The Both of Me
2021 · 18m · United States
Directed by Brandon Lavoie
Genres: documentary, essay film
Tones: contemplative, melancholic
Chuck Nelson, a third-generation coal miner, reflects on the industry that built and destroyed his life.
Picked by Margot
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The essay-documentary hybrid is played pretty straight here—introspective, sure, but it's not doing anything formally weird enough to surprise me. Melancholic self-examination is the default mode for this form, and Lavoie isn't exactly subverting it.
Lavoie's structural restraint and the film's willingness to sit in contemplative space without resolving itself shows a real understanding of the essay film tradition—there's a lineage of formal patience here that reads as deliberate and hard-won.
The decision to hold on silence and negative space rather than overdrive the emotional beat is what makes this work; that restraint, especially in an 18-minute runtime, is the specific craft choice that elevates what could've been therapy-speak into something genuinely felt.
Reviews
the film blends poetic observation, archive testimony and moody drone footage to excellent and intimate effect.