Bokeh

Bokeh is a real word - I learned this last night, watching Bokeh - that refers to the out-of-focus visual blur in the background of a photograph.

If you think Bokeh, the movie, would thus have something to do with ambiguity or uncertainty, you'd be right! Unfortunately, that's about as far as Bokeh decides to go with its own premise: "this is a movie about uncertainty!"

I'll back up. The premise here is that two Americans on vacation in Iceland wake up one day to find out they're the last two people on earth. Overnight, everyone else has vanished. Yes, it's The Leftovers meets The Last Man on Earth and probably a hundred other rapture-like stories. It's the last three minutes of the Futurama finale, played out for ninety.

The acting's pretty terrible, but whatever - the script is, too. Would the third or fourth lines out of your mouth, upon discovering you and your girlfriend are the last two people in the world, be "it can't be a plague, we'd see the bodies?" No? Mine either. How about "it can't be aliens, we'd see all their ships?" Also no? Yeah, same. But at first I at least thought, okay, cool, a low-budget movie that wants to get all philosophical on me - be my guest.

Nope! These two are just content to fart around Iceland for a while. Is it a satire on how self-focused millennials are? Like they barely even notice the lack of other people? Eh, no, not really - the movie's not interested in going down that particular route. Is it ironic that perhaps the most socialist country on earth has somehow become empty, desolate, and society-free? I thought so, yeas, but I'm not even sure if the movie understands this juxtaposition exists. Is this a take on the necessity of social safety nets? After all, winter is eventually coming, and what the hell are two unprepared Americans going to do once the "long night" comes? Eh - we never really get there.

In fact, it's fair to say that almost nothing happens for so much of this movie. That's true in a lot of movies I like, granted - but those are all atmosphere, all tone, all ambiance, and all intentionally so. Here, these two just kind of bounce ideas off each other about what happened - or more accurately, she's driven into a deep depression over the uncertainty about what happened, while he's only focused on how to deal with their new circumstances, how to adapt to their new life. I think that's where the title comes from. She's upset that the metaphorical background's so blurry in the photograph. He's just looking at the foreground, the subject at hand.

But fuck, so many scenes are so beautiful. Because hey, Iceland is so beautiful. Go there! Go to Iceland! You almost certainly won't end up being one of the last two people on earth, and then being so hopelessly boring about it.