Rhayne Vermette’s Levers functions, in part, as a collective portrait of a community caught in limbo: when the sun is inexplicably blocked out globally for 24 hours, residents of the Canadian province of Manitoba endure the long day of darkness, then try to process the aftermath of this mystery when the sun rises the next morning. The film itself also occupies a sort of stylistic limbo. Levers is nominally a narrative film with a concrete dramatic situation, characters, and interweaving plot strands, but Vermette dispenses with most of the expectations of narrative cinema, and instead connects a series of images and episodes, with limited dialogue, while only loosely attending to narrative and temporal logic. Vermette has expressed discomfort with her work being slotted into an “experimental” category by critics and festival programmers (the film premiered in TIFF’s Wavelengths program, and is currently playing as a Currents selection at the New York Film Festival), but it’s true that Levers will appeal more to viewers seeking aesthetic experimentation than conventional narrative satisfaction.
Vermette shepherded Levers with idiosyncratic tools and working methods. She shot the film, alongside Ryan Steel, Heidi Phillips, and Kristiane Church, on apparently “broken” 16mm Bolex cameras, and led the cast and crew through a collaborative filmmaking process, exemplified by the end credits which list each contributor alphabetically, rather than in order of their role’s perceived importance. Describing the film’s production, Vermette noted that “it’s chaotic, because I love chaos and surround myself with chaotic people, which is intended as a compliment.”
Choosing to film using broken, obsolete cameras may seem like creating unnecessary obstacles for oneself, but Vermette clearly made the best possible choice for her film both technically and meta-textually. The images Vermette captures are saturated in deep, vivid color, and in the many scenes steeped in darkness, the contrasts between halogenic sources of artificial light and their pitch-black surroundings immerse the viewer in the inexplicable night the characters have been plunged into. Though temporally hazy, the film appears to be set in the 1980s, so the use of old equipment makes a surface-level visual connection to the past. Beyond this obvious link between content and form, though, there are deeper connections to be made: Levers depicts a community puzzling out how to live in a world that has proved it can suddenly break down without warning, and the often-stunning images Vermette and her collaborators craft from defective technology provide an implicit object lesson in excavating transcendence from decay.
In keeping with the film’s collaborative production, Levers does not have clearly delineated leading and supporting characters; rather, a large ensemble of actors are featured in a loosely connected series of episodes. A few characters recur, though, and most notably a civil servant (Andrina Turenne), whose character arc most resembles a traditional subplot. Noticing odd occurrences — a streak of blood in the snow, a large rock of unknown provenance that has become a local news story — she investigates, taking actions like reviewing security camera footage and reviewing the contract information for a recently unveiled public sculpture that may be connected to the mysterious rock and the 24-hour blackout. Vermette, then, provides a few glimpses of what Levers could be as a more conventional narrative film — with references to detective, horror, and sci-fi films — but always pulls back, orienting the viewer’s focus away from mysteries that will not be solved and back toward the more ambiguous, strikingly composed glimpses of individuals in quiet states of flux. The unfulfilled flirtations with clear-cut storytelling may frustrate some hoping to decode Levers, or even to discern a plot, and at feature-length, attention spans may wander. But what Vermette and her collaborators have ultimately created is a near-unbroken series of images that generate their own intrigue, leaving viewers willing to engage with rich, subtle visions of darkness and light.
Published as part of NYFF 2025 — Dispatch 4.
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