Play This at My Funeral
2022 · 10m · USA
Directed by Ray Smiling
Genres: comedy, experimental
Tones: absurdist, humorous, whimsical
Three New York City vignettes where characters collide — actively and passively — with the soundtracks of their lives, from a Times Square performer scored to classical music to an aggressive air drummer mid-pickup-game.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A film whose entire premise is 'what if the soundtrack didn't match' — finally, someone admits the joke. I'll take a Times Square air-drummer over another grief montage any day of the week.
Diegetic-vs-non-diegetic music collisions structuring three NYC vignettes is a precise formal idea — the Miranda-July-meets-Wiseman street-portrait register works for me.
Diegetic-vs-non-diegetic music collisions structuring three NYC vignettes — Times Square Spiderman scored to Debussy, aggressive air drummer, non-English speaker blasting Three 6 Mafia. That's a sharp formal scaffold for street-portrait energy.