2:37

Rating: R18 - Contains Violence, Suicide & Disturbing Content.
Duration: 97 mins.
Genre: Festival.
Actors: Gary Sweet, Joel Mackenzie, Frank Sweet, Clementine Mellor, Sam Harris, Marni Spillane, Sarah Hudson, Chris Olver, Xavier Samuel, Teresa Palmer.
Director: Murali K. Thalluri.
Release Date: Available Now.

Synopsis
Just your average Aussie high school day, with your average Aussie students, going about their lives, unique struggles and fears. Unlike every other normal day however, on this day, one student will take his or her own life.

The Reality
2:37 plays out like Gus Van Sant’s brilliant Elephant, though instead of the mundane countdown to a school shooting, 2:37 has us embroiled in a kind of macabre who dunnit.

As with Elephant we know what’s going to happen, the movie will finish with the suicide of one student, but instead of taking us through the school day watching to see what the killers are going to do, we get force fed one red herring after another, as director Murali K. Thalluri pushes the boundaries and breaks a few taboos.

2:37 has it all, the homophobic, but gay jock, his bulimic girlfriend, the rich kid nerd and the disabled freak, clichés are thrown left right and centre, all in a effort to make you believe one of them will top themselves before the day is out.

It’s not an easy movie to watch, in fact some of it turns out to be very uncomfortable viewing, but the biggest annoyance is the reliance of some kind of video diary confessional that punctuates the story at frustratingly all to frequent moments.

The movie’s most powerful moment is the actual suicide, and the person who believes that life is no longer worth living. The internal struggle that goes on during this scene almost redeems the movie as a whole, and the reasoning behind the desperation hits the teenage nail on the head.

If Murali had only taken a more subtle, well rounded course to this moment, 2:37 would have been an un-missable classic, but his heavy handedness and determination push the envelope of acceptability is his – and the movie’s – own undoing.

The Look
The actual look of the movie verges on the home handycam, not just in the follow behind the person perspective, but also in the subtle lack of quality of the film. Weather this was the director’s intention or just budgetary constraints I don’t know, but it was a little off putting at first.

Being set almost entirely in a high school we do get the perception of claustrophobia, as after a while everything starts to look the same, but it’s this sameness and forced conformity that is probably the root cuase of half the problems that the students believe they have.

Food for thought
Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but you have to make it through the day to be able to see it!