1972 / 31m - USA
Experimental, Romance
0.5*/5.0*
Hapax Legomena II: Poetic Justice poster

Watches

January 04, 2021

0.5*/5.0*

Myeah. I didn't really like part 1 of Hapax Legomena (understatement), part 2 turned out to be even worse. These experimental shorts often seem fascinating on paper, but the result is rarely much to look at. After about a minute I was pretty sure I wasn't going to like it, the following 29 minutes were just adding insult to injury.

Poetic Justice challenges you to dream up a movie of your own. All you're getting is 250 pages with a limited screenplay written down on them. The camera never moves and every few seconds a new page is added. The screenplay tells a little romance story, one without actors and setting, brought only to life with your own imagination.

No doubt it's meant as a reflection on the nature of cinema, an illustration of the power of the human brain and a quest to find the limitations of the medium, but I have little respect for a single, simple idea drawn out to a 30 minute short film. Might be fun for people who buy into it, others will wonder why they didn't just read a book. That'd be much faster too.