Very Present
2020 · 5m · Canada
Directed by Conor McNally
Genres: documentary, essay film
Tones: contemplative, tender
Filmmaker Conor McNally spends prolonged confinement with his brother Riley, examining how isolation reshapes their sense of time as Riley adjusts to a new but strangely familiar reality.
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A lockdown essay about two brothers reckoning with time—sounds like pandemic-doc boilerplate, except McNally's doing something genuinely estranging with the form, collapsing domestic routine into something that feels almost hallucinogenic; the 'strangely familiar reality' angle suggests he's not here for the easy melancholy.
McNally situates himself in a lineage of introspective essay cinema—the Wiseman observational strain meets the intimate philosophical documentary—and the restraint here is exemplary: five minutes to examine temporal distortion through the prism of familial confinement without resorting to obvious montage or voiceover bombast.
The real move is how McNally uses Riley's adjustment to 'a new but strangely familiar reality' as the structural spine—that paradox, held without resolution, is what gives the whole piece its uncanny gravity, and you can feel it in the editing rhythm, the way sequences refuse to clarify what's being confronted.