There’s a stage direction overheard in the introduction to “It Goes That Quick” that could disabuse the notion that what you’re watching is reality, though co-directors Ashley Connor and Joe Stankus seem to have plunged you headlong into it with a family dinner where her mother Christine gregariously commands the attention of the table while her father Mike can be seen quietly sipping his French onion soup. When retiring to their room for the night, Mike still hasn’t spoken, clearly inhibited by a debilitating condition that he has no control over and while Christine is beckoned down the hall by one of their relatives who is feeling uneasy, Connor asks her father to get up and move towards the window, leading to a scene that shouldn’t be spoiled, yet surprises all on its own when the moment of unguarded intimacy that the filmmaking couple so immediately foster is shattered and while the enormously charming family portrait can be greatly enjoyed without thinking much about Connor and Stankus consider the medium they’re working in, the transcendent result occurs because of how inventively they do.
Although it’s unfortunately true to its title when the family is a joy to spend time with, “It Goes That Quick” is actually the product of a decade’s worth of Connor and Stankus picking up scenes with their extended family as their own relationship progressed. Personal milestones for the couple are filmed with the timeless quality of Chopin underscoring a sound-deprived Bolex from their wedding to the birth of their daughter (with Connor, one of the great cinematographers of such films as “Madeline’s Madeline” and “Tramps,” appearing not about to give up the camera as she delivers), but scenes with relatives are captured in crisp digital where the immediacy of the images never leads to wondering about what time has passed, creating a sense of truly living in the moment that can make it shocking when change occurs from mild circumstantial changes like changing homes to the inevitable death. Presented as vignettes, it would seem at first as if Connor and Stankus simply selected some of the best moments as they kept the camera rolling for a verite project, catching a deliciously tetchy conversation between Stankus’ mother Andrea and his grandparents about the proper set-up for a Passover seder or a splendid day in the life of Connor’s uncle Michael and his husband Ed at the rare hours when they’re together in the same place at the same time when both work in the airline industry on different shifts.
However, beyond the filmmakers occasionally pulling the curtain back on their process as they ask someone to change position or repeat something, a structure to each individual sequence sets in where a bit of information is withheld in the editing to add a little extra punch to an end and the consciousness of these scenes being crafted takes on an unusual poignance as if they are exactly how the filmmakers want to hold onto their loved ones, something that in spite of all their considerable skill is naturally out of their control. Yet Connor and Stankus can be counted on to use their imagination and rather than limiting ideas about cinema to a container of memories, they find new ways to give life in both form and function when footage can revive those who have passed making their loss a little more manageable, but also in the film’s beautiful treatment of Connor’s father Mike, convey a rich inner life that a camera would actually be incapable of seizing on its own, as shrewd editing can create a depth of feeling from his gaze and cuts to the world around him. Home movies that were filmed on VHS with Stankus and Connor as kids in front of the lens may help usher in the film as part of its opening credits, but now as adults behind it, the two reframe and reenvision just how much those keepsakes can hold as well as what they can’t, creating a deeply affecting appreciation of the time we have together when for as professionally gifted as they’ve become, the truth they illuminate so brilliantly is that there’s only so much within their power to preserve.
“It Goes That Quick” does not yet have U.S. distribution.