Dave's latest effort, As Long As Life Endures, is starkly simple—in fact, it was reportedly shot in under a day. The film lasts only 10 minutes, it is set entirely inside a New York City subway car, and includes no dialogue apart from the conductor's announcements. For the first few minutes there are few indications that anything is out of the ordinary, as the camera turns from person to person, some of them reading, some of them occupied with their own thoughts.
Then a muffled explosion sounds, and the subway car rocks slightly from side to side. Its power goes out and it slowly rolls to a halt. When the lights come back on, the conductor tries to make an announcement, but there is too much static for her words to be comprehensible. For the most part the passengers remain strangely calm, as though an attack was not unexpected, but we can see the fear on their faces. Another explosion sounds. The lights flicker. The conductor tries again, her voice rising with panic, but it's still impossible to make out her words. The passengers look around, as if to take stock of who might lose it and become dangerous.
Then we hear a quavering voice: "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound..." The camera searches from face to face, looking for the passenger who has started the song. A few more voices join in. The hymn is ragged, but it begins to swell as more and more people start singing, and it keeps going strong even as the explosions resume outside the car. A black man holding an umbrella starts shouting out the lyrics ahead of each line, so that everyone can sing the less well known verses. Still they stumble over the words, but enough people know the lyrics to keep the thread. Many others just hum the melody, creating a strange, other-worldly effect. The lights go out again, but the music continues.
Critics have argued that As Long As Life Endures derives its power from Trump's election, and that it will be soon forgotten with the ephemera created by the literary opposition. But the movie need not be read in such a literal way, and I predict that it will retain its power after Trump is gone, assuming anyone survives to watch it.
