"God's Time" - Film Review
God’s Time is chaotic in the way that only life in New York City can be. Inevitably, with its tense, frenetic nature, this film will be compared to the Safdie Brothers’ filmography, but God’s Time is far more earnest and delicate than something like Uncut Gems. God’s Time is a fourth-wall-breaking, cat-and-mouse chase of revenge through the streets of NYC.
Dev (Ben Groh) and Luca (Dion Costelloe) are best friends and addicts who met during their first recovery meeting. Also in their group is Regina (Liz Caribel Sierra). At every meeting, she tells the same story about how her ex-boyfriend, Russel (Jared Abrahamson), evicted her from her own apartment and stole her dog. She always ends the story saying that Russell will die in “God’s time.” However, after a stressful phone call in the middle of the meeting where she begs for her dog back, Regina finally ends her share time in a different way: she vows to kill Russel. Dev is the only one who cares about her change in storytelling and drags Luca along to stop Regina from committing murder.
Courtesy of IFC Films. An IFC Films Release.
God’s Time is confident and audacious in a way that’s staggeringly impressive for Daniel Antebi’s feature-length directorial debut. Perhaps the clearest evidence of Antebi’s skills is how perfectly interwoven the fourth-wall breaks are in the film. Netflix recently tried to modernize Jane Austen with the Dakota Johnson-led Persuasion adaptation that saw Johnson forced to speak directly to the audience. As with other instances of this trope, Persuasion quickly abandoned its dedication to the fourth-wall breaks fairly quickly and left the audience wondering why they were included to begin with. God’s Time’s inclusion of the breaks is far more comparable to Fleabag’s pitch perfect understanding of the trope’s function. It’s Dev who is the primary person who speaks to the audience in God’s Time, but there is a thrilling moment where another character winks at us.
The fourth-wall breaks are not God’s Time’s only flashy components. The editing is frantic, especially the film’s opening sequence where Regina tells her story in so many different ways at recovery meetings. There are sparkly titles that pop up with each character introduction, a bizarre fake infomercial, and a dance sequence on a bike down Fifth Avenue. Despite all these oddities, God’s Time is dealing with the intensity of recovering from addiction. God’s Time finds honesty in its balance, in the ups and downs of recovery, addiction, friendship, and love. There’s no singular tone because that’s not how life works.
Courtesy of IFC Films. An IFC Films Release.
The one glaring weak spot in the film is the treatment of Regina’s character. She is, in many ways, the center of this film. It’s Regina who we see first, it’s her story that sets the entire film into motion, but it’s her we see the least as the film goes on. On the one hand, a revenge story about a dog is understandable. One could argue that we’re getting four John Wick movies all because of the death of a dog. One could also argue that this is yet another instance of a woman’s role being reduced to a vehicle that simply moves the plot along, rather than an opportunity to give her development of her own.
Visually, God’s Time is a lot closer to The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All At Once than it is to a Safdie Brothers film. Realistically, God’s Time and Everything Everywhere All At Once should not work. They’re manic, chaotic, and visual overloads. Any one of their high-flying leaps that divert from the norm of storytelling could cause either film to crash and burn, but they don’t. It’s their commitment to the visuals that ultimately makes them successful.
Courtesy of IFC Films. An IFC Films Release.
God’s Time is a more-than-impressive debut for Antebi and the entire cast. The film has a magnetic presence that forces the audience to really pause and take everything in. It’s a cacophony of chaos, love, and hope.
Follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Letterboxd, and YouTube.