Little Fish (2020)
Directed by Chad Hartigan

I recently read Yōko Ogawa's The Memory Police, a moving piece of science fiction that was released in 1994 but was only translated to English and released in the U.S in 2019. It details the life of a writer living on an island during a surveillance state, whereupon a governing body decides what can and cannot be remembered. From objects of sentimentality like music boxes or roses to limbs get sacrificed. It's a macabre narrative that will be adapted by Charlie Kaufman into a feature film. I'm looking forward to it.

I remember reading some of Chad Hartigan's writing back in the early 2010s when he wrote for InContention. He would write about films that never received an Oscar nominations on a website dedicated to Academy Awad coverage. I appreciated it. His latest film, Little Fish, was never going to be primed for major awards contention. Part of me thinks he's content with that. But given that this film is now being programmed locally in Chicago alongside heavyweight titles like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Paris, Texas, In the Mood for Love, and Richard Linklater's Before trilogy, I can't help but feel like his work is finally getting the recognition it deserves.

I confess having some reservations with how the narrative begins, in what frequently felt like a rethread of Mike Mills' Beginners. But as Hartigan pieces together the larger social forces that exist outside of his couple (an excellent Olivia Cooke and Jack O'Connell), the film sings. Hartigan's foresight on how the world would react to a global pandemic will reward viewers for its recognizability, but ultimately this is a film about existing and loving in a despairing world. Being paired as a double feature to Michel Gondry's Eternal Sunshine makes sense, but I also consider Kristen Johnson's 2020 documentary, Dick Johnson is Dead, to be just as worthy of a companion. Nevertheless, what Hartigan gets at here, scoping the ephemerality of our minds and the deep-rooted connections that make each rotation around the planet bearable, is rendered beautifully here. I've admired his previous films, particularly This Is Martin Bonner, but Little Fish represents a significant thematic and formal advancement for the filmmaker.