Locke

Locke (2013)

Written and Directed by: Steve Knight
Starring: Tom Hardy

One of my favorite genres in film: the one location film. This film is entirely set in a car, where we see a man driving it and having different conversations over the phone call with different characters. A few of such more films would be, The Guilty, Phonebooth and Buried. All of them mostly banking on conversations through phone calls. As an aspiring filmmaker, it's inspiring to see a film being made with such limited resources and yet telling a gripping story. With all these films, I think it's key to get the structure right. Because there's enough experimentation happening with the film being set entirely in one-location, so for something like that to work, the story structure has to absolutely be in place. The good part about this film is, it tells a story which can't be told anyway else. The one-location setup is not to make a low budget film, it's to support the narrative. It's the story of a man who decides to drive and be there for the women he cheated with, when she's having a baby. What follows is a series of fuck ups, confrontations, revelations - all over phone calls when he's driving. 

What I loved about this film is this one car journey seems like a mini life experience in itself. He has to keep track of his work emergency amidst all this stress; just like life, no matter what you're going through, you gotta show up and do your job. It's interesting how they explore such lows over this one journey. He loses his job, his wife, his home - everything. And he'd have had everything if he didn't want to be there for the woman. But he couldn't not be there. Why? Unresolved childhood trauma. What's the most heartbreaking is when he gets his call from his son, asking him to come back home. After losing everything, you know the value of something as simple as this. It's priceless. I loved the film for how it made me so many life altering events over one simple car journey.