A meditative film – Never Gonna Sleep Again has a difficult time hitting its marks, even if it generally remains engaging with its odd, sparse atmosphere and thought-provoking climate undertones.
6.4
Never Gonna Snow Again starts in cryptic fashion. Zhenia meets a sunken-faced landlord to rent a room. He’s short on answers and deliberately oblique. At one stage, the landlord answers: “I feel quite strange around you”. The audience, no doubt, is meant to feel that same unsettling presence. And we do, as we do with any man short on answers and long on cryptic gazes. The meeting ends with Zhenia seemingly sedating his landlord through some sort of mind control and obtaining a room.
That sets the scene for a curious film albeit one that can’t quite match that scene. It transpires that Zhenia is a travelling masseuse, soon to be doing work in some sort of impeccably organised, gated community. The film, then, tracks his days treating clients. He massages and hypnotises ad nauseum. Little by little, we learn more about these people and their vices. They all, in one way or another, confide in Zhenia.
There is an odd presence around Zhenia’s character, perhaps. But the bottle’s never truly uncorked. Or maybe more accurately, there isn’t much in the bottle to begin with. The film tends to meander and focus on a series of side-characters who don’t really draw a great deal of intrigue. And Zhenia himself becomes more a sounding board for them than anything else. I mention the opening conversation with the landlord because it plays as a bit of a teaser – we’re introduced to a potentially enthralling character. But Zhenia is something else. More quiet than pensive.
Perhaps part of the issue of this film are the cavalry of patients that Zhenia encounters. They are all wealthy, drug-fuelled individuals desperate for the healing properties of the masseuse. But most of them are one-note. We’re left with a swirl of surface-level complex people. Even where one or two start to seem interesting, they taper away or we’re drawn to another. The sequences aren’t as effective as they could be and none of the characters, save for perhaps Zhenia’s love-interest, really land.
But there are some interesting themes coursing through the film. The undercurrent of Zhenia’s Ukranian past and his disconnect with his wealthier clientele is a quiet tension even if it never bubbles to the surface. The other obvious theme is climate change (hinted at in the title). The weather follows this film. In its more pleasant tones, snow laces along the houses whilst stilted piano plays. Characters repeatedly reference the belief that soon it will never snow again. Never Gonna Snow Again is certainly a allegory for the climate crisis and its conveyed well, particularly in a late scene in which Zhenia talks of snow in his childhood. It’s clear where directors Malgorzata Szumowksa and Michal Englert’s passions lie. And this film ends nicely, even if the meaning behind the ending feels a bit confused – an unsettling mix of hope and dread.
Never Gonna Snow Again is a meditative film. Not every step lands with full force and some feel misplaced. But its heart is there and it holds just enough intrigue to keep you from a deep sleep.
THE MIDNIGHT SPECIAL 