**½/****
screenplay by Ryan Kasmiskie & Alexander Mirecki
directing Alexander Mirecki
by Walter Chaw Two scenes: one
featuring a bonfire-illuminated kiss against a forest backdrop, the other a
man standing on a platform in a clearing as a crowd fills in around him. Both
are captured in glorious 16mm, shot through with grain and lit by natural
light; both are suffused with a magical, twilit glow that only really happens
in exactly this way when you use old, some would say obsolete, technology.
These moments almost, by themselves, justify the existence Alexander Mirecki's All
Together Now. At the least, there's nothing about the substance of the film
that detracts from the beauty of Zoran Popovic's cinematography. Plotless,
listless maybe, wobbling slightly from portentous to unassuming and slight, the
picture is a half-fictionalized document of an all-night music festival that,
in the tradition of Richard Linklater's earliest forays into proto-mumblecore
(Harmony Korine's, too), doesn't have much on its mind and would even,
given its lo-fi visual beauty, be better served as a silent.
Still, it demonstrates just enough in terms of instinct to suggest that Mirecki
has a future. Lou Taylor Pucci presents an affable semi-centre for the piece as
the organizer of the concert and recipient of the aforementioned kiss, while
bands like Manicorn, Pedestrian Deposit, Nice Face, and Night
Control provide the right CBGB authenticity when we pull away from the
overly-scripted (overly-slotted, truth be told) interactions of the audience.
