https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pisfj0PWZlI
Broken Sky (2006)
El cielo dividido (original title)
Broken Sky works like a silent film. There is a soundtrack, but roughly, only 2 pages of character-to-character dialogue over it’s entire 140 minutes. Director Julian Hernandez turns that into an opportunity to fill the screen with sensual imagery and camera movements that emote louder than words. Watching Broken Sky is a reminder to the eyes, and an argument for why you should avoid bathroom breaks.
In 2003 Julian Hernandez made his first feature, a student film, A Thousand Clouds of Peace. I don’t remember it or Broken Sky getting any theater runs outside of New York. So big thanks are due to Strand Releasing for putting both out on crisp DVD (it makes up for Strand’s release of the homophobic, self-hating Two Drifters last year).
Beyond anything else, Broken Sky is a love story between Gerardo and Jonas. Hernandez extends the time they share by filming in long shots and tracking shots. Some of the tracking shots only move 6 feet, but it’s essential in locking in on the eternity of the moment. The rooms and hallways and streets of Broken Sky are of the modern world, but Hernandez makes us feel like we’re in la-la land, walking around with tunnel-of-love vision.
But as the title suggests, Broken Sky isn’t just a love story, it’s a lovesick story too. Post-breakup, the camera moves in, especially on Gerardo. The freckled skin on his back once looked like that of a marble statue, but in grief, it stretches a bit and wears the age of a pock-marked old man.
More than twice, a scene is as simple as a hand on a shoulder (this made me think of the finale in M where a man puts his hand on Peter Lorre’s shoulder in a sign of compassion). With two bodies and their eyes, these actors say more silent than a monologue in the rain by Ben Affleck. Props to Julian Hernandez for saying so much with so little and making the viewer feel every moment of it.
