The problem that is My Name is Myeisha (2018) Bushwick Film Festival 2018

Myeisha drifts in in a dream and contemplates her life in the instant she dies.

If you want to see a film that has some of the best moments you will see in any film this year but which never quite pulls them all together then you must see MY NAME IS MYEISHA.  A free flowing dream of a film this film takes the musical form we know and shakes it up to make something special. In all seriousness once the dream begins the various bits of Myeisha's tale sing and move and explode delightfully until the ending which is suitably shocking and unnerving.

The thing is that watching the film is kind of infuriating because the pieces don't wholly work together, I was delighted as each piece came on the screen...but annoyed because the pieces didn't seem to flow together. The bits seem to collide into each other as the differing styles and looks banged into each other.

The film moves exactly like the way a theater piece moves. In theater you can walk across different spaces and times on the stage because of the constraints of the space, doing so on film is a bit trickier because there are no constraints. That's a statement which makes perfect sense since the film on stage you are forgiven because of obvious limited space but on screen you have to make it work. MY NAME IS MYEISHA  started life as a play so the drifting would have been more natural but on screen not so much. 

I have to applaud director Gus Krieger for keeping playwright Rickeby Hind's rhythms and sense of life but at the same I wished he  had found the key to create a way to link up all the bits cinematically. I'm guessing this kicked ass on the stage.

And you need to understand that I don't hate the film, I really like it- hell as I said at the top some of th moments are the best in any film I've seen all year, but I'm just frustrated that the whole isn't as good as the parts because I really wanted to love the film.

Ultimately if you want to see a good attempt at reinventing the musical, that has a very serious point about life, and you don't mind some bumpiness search out MY NAME IS MYEISHA when it plays tomorrow at the Bushwick Film Festival

For tickets and more information go here