How Heavy This Hammer (2015)

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How Heavy This Hammer (2015)

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Kazik Radwanski, whose 2012 Tower attracted some attention at fests, returns with another dishwater-dull hero in How Heavy This Hammer, about a family man who can't muster the enthusiasm to participate in family life. Shot almost entirely in close-ups, the pic burrows into a style as oppressively confining as its subject's view of marriage. But aesthetic coherence only goes so far in this miserablist portrait, which may earn some respect at fests but has little hope commercially.

Erwin Van Cotthem plays Erwin, a Hitchcock-shaped lug we meet as he stares expressionless at his computer, playing a crude Viking warfare game as his wife (Kate Ashley) tends to two sons in the next room. An aria on the soundtrack (which will return in subsequent lonely gaming scenes) is the film's main note of irony, its operatic drama pointing out the obvious lack of heroism on screen. As his wife calls repeatedly to tell him she's done fixing dinner, that everyone's at the table, that it's getting cold, he reluctantly mutters "I'll be there in five." Ashley makes for a remarkably patient wife, gently probing Erwin about the depressive funk he's clearly in and looking for ways to help. He has no patience for it: "I don't wanna talk about it anymore, okay?" he says after perhaps two sentences have been exchanged.

Radwanski skips over whatever decisionmaking process follows, but soon Erwin has moved out of the house, holing up in an apartment adjoining a bar and showing some signs of enjoying life. He's a more engaged parent as a part-timer, which is not to say he's a dad you'd want for your kids. And he tries his hand at internet dating, lavishing his entire reserves of charm on a woman less appealing than his wife.

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How Heavy This Hammer (2015)

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