Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 123873 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 619(@200wpm)___ 495(@250wpm)___ 413(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 123873 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 619(@200wpm)___ 495(@250wpm)___ 413(@300wpm)
Of the moment when it was too late.
The frames leaped forward abruptly, moving at normal speed with no warning, the transition jarring enough to make Brendan’s heart give an uneasy jump. Stumbling, scrambling, running so fast he became a blur, Roland caught up to Natalie. Reached for her.
But he grasped on to nothing.
As she burst apart in a shower of black fragments, tiny little motes like insects, swirling away on the wind.
Leaving Roland empty-handed, sobbing, his entire body quivering with the energy of a hope destroyed and yet also—resignation. As if he’d known. As if he’d lived this nightmare a thousand times before, and always knew how it ended.
Yet this time he’d hoped somehow, somehow he could change it.
Fascinating. Brendan rubbed at his chin, narrowing his eyes and studying Cillian’s body language as once again the film slowed down to half-speed, bringing into sharp focus the subtle details of limp limbs, a heaving chest, a head bowed in defeat, a single tear dripping from the tip of a crooked nose, the restless movements that still wouldn’t stop—as if already he was preparing to try again.
Five minutes in, and so much had already been conveyed without either of the actors speaking a single word. Cillian exuded emotion, as if he were a light shedding the radiance of those feelings to tint the color of each frame. The film rolled on to tell the story of a grieving young man who had lost his beloved in some untold way, left alone in a small stone cottage among heathered fields. Over the course of each scene, the young man lost himself in memories that called into question whether or not the woman had ever even existed at all.
Or if she was a figment he’d concocted to fill the endless silence, where he never heard anything out in the fields but the wind in the grass, the calls of lake gulls and sparrows…and the sound of glass, as she traced messages on the windows for him in the morning mist, waiting for him to find them each day when he woke to begin the daily repetition of tending to his small patch of herbs and vegetables with an almost obsessive focus. Roland didn’t seem to do anything else—just the consuming actions of preserving his existence on his own in this endless isolation, now and then hunting in one strikingly and surprisingly bloody, visceral scene with a bow and arrow and a deer, but mostly fixated on that garden and the letters in smoke on glass.
By the end of the film Brendan himself wasn’t even sure what had been real or not. The final shot was just the words FORGET ME traced on the glass, cutting through the condensation…and Roland’s haunted face, blurred past the mist, clear only in the shapes of letters showing glimpses of haggard features, of a heart that could never be at rest, burning in those pale, oddly-colored brown eyes.
And Brendan hadn’t even realized an entire hour and fifty minute film had passed.
He glanced at the clock, at the script, at his phone.
Then queued up another of Cillian’s films.
A sci-fi, this time. An adaptation of a novel about a lone person maintaining a critical warp jumpway, and the strange things that happened to him. Then another, about a young lawyer caught up in an illicit series of deals with clients of power and prestige. And another and another and another, taking it in, memorizing how Cillian moved, the ropy and somewhat gangly lines of his body giving him a sort of otherworldly grace.
He was a raw talent, yet to be refined, working best in those solitary roles that bordered on monologue—while he grew flatter, more awkward in scenes with others. Still so very one-note, until he played the same character in different settings and time periods; but what Cillian knew how to do, he did well, throwing himself into roles until he burned his way through them.
And, dear God…
Did he burn.
That was the only way to describe how he electrified the screen; how he seemed to simmer with emotion even when holding fully still. He was on fire inside with everything he felt, spreading its heat to anyone who came near him and drawing them into his magnetism. When alone on the screen, he seemed to fill the camera shot from border to border until his presence was everywhere.
And all it took was one sidelong glance from beneath starkly angled brows, eyes hot, for Cillian to fully pull the viewer into the quiet, moody world he created.
Brendan took a brief break to pour himself a tumbler of Glenfiddich and change into a pair of loose pajama pants, turning what he’d observed over in his head. He could see why Cillian had been cast, but that in and of itself was a bit of a problem. The kid had been typecast before even his first major production, and if he became known as a single-role actor with a limited range, he’d be pigeonholed into a rather reductive repetition of films.