“Gazer” (2024) is set in contemporary Newark, New Jersey and follows Frankie Rhodes (Ariella Mastroianni), who suffers from dyschronometria, which means that she cannot perceive the passage of time. By listening to cassettes of her voice prompting her to carry out activities, Frankie stays engaged instead of zoning out and losing time. (Isn’t it zoning out if you are imagining other people’s lives?) While working at a gas station, she crosses paths with a woman (Renee Gagner) who offers her an easy payday if Frankie retrieves her car. Frankie is trying to save money for her daughter, Cynthia (Emma Pearson), and readily accepts the gig, which gets Frankie sucked into someone else’s circus. Will Frankie be able to detangle herself from the drama and resume living what little functional life she has left?
Frankie has an active inner life thanks to her voyeuristic tendencies and active imagination of a crime behind every curtain or corner. Unfortunately, this dissociative tendency does not encourage Frankie to get her guard up. Like many people suffering from disabilities or are financially vulnerable, others see her as an easy mark, which she is. She lives a spartan life, but not because she is a minimalist or a hipster. She is trying to save money and looking at screens exacerbates her condition. There are oneiric, body horror sequences that either offer clues to her past or her psychological perceptions of the past, which is the most interesting part of “Gazer.” When her life shifted from wife and mother to widowed, unfit mother, she apparently decluttered, owns a few cassettes and a box of belongings. It feels gritty and realistic until you think about it for more than a few seconds. Poverty leads to piles of junk because you save things in case you need them and cannot afford them.
Life in Newark is already a nightmare without getting sucked into a murder mystery. “Gazer” feels like a Seventies gumshoe detective film noir without the detective in the vein of “Memento” (2000) without Christopher Nolan’s ability to make the work approachable and entertaining, which is not inherently bad, but a problem because most will walk away from the film with little more than vibes and impressive visuals. There are no solid takeaways about the characters or story. The aim is supposed to be about the grief of not truly knowing someone, survivor’s guilt and being unable to move on because time cannot heal all wounds if a person cannot feel time passing, but it gets lost in the mechanics of Frankie’s developing dilemma. She gets absorbed in other people’s drama because it is easier and more manageable than dealing with her own life. It also may have the unintended effect of providing an interpretation of events that the filmmakers may not have intended.
Is her new friend/employer real? Yes, this character objectively interacts with people other than Frankie, but she feels like the version of Frankie that other people see because of her past. Though it is likely that the audience for “Gazer” is different from people interested in “Cash for Gold” (2024), they share more elements than expected for a gritty urban independent film versus a hopeful, holiday film. Just because Frankie looks helpless, it does not mean that she is wholly innocent. She is an unreliable narrator who does not even listen to her own instructions and tends to end up in a lot of places with blood on the floor and bodies. Because this film is a murder mystery, it is impossible not to theorize that maybe Frankie is not so much lying to herself as unaware of who she is when she loses time or that she is in part projecting her situation on to strangers.
The underlying mystery is more intriguing than the A list story: opioid epidemic, twisted revenge, a reference to Daphne du Maurier. The visual homages to Alfred Hitchcock, Brian De Palma, Stanley Kubrick and David Cronenberg become rip-offs once it starts recreating whole scenes from their movies. There are themes of tragic family-based revenge from a homicidal level to a quotidian one. It makes sense that Frankie may try to make friends and relate to a woman around her same age since she is so alone, but her new friend is more fascinating than Frankie. There is a point in “Gazer” when Frankie just lays out everything, and who would not want to watch THAT movie? One twist feels ripped from a real-life headline, but this movie came first, so it is just in the ether.
Her neighbors seem like better candidates as potential friends. Sheila (Sheilagh Weymouth), her ride or die next door neighbor, seems to accept Frankie despite her flaws. If “Gazer” is refreshing, it is because it passes the Bechdel test and offers all types of women who do not fit into any prevalent gender norms. These Newark neighbors may not know each other well, but that fierce loyalty and willingness to sacrifice, intervene and fight for strangers conveys what makes cities great and their denizens naïve.
The theme of mothers without children and children without mothers could have been fleshed out and may have made the story stronger. Gagner’s character is a woman without a mother which turns her into a woman who strays from expectations. Frankie and her resentful mother-in-law, Diane (Marianne Goodell), adore Cynthia, but Frankie does not prioritize Cynthia’s well-being over her needs, a problem that existed long before the events of this movie according to Frankie’s liminal recollections. Once Frankie solves the mystery, she can finally talk to Cynthia. Is there an underlying fear of what happens to children without their mothers? There are two examples: possible monsters who endanger others with broader repercussions on their respective family members. Frankie’s fear is what will happen to Cynthia without her. The rationale is fear that someone will hurt her because of Frankie’s decisions, but the reality is that Cynthia gets hurt because of Frankie without any intervening actor. The subliminal fear is Cynthia turning into another destructive, monstrous woman without Frankie, so theoretically the benefits outweigh the risks.
“Gazer” is clearly a passion project for first-time feature director/co-writer Ryan J. Sloan and cowriter and star Mastoianni. It took them four years to make it, and for the audience, it will feel like it at an almost punishing two-hour mark. The atmosphere is strong, but not substantial enough to make a lasting impression. They are better filmmakers than story tellers. There is a pleasure to making a film for yourself just like there is a pleasure to writing for yourself without considering anyone else, but other people are watching whether you like it or not. They dedicated the film to William F. DiPietra, a deceased filmmaker whose foundation gave them a $1000 grant and a 16 mm Arri camera to make this film in 2021. They accomplished what they set out to do and made a more lasting visual impression than filmmakers with more experience, but let’s hope that they devote more time to narrative than a visual love letter to their favorite cinematic images.
