Danielle Solzman
Murmur offers a taste of bold experimental filmmaking surrounding the connections between humans and the animals in our lives.
Documentary-narrative feature hybrids are starting to become more of a thing. The main focus in this film is Donna (Shan MacDonald). Donna is an alcoholic and following a recent DUI charge, she’s been ordered to perform community service. Her community service obligations find her serving or time at an animal rescue shelter. While putting in her time, she starts to bond with some of the dogs. There’s one senior dog in particular that captures her attention. But as Donna is aging and feeling lonely, she starts to crave some attention. What happens with Donna is that while she brings one dog home, she feels this need to rescue even more of them.
One can understand Donna’s need for bringing in more dogs but she doesn’t have the necessary space for all of them! Regardless of this impulse to bring more dogs in, it’s obviously too much to handle. With one dog in particular, there are so many health issues that I thought this film would be added to the website about dogs dying. I love dogs myself and realize that I can’t exactly offer them what they need in my small studio apartment.
What’s so fascinating about Murmur is watching Donna go from this alcoholic addiction to an addiction for dogs. The latter is clearly more healthier for her body but she really has her work cut out! Whether it’s one addiction or another, she still needs to have people putting her in check.
Murmur, while being bold in its storytelling choices, is not going to be for everyone.
DIRECTOR/SCREENWRITER: Heather Young
CAST: Shan MacDonald, Andria Edwards
