As promised, I just saw Any Way the Wind Blows at the Stockholm Film Festival. By all means buy the soundtrack, but don’t bother with the film.

Director/writer Tom Barman himself was at the showing, warning us we were about to see not so much a story driven film as a mood piece. Well, he was half right: you can get more plot twists watching carrion on the Discovery Channel. But why am I restraining myself? Any Way the Wind Blows is a load of pretentious twaddle and I suspected as much before the opening credits were done rolling: one of the “protagonists”Scare quotes because I’m not sure it’s technically possible to have protagonists in a film without plot. actually begins to dodge the credits as they swoosh by. Just like that. For no subsequent purpose, modern or post. What follows is a day in the life of people for whom we feel nothing — they don’t grow emotionally, or suffer particularly, they just are, in Antwerp, mostly to a soundtrack.

The central conceit of this film, and for which I hold the director in contempt, is to think that this might somehow be interesting viewing. It’s not — it’s like watching someone else’s home videos. Real life is something that you do already, so why watch this film? Just buy an iPod instead.

Put another way: This movie is not art. Art is meant to distill life, to sublimate its essence. Any Way the Wind Blows dispenses with all the dramatic devices that could possibly propel a movie in that general direction. Plotlessness is not by itself fatal — look at Koyaanisqatsi — but there are reasons why good directors (and even bad ones) add plots to their movies, especially if there are actors in them. For example, it gives both the actors and the audience something to do for two hours. If the actors are any good, they might even hook the audience emotionally. The only way this movie is going to sustain an emotion in you is if you first take the same drugs the people in it are so fond of.

AWtWB aggravates on many occasions. Take a scene in a supermarket where two of the “protagonists” are arguing whether on the whole people are happy. One of them decides to ask random fellow customers, and they answer truthfully, deadpan, before continuing shopping — it’s clearly plagiarized from the classic scene in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall. Perhaps the director thought it was an homage, or satire, except it’s neither if you ask the exact same fucking question. There is no progress here, no sign of intelligence. It’s as if Barman liked that scene so he decided to have it in his movie too.

As for the 7.3 score on IMDB, I suspect the 200 people who voted for it were all cast or crew. It certainly looked like a blast to make, so it’s a pity so little of it rubs off on the viewer. If you want to see an amateurish film made among friends, see Beaver Me First instead. In addition to swooshing title credits, it has cruelty, cults and cleavage, so I have to warn you, it’s not so much a mood piece as a story driven film.