A Sobering Reality Check and Why We Still Create Art Anyway

A BREAD FACTORY, PART TWO: A Sobering Reality Check and Why We Still Create Art Anyway

NOTE: A Bread Factory, Part Two is the second installment in Patrick Wang’s 4-hour film project. Although it functions as a standalone film, it is also greatly enhanced seen in conjunction with Part One (read our review here).

It’s a joy watching A Bread Factory, Part Two in light of its first half because if we didn’t know what we were getting ourselves into initially, we feel far more at home now. At the very least it does feel like we’re in the know and we can even (if only momentarily), claim to be on the inside track of this community.

As a quartet of musicians sit down and go to work on the film’s familiar stringed-score, we can look on with a bit of a knowing smirk as the entire premise of the earlier installment plays out on the stage in front of us. On the right half, we have the musicians in a spotlight. To their left, all the major players move in and out of the other spotlight acting out their various paces in a nonchalant kind of mime.

It’s a bit of meta-ness that’s appreciated and it’s just the beginning. What we are given is the first of many visual motifs Wang will utilize. Because while his story is continually grounded in this reality he worked hard to establish, what is even more audacious is how he’s willing to stretch the boundaries.

There are new developments, with Wang choosing to take his story in some off-kilter directions. He breaks into the narrative with these fanciful offshoots to creatively articulate a core conflict. As a result, the picture turns into part musical, with tourists gaping and posing with their selfie sticks aloft. They prove to be both misinformed and misguided and we don’t quite know what they’re doing in Checkford aside from the neon-bright allure of the imported attraction May Ray.

There’s also the proliferation of tech companies moving in with random techies hanging around on the fringes of town. Their constant texting is reinforced through tap dancing. In an arena like the local diner, it proves overtly disruptive and impersonal behavior. Another impeccable personification of what they represent.

Like these giddy out-of-towners or May Ray, they are yet another external force constantly being acknowledged and accepted albeit mostly in the periphery. However, what still matters most are the people who make up the bulwark of this small town — their relationships, conversations, and lives — this is what we wind up caring about at the end of the day.

Pushing Back Against A Bread Factory

Jan (Glynnis O’Connor), the local newspaper editor, has disappeared. We do not know how or why (as far as I know) but in her absence, Max (Zachary Sayle) realizes his calling in journalism and keeps the local publication running at full steam. The local loud-mouth Alec (Joe Paparone) becomes parking lot attendant so he can maintain his passion of chewing out people.

The performance of Hecuba is in full motion with Dorothea (Tyne Daly) and Greta (Elisabeth Henry-Macari) frantically searching for a new Polyxena before opening night. Part of me enjoys having longer with these characters but if I’m honest — terribly honest — I’m ready to push back against Part Two, because it has the same methodical, unhurried pacing. Let’s just admit it. In the world we have found ourselves living in even in the last 5 years, most of us (myself included) are high on constant stimuli.

A BREAD FACTORY, PART TWO: A Sobering Reality Check and Why We Still Create Art Anyway
source: In the Family

We need pizzazz and excitement. We need concrete reasons to do something or watch something or go somewhere. Anything else we deem to be wasted time that could be better served by doing something else and getting distracted by some other awesome experience.

To the very fiber of its being, A Bread Factory, as a movie and a physical institution, is fighting against this. I never had such a place in my life and I really wish I did. I can imagine it being a forum where all the value is intrinsic. You do not have to be there. You want to be there, to learn and to read old, antiquated plays and listen to poetry and sing songs and do whatever else, because there’s something in it that you find exhilarating.

Because it’s so different and cool and inviting in such a disarming, counterintuitive way. This is not school. You are not being graded on how eloquent your understanding of Shakespeare or Keats is. All that matters is the appreciation of something. Again, I am speaking as much to the conception of this physical place, if it were to exist in reality, as to this film that I see in front of me.

A Reality Check

But the final act involves coming to terms with reality. Finally, the production of Hecuba is being put on and it’s simultaneously gripping and taxing, bare-boned yet evocative. But what’s more painful still is how so much emotion and passion was exerted in it and then we realize when the show is over, only a handful of people sit in the seats. The audience on hand is minuscule. At least for me, this feels deflating. Sure, it’s difficult going at times, but shouldn’t more people have gotten a chance to be a part of this? It seems like a shame and if this is how we feel about a play (which is not real), it also applies to how we might feel about Patrick Wang‘s film.

It’s this indie passion project. Totally original and singular. There’s nothing like it you’ve probably ever seen. It barely has any recognizable names (Tyne Daly is the only one I could give you solely for the older crowd). There are no explosions. There’s hardly what we would call one firm action line from start to finish, where every conversation is consciously pushing forward this central story to its final conclusion.

Character arcs remain unresolved. We forget about others and villainy in the conventional sense does not exist. And yet I look at this picture — not like it’s incomplete — but as a full-bodied impression of a real community. This is really hard to do and Wang succeeds beyond normal expectations. However, how many people will actually get to see this movie?

A BREAD FACTORY, PART TWO: A Sobering Reality Check and Why We Still Create Art Anyway
source: In the Family

If the first addition documents the struggle to remain relevant and keep afloat, Part Two is the backslide that occurs in the wake of the fight because you cannot last forever. The Bread Factory is all but sunk in a few throwaway lines of dialogue. After limping along for 40 years and change, it seems like an utter waste. Again, we pose the question. Was it even worth it?

But this is deceptive. You only have to look at the richness on hand. Surely, this is an acknowledgment of the death grip put on meager institutions like The Bread Factory. But it is also a celebration and an attentive call-to-action. There is a bit of melancholy assuredly, even as there is still humor, maturation, and isolated moments of pulchritude.

We still need films with these reverberating themes and on a broader scale, we still need the arts, with diverse ideas and perspectives being explored. And not just the new but the old and the ancient and everything in between. We need The Bread Factory. Both the metaphorical places like this existing in our society, and this very tangible film of Patrick Wang’s.

A Bread Factory: The Resolution

But never fear. If you don’t get a chance to watch this film there is an alternative. Go to the theater. Read some poems. Watch some Shakespeare in the park. Have a viewing party of a black & white movie with friends. What you do exactly does not matter.

What matters is a firsthand involvement in the arts. We tend to think of them as auxiliary if not altogether superfluous. But if I understand this film correctly and have a pulse on my own experience, the arts are vital. They put words and feelings to the most perplexing things in life, evoking all sorts of visceral reactions to formerly unnamed phenomena.

Done well, they can be beautiful and any blemishes just mean they’re even closer to our imperfect human condition. In this fractured world of ours, we can use every smidgeon of artistry we can get our hands on. We need creators. We need cultivators. Hey, we even need critics to tend the gardens of the arts.

We must be reminded that even the most basic human interactions can be imbued with immense beauty because such qualities are innate within us and a true reflection of our natural world. We were not meant to do this alone. A Bread Factory only exists because it’s not about one person but a thriving symbiotic community. This is imperative.

What area of culture do you find the most rewarding? Are there any ways you want to get more involved in the art within your community?

A Bread Factory Part One and Two were released in the U.S. on October 26th, 2018. 

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