- A comic satire 20 WAYS explores the absurd humor of an article by an Oklahoma lawyer that proposed twenty ways to spot an illegal. An entertaining, intelligent look at immigration using humor to explore this very contemporary story.
- If you watch 20 WAYS till the end you'll see it is a film about immigrant bashing. A contemporary story on Hispanic profiling through the experience of a Jewish family in 1930's Europe. A satire 20 WAYS is a metaphor for today which explores through drama the absurd humor of an article by a mid-Western lawyer that proposed twenty ways to spot an illegal. Shot on film in New Mexico by International award winning writer & director Peter M Kershaw with an original score by Emmy winning Oscar nominated Stanley Kubrick's own composer, Gerald Fried. The screenplay won the State of New Mexico, New Visions & Panavision production Awards for 2011. Shot on B&W film and designed to create the visual look of period film before the comic conclusion and a return to the color of today's world.—Peter M. Kershaw, Director & Writer
- A short comic satire 20 WAYS explores through drama the absurd humor of an article by an Oklahoma lawyer that proposed twenty ways to spot an illegal.
In the opening frames of 20 WAYS, two horses pull a rickety wagon down a dusty dirt road toward the audience and a pair of stern, stiff, spread, uniformed, and jackbooted legs. This simple image, iconic in nature, introduces the thematic riff that will shape the films 16-minute running time: people versus the system. When the image shifts to a lone Nazi officer and owner of said jackboots, he slowly removes a pair of anachronistic police shades before halting the wagon, introducing the storys key component: timeless absurdity.
The film starts in a B&W world to tell a story that is anything but black & white, nothing is as it appears to be or when it appears to be. Seemingly, we are watching a period story about Hymie, his family, and their horse - a Jewish family who are stopped by Marc a Nazi border guard as they flee Europe in the 1930s. As Marc, the Guard searches for something he feels the family are hiding he goes through the absurd twists and turns of profiling a people without being able to say, the very thing we as an audience know he is looking to find.
Shot in New Mexico on (mostly) black and white film, 20 WAYS as a short comic satire takes an off-the-wall look at a contemporary and emotionally charged issue of debate immigration - without ever preaching about it. Instead, the film tackles its subject through its clever plot, offbeat characters, quirky visual style, and original score by legendary film composer Gerald Fried (The Killing, Paths of Glory, and Roots among his classics).
The story unfolds simply enough. A mother (Kathryn Phipps) and her two children sit in uncomfortable silence as Hymie (Joe Feldman), the fully bearded family patriarch, fields the increasingly bizarre and intrusive questioning of nosy border guard Marc (Christopher Dempsey). His investigation becomes an awkward one-man game of good cop/bad cop that leaps from straightforward interrogation, to language confusion, to threats of force, to sly mind tricks, to passive-aggressive harassment and back again.
But the devil is in the details, and atop his basic narrative foundation writer/director Peter M. Kershaw has erected a rich and complex web of structural girders dramatic flourishes that one by one, little by little, bring the storys subtext into the light. Marc is consistently preoccupied with testing the familys Germaness, their belonging to the State. While searching their belongings, he happens upon an antique violin. After some finagling, he encourages their young daughter Jessica (Liliana Ashman) to play a brief selection from Bach. Good German music, he nods in approval. But Marcs satisfaction is short-lived. He soon discovers Uncle (John Flax) hiding beneath the wagon. Uncle produces a hammer and claims he was fixing a leak. When Marc asks for his name, he blurts out Isaac! Simultaneously, Hymie chimes in, Michael! Hymie scrambles to clarify, settling on Isaac von Michael.
Uncle, wildly uncomfortable, avoids eye contact. Marc smells a rat. Further investigation reveals wait for it the size of Uncles and Hymies noses. Abnormally large for people claiming to be from Frankfurt, in Marcs opinion. Now he needs to see their papers. Its a pivotal gem of a moment, and an illuminating one. The storys humor is driven by the mens witty and excruciating verbal interplay that constantly beats around the bush. Despite Hymies name and appearance, Marc never once asks, Are you Jewish? This refusal to cut to the chase contains an unpleasant ring of familiarity; as Marc engages the family, his behavior walks a razor-sharp edge between the gruff, businesslike shakedown tactics of a servant of the Third Reich and the subtle, tortured restraint of a twenty-first century Border Guard, hence the shades.
Even some of the character names feel vaguely anachronistic, out of place, modern yet somehow appropriate to the story. Its as if the events of 20 WAYS could unfold in 1930s Germany or in present day near the Mexican border and thered be no difference. When UK native Peter Kershaw resettled in New Mexico in early 2010, he left behind a Europe in which the legality of actions taken in France and Italy raged over their treatment of Romaines as illegal immigrants. Then, his new neighboring State of Arizona was gearing up for a controversial legislative crackdown on illegal immigration. I found a piece on the Internet to do with an Oklahoma lawyer who put together twenty different supposed ways to identify an illegal. This formed the basis of the Arizona police forces approach to identification right down to the sandals you wore.
The clever insertion of these twenty ways into Marcs investigation draws a direct link between past and present, between the tension of pre-war Europe and the unceasing headache of the southern U.S. border echoed today across the globe. This link is boldly underlined in the storys unconventional twist ending, which, without spoiling too much, sees a striking transition to color film.
Kershaw concludes, we wanted the satirical approach of the film to have a definite look and style and I think we achieved that. I wanted the audience to feel they are watching history but are they? As director, for Kershaw, the power of the sound track and Gerald Fried's original music score and the importance of the cinematographic approach achieved by Cinematographer Anders Uhl edited by David Aubrey, can be summed up thus: It brings a whole new edge to a comedy. Combining that dark, dramatic look with these absurdist elements in our photographic approach mirrored in our playful and powerful score makes this a unique, complex, original piece.
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