by Abhi Parasher
“You could spend a month travelling around Utah and go through 4 or 5 different worlds,” Robert Machoian notes as the sun goes down outside his window in the small town of Provo.
Machoian, a photographer and critically acclaimed filmmaker, best known for his Sundance and Independent Film Awards nominated film, The Killing of Two Lovers, moved to Utah as a photography teacher and has since found himself entrenched in the vibrant independent film scene.
“With The Killing of Two Lovers doing Sundance and [US distributor] Neon buying it, it would probably benefit me being down in LA,” says Machoian when comparing living in a small state like Utah to a big city like Los Angeles. “But it’s a give or take because I just shot a short film here where we were able to get a diner for the price of one employee’s nightly wage. So, I am able to shoot for a significantly lower cost than if I was in Los Angeles.”
Machoian has thrived with a lower-cost production model that serves his modest style. For the most part, he prefers long takes that favour a perceptive audience. Machoian’s latest film, The Integrity of Joseph Chambers, doesn’t stray too far off course.
“I once met a guy who said, ‘Give me a knife and I can go out naked in the wilderness and survive for two years’, and I said, ‘I can also give you underwear…’,” laughs Machoian. “I meet these people in rural Utah who have learnt to survive just based on practicality; like a mechanic who learnt how to fix his car because the nearest town was hours away. So, I thought, what happens if you put someone who hasn’t grown up in this culture or community but wants to embrace it?”
The Integrity of Joseph Chambers follows Joe, a family man, who hopes to prove his survivalist capabilities and manliness to his family by deciding to irresponsibly head off into the woods and go deer hunting by himself.
“There is some interesting dialogue in the film that speaks to masculinity in crisis, where Tess (Jordana Brewster), his wife says, ‘What are you doing, this is not what we discussed’. They bought this land to grow crops and he’s immediately abandoning it because nobody tests the limits of their manhood by tilling the earth.”
Joe’s character is pulled from many people in Machoian’s own life that successfully achieve the masculine standards of providing, but who may feel their masculinity challenged by their inability to navigate life’s more primitive challenges.
“I pulled quite a bit from my brother-in-law, who sells insurance and makes a lot of money. In that way, he’s actually satisfying an aspect of masculinity by providing for his family,” shares Machoian. “What was interesting to explore is that person in a world that went south, what happens then?”
Machoian doesn’t simply declare the answer to that question. Instead, he expects an attentive audience, able to decipher the message hidden in the long takes. It’s a style that is poles apart from the trendy fast-paced TikTok-like filmmaking.
“One review I read was like, ‘he’s not telling us what is going on, we have to watch and figure it out’, which was meant to be a dig, but that is the exact way I meant it to be,” he says. “People sometimes say that a scene was too long or maybe a little self-indulgent, and they’re not wrong to feel like that. But at the same time, catering to that TikTok trend means it can only exist in one particular time frame.”
Machoian’s concerns stem from an ideology that derives from his extensive knowledge and study of the broader art world.
“As an artist you are trained to look at the long-term history of the work you do over time,” the filmmaker explains. “If you look at galleries like the Met in New York, their contemporary section is quite small. They are not catering to TikTok artists.”
A further worry of Machoian’s is the lack of authenticity his films would hold had he given in to a trend tha is incompatible with his own taste.
“It would be important for a twenty-year-old that has grown up with TikTok to make snappy content because that is what is authentic to them” says Machoian. “Whereas with me, I would be afraid that someone would be like ‘Oh wow this is an old guy trying to fit in’.”
Fortunately, Machoian has found himself partners who service his taste, particularly his Killing of Two Lovers collaborator, Clayne Crawford, who plays Joe in the film.
“Clayne is actually really good at long takes” says Machoian. “The longer he lives in the world, the better his performances will be and throughout the take, his performance builds”.
