Sundance 2024: ‘Little Death’ Review
Stars: David Schwimmer, Gaby Hoffmann, Jena Malone | Written by Jack Begert, Dani Goffstein | Directed by Jack Begert
Martin Solomon (David Schwimmer) is a washed-up screenwriter who has no sense of purpose or fulfillment in his life. When the offer to turn one of his dream projects into a film is on the table — but he has to change the male protagonist into a woman — Martin starts to emulate his life through a female lens while pursuing a hallucinatory dream. Meanwhile, two kids get robbed and end up caring for a dog that neither of them knows where it came from.
The moment that viewers realise that Little Death was produced by Darren Aronofsky, all the pieces suddenly click into place. Keeping it lucid while playing it loose, the movie dares to experiment with form and socialised ideas until it abruptly pulls the rug out from under its audience, veering off course in a completely new direction. In short, it’s a bit like putting two completely separate films together, acting like a relay race rather than a fully cohesive narrative. Just as it starts to tap into something worth exploring, it stops itself from delving in.
That being said, when Little Death is good, it’s extremely good. The first half of the film — following Martin during his subtle war on gender politics — finds a sweet nut that’s ripe to crack. A tale of ‘woe is the white man’ is something that viewers typically loathe and have seen a million times before. Instead of shying away from it, Jack Begert approaches the perspective at full throttle, with Martin trapped in his own sense of sorrowful self so much that he sees his imagined female counterpart as the typically chosen choice. The white straight male so effortlessly becomes the victim that it’s almost easy to empathise with him, lost in a pit of self-destruction alongside an insane need to make a nigh-on hallucination come true.
Just as the sewn seeds of casual misogyny are beginning to bloom, all hope of delving further into something that could become a thought-provoking piece of art is instantly shut off. Instead, Little Death is replaced with a budget version of Euphoria that nobody asked for and that has no inherent ties to the plot or real emotional value. A halfway tipping point allows the narrative to swap hands from Martin to Karla (Talia Ryder), a teen who seems fixated on getting her next hit as she wanders aimlessly through life. It’s this sense of aimlessness that parades over our second mini-movie, training further and further away from any sense of style, criticism, and provocation that the first half held. Why do we care about these kids? Why should we care about these kids? Meandering through their lives with weak tie-backs to the first half of the story, there’s no conclusive answer to this.
Where Little Death shows promise, it shows just as much error. Its intriguing beginnings of subverting a tale as old as time set up a potential precedent for a must-see movie, yet implicates itself into becoming generic — which ironically, is what Martin hates about his own career. If nothing else, it’s self-loathing until the very end.
*** 3/5
Little Death screened as part of this year’s Sundance Film Festival.
