Chad Hartigan's Little Fish

Each week, we ask the tnmn community for film recommendations and feature some favorites for the community to vote on.

Last week’s category was breakthrough films. See the results here on the tnmn website. Or, visit the guides hub page, which houses every category we’ve created together thus far.

This week’s category is tearjerker films. That is, movies that make you cry like an itty bitty baby. Vote on your favorite featured submissions below:

Honorable Mention 🏅

That is, two characters with conflicting personalities team up on an adventure. Reply to this email with your recommendation and why we should watch it. We’ll feature you in next week’s newsletter.

Note: If the movie doesn't comply with the category, I’ll become a certified electrician. I’ll spend years apprenticing for an excellent mentor and become a wiring wizard. The next time you’re looking for electric work, I’ll earn your business. Then, I’ll rewire all of your switches to be infuriatingly inconvenient. Want to turn on the bedroom lights? The switch is in the basement. Open the garage? Use the air switch next to the sink. So, ya know. Follow the category.

A spoiler-free description of the movie.

A couple fights to keep their relationship together as a pandemic virus causes those who contract it to lose their memory.

If you like these things, then you’ll like the film.

▶ Nonlinear films. It’s not intended to be confusing, like Memento, but Little Fish is edited out of order.

▶ When cute couples paint a wall together. It totally happens in this movie. It’s adorable. There are a few things in this film that border on trite. Let’s be okay with that. Don’t be such a tight ass about it. It’s a beautiful story.

▶ Dashboard Confessional. Like, you’ll feel like you just heard a love story. But, you’ll also feel sad. Little Fish is a rainy day movie.

What I liked about it.

I love it when movies make me wait before they reveal their title card. You’re settled in. You’ve met the characters. The story is moving. You’re absorbed, and then boom: title card. Little Fish.

This is a technique known as the cold open. As we all already know, especially me because I’m so smart, Serbian-born cinematographer Slavko Vorkapich (1894-1976) originated the first cold open sequence for the 1934 film Crime Without Passion.

This sort of non sequitur energy is present throughout the duration of the film, though it’s tastefully delivered, and never becomes the distraction it often is when stories force it.

Like many other films, Chad Hartigan's Little Fish continues after the title card is shown. And what follows is a gorgeously drab, heartbreaking story about memories and the role they play in our relationships.

This is one of those movies where every element feels intentional. Each part was crafted in a way that serves the broader theme of the story.

Mattson Tomlin and Aja Gabel’s script, inspired by Gabel’s short story of the same name, artfully plays with repetitious dialogue and details to add power to the narrative’s emphasis on imperfect recollection.

Cinematographer Sean McElwee’s lens is trained on fine details — the haptics and textures that often jog our memories of specific events.

He plays with focus and blur, resembling the lead characters’ struggle to hang onto specific threads that might spark a memory. The color palette is muted, dismal; like beach-worn memory.

Keegan DeWitt, who recently worked on Friendship, turns in an inventive orchestral score that further compliments the theme of fading memory. DeWitt plays with dialing individual elements in the orchestra up and down to represent the idea of a fading memory.

The full version of the score is the sound of nostalgia and joyful recollection. As elements of the score are dialed down, it borders on desolate, dark, and hopeless. To effectively produce these feelings using one orchestra track is ingenious.

Olivia Cooke and Jack O’Connell each deliver appropriately nuanced performances as Emma and Jude. Cooke is heartbreaking as Emma, showing the exhaustive toll of being a caretaker, while O'Connell perfectly embodies the tragic weight of a mind slowly coming undone.

Whether it’s in the writing, cinematography, score, or performances, Little Fish is a film concerned with the details, the little things.

The red-parachuted toy soldiers descending from a city apartment balcony. Or were they yellow? Ironically, it’s these fuzzy moments of imperfect recollection that make it a film you won’t easily forget.

Enjoy the film.

A fact or two about the production that makes you say “oh, neat”.

▶ Composer Keegan DeWitt recorded the original score with a full orchestra. DeWitt deconstructed the recording so that, over the course of the film, he was able to strip away individual elements and instruments. Portions of it only include a soloist from the orchestra, re-pitched and reversed. This technique allowed the score to better reflect the themes of fragmentation and fading memories.¹

▶ The script was written as a nonlinear story, which makes editing the film more flexible —  most scenes can be moved around. In the end, the director estimates “probably only 60 percent of the scenes [were] in the same spot they were in the script” after the edit. That’s a lot of rearranging.²

One great line of dialogue from the film.