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Personal Velocity (2003)
Rebecca Miller
Personal Velocity provides us with an opportunity to discuss the
difference between film directors who are strictly film school and writers
who take to directing because they want a new audience. Of course, I
don’t officially know why Rebecca Miller has decided to get into films,
but clearly she is a writer first, or at least, she writes things. But we’ll get
back to this.
Personal Velocity, a film by Rebecca Miller, is divided into three separate
stories, which don’t seem at all integrated. And if they are, I didn’t get it.
Having three small films instead of one big one prevents Miller from
using the full hour and a half to develop a set of characters and build on
contiguous themes. Because of this, there can be no unearthly payoff at
the end like Andrei Rublev. But Rublev is three fucking hours long!? My
God man! You’d need an ass of steel! And hold on, there’s plenty of very
short films with great momentum, great payoffs. Whacked! by Rolf
Gibbs, for example, is only five minutes—five minutes to total filmgasm.
So maybe length really isn’t the problem. Maybe it’s how you use that
time to tell the story. Miller, for her part, tries to cram too much of her
precious story into each little featurette, which makes it seem forced. And
there are times when the writing is painfully self-satisfied and selfaware.
1 A screenplay (especially voice-over narrative) should not call
attention to itself in a way that makes what’s actually happening on the
screen seem only secondary. And it probably shouldn’t be supremely
literary either. Some of the best lines of all time are from the most overthe-top
films like Dune, Once Upon A Time in The West and Blade
Runner. Most if not all of the lines in Dune would be laughable if they
weren’t frigging great. But they are great. With the music playing, David
Bowie lyrics blow Billy Collins away. Turn off the music, and Eliot
moves out in front. The only person who can get away with building a
1 Um, yes well, ahem.
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