“A deeply unnerving but also wickedly entertaining piece of satire.”

“Do you know what your country is called?”

In his novel Waiting for the Barbarians, Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee explored the postcolonial legacy of his native South Africa through the story of a lonely officer stationed at a remote outpost in some far corner of the empire, patiently anticipating the arrival of the titular “barbarians” and their imminent invasion, despite it being their own land. Whether or not Oscar Hudson was directly inspired by this subject in his feature directorial debut Straight Circle remains to be seen, but the comparisons are very easy to make considering they are both stories set during what appear to be the final waning days of an empire long past its prime; the correlations help enrich this film by highlighting its underlying themes and deeper messages that are often found in postcolonial literature. The film follows two officers who are stationed in the desert, tasked with guarding the border between their two countries that have established a truce. The tensions from an unnamed recent war still exist between them, manifesting in the growing sense of unease between two men who could not be more different. They spend their days trying to find common ground, but they have as many conflicts as they do resolutions, leading to some dark revelations coming out about both of them. Pure artistic audacity condensed into a film that attempts to redefine certain aspects of the narrative process, both chaotic in theory and brilliantly formal in construction, Straight Circle is one of the year’s most original works, and a film that challenges and provokes in equal measure.

Straight Circle is a film that dares to ask the question: what if the danger we are waiting for isn’t coming across the distant horizon, but originates from a place much closer than we expected? Hudson uses this as the starting point for a story that sets out to capture a distinct set of ideas, most of which are not made clear at the start, but rather gradually trickle through a deliberately rigid narrative that becomes progressively more challenging as we begin to see beyond the seemingly simple premise. Duality is the primary focus – two men who could not be more different occupy the central roles, one a strait-laced veteran officer who respects the strict order, the other a free-spirited volunteer who relishes chaos. Hudson builds from the odd couple scenario and makes some fascinating observations about war and international relations, which are reduced to their most basic, unfurnished form in this film. He very smartly doesn’t draw inspiration from a specific war, allowing the ambiguity to become a deliberate feature on which he was able to build a sardonic satire about humanity’s predisposition to conflict, and our often heavy-handed, ineffectual attempts to make peace, which proves to be less about honoring fundamental human rights and more about maintaining order and asserting a careful balance of power and influence. The director is very attentive to many of these deeper ideas, and while he may not choose to explore each one of them in detail, he nonetheless still touches on some fascinating points in the process.

For a film that touches on issues as broad and daring as this one, we find that Straight Circle is as formally impressive as it is narratively complex, with Hudson showcasing his incredible skill in bringing these ideas to life. The form the film takes consistently emphasises the theme of banality, which the director posits as being an effective narrative tool and one that he constantly uses to represent the feeling of boredom. Much of this is done through repetition – these characters go through the same daily routine, but as time progresses they find small changes beginning to take over the usual procedure, leading to some fascinating shifts in their dynamic. The tone is what ties everything together, with Straight Circle being a fantastic dark comedy in which the surrealism of everyday life is heavily prominent, as well as having a sardonic edge that aligns with the intention to be brutally raw in how it examines the declining mental state of these men, who begin to wonder why they have even chosen to participate in something that clearly does not benefit them in any way. The two protagonists are portrayed by brothers Elliott and Luke Tittensor, recruited to breathe life into these challenging roles, and more than willing to commit to the process of telling this story. The human body itself becomes a storytelling tool to the point where their work can actually be considered a form of performance art, their contortions and movements becoming unexpectedly mesmerizing. This also contributes to the lingering sense of curiosity that persists throughout this wickedly funny but profoundly bleak film, that builds itself on being entirely unorthodox, and makes sure that every detail reflects the director’s incredulity towards logic or rational explanation.

A classic case of a film that begins to make less sense the more you try to comprehend it, Straight Circle is an ambitious achievement, and an immediate indication that Hudson has the potential to be one of the most exciting cinematic voices working today. His previous work in short-format filmmaking provides support for his skills as a great visual stylist, but his writing is just as enthralling, spurring a sense of genuine enthusiasm in the viewer with this overly conceptual but unquestionably bold satire. The precise message that the director is trying to convey is left up to interpretation (or rather his definitive thesis statement, if one was even intended), but it is evident that Straight Circle is a film about fighting the war within, a deeply unnerving but also wickedly entertaining piece of satire. It resists any kind of classification, blurring genres in much the same way that it challenges the fickle boundary between fiction and reality. It uses the story of two soldiers forced into isolation in a place suspended in time, where they experience the most vivid and unsettling existential crises that ultimately reveal some deeper truths, not only about society and how war is often nothing more than an expensive, brutal demonstration of strength and power, but also the human mind, something that the director chooses to portray as a complex labyrinth that only becomes more confusing and impossible to navigate the further one ventures inward. Blisteringly funny, deeply offbeat and consistent in its efforts to push the boundaries of the medium while still maintaining a recognizable composure, Straight Circle is a film filled with fascinating contradictions and peculiar exaggerations, an enthralling depiction of existence and its many bizarre qualities.