One of the most memorable film experiences I had with my father was Tom Noonan’s “What Happened Was …” It was memorable, not because we both enjoyed it.  Nor was it was one of those Hollywood classic films he was introducing me to for the first time.  Neither was it part of the “new arrivals” section of our Bacolod video club, Quad Tech (a.k.a. bootleg film/video tape rental store), but because we were left completely baffled by the film. 

The film chronicles one evening in the lives of Michael (Tom Noonan) and Jackie (Karen Sillas).  Michael and Jackie work in the same law office.  Jackie invites Michael over to her apartment for dinner one Friday night, and from there things get uncomfortable and the film goes frighteningly deeper than either character could have perhaps ever imagined. 

I was nineteen when I first saw the film, and I recall my immature side comments and questions to Dad while we were watching: “Okay they’re talking … Okay they’re still talking … Okay they’re still talking some more … This is boring!” My most immature and shallow comment was quite telling: “But dad, why does she like him?  He’s ugly!  He’s not even handsome!” Years later, this made me question the kind of damage that commercial filmmaking can do to one’s openness to image representations of physical appearance.  To put it simply: I believe commercial films brainwash audience members to believe that only people with movie star looks have the right to be desired and “loved” and to “find happiness in a relationship”, while those less handsome actors become “character” actors. Years later, the karmic bookkeeping sheet was balanced when some of the actors in my own films were on the receiving end of similar, misguided comments from some audience members.            

Most film audiences – including myself – go into a film screening with the expectations that I am going to see a story, all loose ends are going to be tied up, everything in the film is going to be completely enjoyable, understandable and relatable.  I learned that the greatest films tend to resist and even break those preconceived expectations.  Not because they are perverse (although some use perverse methods to do so) but because the filmmakers advocate the value of the audience needing to actually learn from a film, through the best way possible:  by experiencing it as if it were real life, or at least a close approximation of it. 

Hopefully, these films invite or force the audience to actively participate, to get involved, to get outside of their comfort zones, to fumble, bumble and live through an approximation of a personal life experience rather than just sit there to passively and mindlessly consume another entertainment product.  “What Happened Was …” is one of the best examples of a film as an experience to be lived by the viewer. Like many others, it is also not afraid to present a specific, particular experience that may be beyond a film audience’s present level of maturity and life experience.  At the time of my first viewing, I obviously was not ready for the film.  I didn’t even have a girlfriend at the time, so how was I to know about the awkwardness of dating let alone the complexities of relationships?      

Since that first viewing, I’ve had to live my life seventeen years more to appreciate much of its ideas, nuances and wisdom.  I’ve since seen the film numerous times.  I’ve shown it numerous times to friends and colleagues just to see how they would react.  For the most part, the reactions to the viewings have been visceral, deep and uncomfortable.  I also wrote a critique on the film for the international film journal Desistfilm.  But there was one sequence in the film that continued to puzzle me, at least until today.

It puzzled me because it was the only thing that I could remember during the years in between the first and second viewing.  I even asked Dad, “Why was that sequence in the film?  What does it mean?”  He could not answer me.  It remained with me not because it was a surprise shallow plot twist that I thought it was then.  It remained with me because even though I was puzzled at the time, its effect on my emotions then was not unlike walking inside a seemingly ineffectual amusement park horror house when suddenly a trap door opens underneath, and you fall into the depths of some unknown circle of hell.     

Not wishing to spoil anyone’s viewing experience, (if you have not seen the film) the most I can say about the sequence is that Jackie shares something private with Michael that leads to many chillingly uncomfortable moments for him, and for the audience.

The sequence was not a calculated plot twist or whimsical tonal shift.  I realize now that perhaps Noonan decided to film and present the sequence the way he did, because he wanted us to experience what Michael was experiencing while listening to Jackie.  This artistic decision may sound pedestrian at first, but it was how Noonan accomplished this that merits examination.  This would not have been most effective or more importantly, affecting, if Noonan had employed the familiar and formulaic commercial film techniques like obvious establishing shots, sounds, and music, a more predictable editing, calling-attention-to-itself lighting, relatable close ups, giveaway voiceovers.  Instead he cleverly inserts a knot in conventional film language, which we the audience have to get around, by ourselves. Had Noonan gone about editing the scene differently, we would have of course immediately understood that this was Michael’s mental point-of-view at that moment, as in most conventional film language, but our necessary experience of his POV would have lost most, if not all, of its dangerous power. 

From the beginning, the film’s visual and aural experience instead holds us on the outside of the characters similar to the way Jackie and Michael only see each other from outside, as office mates, and the way we see other people we encounter in our day-to-day lives.  We have our own ideas about people we know, and often the idea is very different once we get to really know someone. By holding us on the outside even during this crucial sequence, there is no POV for us to hold onto or character mold for us to shape as we see fit.  By holding us on the outside and denying us easy entry into Michael’s interior we paradoxically experience nearly the full force of Michael’s discomfort, anxiety, and near panic.   We are also left to wonder if the things we witness during the scene are actually real, or some kind of horrific spell woven by Jackie’s words, or some outside diabolical force. 

The film shares with us that here is a big difference between putting ourselves in someone else’s shoes and actually walking in those shoes.  This sequence, like most of the film, denies us the limiting habit of filtering everything through our own ego, and confronts us with the uncertain, uncomfortable but ultimately, necessary lessons of experiencing other perspectives.