Educational Media Reviews Online

18½, a clever and resourceful fantasy about what happened to that many minutes of audio recordings which famously went missing during the Watergate scandal, exists because director Dan Mirvish happened to be visiting the Silver Sands Hotel in Greenport, Long Island when Donald Trump was elected president in 2016. Owner Terry Keefe noted that although it was a popular location for fashion, short film, and music video shoots, it had never been used in a feature. Around this time, they had a conversation with legendary political cartoonist Jules Feiffer about parallels between Presidents Trump and Richard Nixon. With a setting and the germ of an idea in place, Mirvish was off and running, and while the resulting movies–DVD and institutional streaming video copies of 18½ come bundled with a making-of documentary called Covid 18½: The Making of a Film in a Global Pandemic–don’t achieve the level of cultural resonance they appear to aspire to, they do constitute entertaining additions to the American independent film canon.

The action begins with protagonist Connie Lashley (Willa Fitzgerald) taking the ferry to the Chesapeake Bay town that Greenport plays in the film. As the world spins out-of-focus through her rearview mirror, the radio plays news about Watergate. We soon learn that she is enroute to meet Paul Marrow (John Magaro), the New York Times reporter on that beat, because she is in possession of a copy of the tape (which Nixon tried to eradicate) everyone is talking about. Her conscience won’t allow her to keep it to herself, but she’s too cautious to just give the tape to him; luckily, he has a reel-to-reel player in his trunk and noticed a sign for a nearby hotel (the Silver Sands) on the way to their rendezvous. Their original plan is to check into a room as newlyweds and listen to the tape there, but when Paul’s player turns out to be broken, they pivot to dining with the eccentric couple (Vondie Curtis-Hall and Catherine Curtin) playing bossa nova music loudly in the cabin next door hoping that they can borrow theirs. But paranoia is in the air thanks to a mysterious message left for the hotel’s proprietor (Richard Kind), suspicious lone fisherman (Alexander Woodbury), and the conspiracy theories of the Wonder Bread-obsessed hippies (Sullivan Jones and real-life twin siblings Alanna and Claire Saunders) also staying at the Silver Sands and as the wine and digestifs flow, the evening spirals out of control.

Fitzgerald and Magaro have terrific chemistry both with each other in their lead roles as two straight characters who have been transported through the looking glass and with the ensemble cast of oddballs they find there. Another strength is production design which creates a believable 1970s atmosphere on a budget through the intelligent use of period costumes, lenses, and camera techniques such as zoom shots. Its best attribute, though, is the original music by Luis Guerra, which features a song called “Brasilia Bella” that a number of publications tabbed as a candidate for the 2023 Best Original Song Oscar.

Unfortunately, Covid 18½ is just an overgrown DVD extra. It’s fun to learn that the Front Street Station restaurant where Connie and Paul first meet was added as a location because it was owned by screenwriter Daniel Moya’s family and see how the costumes and sets were subtly color-coded to establish “teams” of characters, but it takes more than an hour to get to the global pandemic referenced in the title and the main lesson about making a movie during this era seems to be that sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good.

At different points in Covid 18½ interviewees observe that shooting on 18½ followed close on the heels of the first impeachment of President Trump and compare Connie to Cassidy Hutchinson, a key figure in the House of Representatives investigation into the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol. They ultimately fail to make a convincing case that these are more than coincidental resemblances, though, and much like the film’s “Wonderground Revolution,” their ideas remain (if you’ll excuse the pun) half-baked. But if the documentary isn’t successful at elevating its subject to a new plane of significance, neither does it detract from it: 18½ is an impressive achievement and a lot of fun.

Awards:
Jury Prize for Best Narrative Film, Tallgrass Film Festival; Jury Award for Creative Vision, Rome International Film Festival; Best Feature Film and Best Director, Southern Film Festival; Best Director, Manchester International Film Festival; Founders Award, Barbados International Film Festival

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