An Uplifting Glimpse Into Three Intertwined Lives
Review by Alex Ricciardi
From the first frame of Garrison West’s experimental drama, Soulever, you know you’re in for something outside of the ordinary. We see the moon, hanging in a city sky at midnight. The camera holds. Suddenly, a body falls into frame. It is a hobo, his clothes tattered, hair matted against his face. He is dead. His body rings the screen like a corona around the moon. Slowly, a light descends from the sky, growing until it reaches us. The camera pulls impossibly far back as we zoom and swerve through the streets, until we are looking at the entire city skyline. A bright light shoots up from near a building, bisecting the frame, and a face is just visible, almost completely transparent, each eye in one of the frame’s halves. A moody orchestral score lulls us all through these shots, and then suddenly crescendos, cuing a fade to black.
From here, the films slows down, and begins a slow boil back to the energy it started with. We meet the three main characters: Waldo (Chester Woolworth), a professional bodybuilder; Erasmus (Cary Fawxner), an elevator operator, and Keith (Jacob Leisner), an angel. By choosing unknown actors to play these parts, West is able to make us truly believe in these characters. He takes his time to introduce them, meticulously setting up shots that show them in their own prisons: the bars and cold metal of machines at the gym; the sliding, latticed door over the elevator; even Keith’s own wings shroud his face, and seem to hold him captive.
What is remarkable about this film is the way these external motifs begin to internalize themselves: through the character’s actions, feelings–even simple facial expressions–we begin to reach an understanding of the film’s central theme: our bodies are not our selves.
Soulever is a film about people wanting to escape. Erasmus wants to escape the dullness of his life; Waldo, although unconsciously, needs to escape his materialistic existence. Keith is a character who can permit this transcendence, but he needs to escape his life as well. Because of his hypocritical nature, the angel is probably the most interesting character in the film. His central dilemma revolves (as each of the characters’ does) around his occupation. He is what the other angels call a “lifter.” He carries souls up into heaven. But there is a darker side to his duties as well: he must also thrust bad souls down to hell. Keith wrestles with the fact that he must do what he is told, no matter what the cost. He is told nothing of the crimes or foibles people may have committed in this life–kept completely in the dark, why should he be the one to condemn their souls for eternity?
These conflicts come to a head in the film’s thrilling finale: Erasmus has decided to commit suicide by cutting the cables on his lift. The only casualty will be his sole passenger, Waldo. Keith has been called in to witness their deaths, and then ferry both of them to hell. However, in an act of sheer courage and inhuman strength, Waldo is able to stop the elevator’s descent–but at the expense of his own life. His body, broken down by steroids and muscle milk, suffers a heart attack. Witnessing this tremendous act of humanity, Keith decides to break Heaven’s rules and save their lives. It is a surreal, but incredibly potent sequence: the angels pulls the bodybuilder’s soul upward, as he holds the elevator cable. The elevator and its passenger begin to rise in the shaft, as an increasingly bright light beams down from above. This scene is shown almost as a tableau–it is a beautiful, transcendent moment, frozen in time. This, among the many other connotations it has in the film, is the titular “soulever,” or, “lift.”
For a film with this type of subject matter, the acting has to be very natural and realistic. The characters need to live and breath, and Woolworth, Fawxner, and Leisner are up to the task. The writer/director wisely chooses to limit the majority of the film to these three characters–whenever the film introduces a side character, the writing and performance suffers. These peripheral people are barely existent, and are used only as devices–the friend who invites the bodybuilder over so that he will get into the elevator, etc etc. It’s a shame, because I believe West’s film could have been stronger with true thematic symmetry throughout.
As a result of some of these weaker performances, some lines meant to sound “important” fall flat. The film, more than a few times, threatens to fall into obscure pretension, only to have a moment like the tableau in the finale rescue it and show us that there is something precious beneath. Once Garrison West’s writing can truly and completely fill out his ideas, I believe we will have a masterpiece on our hands. As it is, this is a good film with moments of greatness–and sadly, that’s better than the vast majority of offerings in theaters this Winter.
Despite its shortcomings, what’s good is very good. West is one to watch out for: a director creating a unique vision that is entirely his own. We can always use more of those.
