Todd Giglio's "Drawing With Chalk" is something of a hand crafted, low budget, soaring, and deeply moving masterpiece. It brings us a familiar concept for a film, and converts it into an original, great looking, and unbelievably well acted experience. The characters are remarkably vivid, developed through out the film with warmth and ...honesty, played beautifully by the entire cast.
The film is a true depiction of the aspects, good or bad, of life, the ways that you can choose to live, and the people that you share it with. For different people, the out come will give spring different emotions, but I am quite sure that for the majority of viewers, that the out come of this picture will satisfy and move them unlike most other movies have before. It's a treasure.
Todd Giglio (the writer/director/star/score composer) should be looked up to any aspiring film maker as an inspirational figure. His screenplay here is genius, exploring the story of a man, with a love for music, and additionally tackling other important points such as friendship and love; but also including that with other pleasant touches like humor and fun. The story itself is beautiful, sad, and wonderfully truthful, it's one of the most realistic pieces of cinema that I've seen in some time.
To sum up the basic story; Giglio plays Jason, a mid-aged and well spirited musician, who has had the dream of musical succession since childhood. His dreams though, are intercepted by his will to support his wife and young son. Jason's best friend and musical companion is Matt (terrifically played by Christopher Springer), who Jason has been friends with since teen-hood. Matt's father is the owner of a steel business, in which both Jason and Matt make their finance.
As the story moves forward, problems begin to develop involving Jason's job. And as Matt and Jason's hope for pursuing a career as professional musicians furthers; tensions grow between Jason's well-being as a family man, effecting his musical relationship and friendship with Matt, which causes his life to grow more and more complex. It's artful and, once again, beautiful.
Each scene is gloriously shot with digital cameras, resulting in Michael LaVoie's cinematography being a delight to the eye. Giglio's execution and deliverance of his wonderful story doesn't ever make you confused, but always keeps you interested and alert. I think that the story is so affective, because it shares a relevance with all of our lives, all of our hardships, and all of our passions as human beings. The screenplay is nothing short of masterful.
Giglio and Springer give knock out performances as the two leads, but pretty much everyone in the cast is flawless. Pooja Koomar as Jason's wife Jasmine is great. Brennan Giglio as Jason and jasmine's son, Brian, is convincingly talented. Jasmine's brother played by Debargo Sanyal is funny and satisfactory. And Tom Loughlin is also fantastic as Matt's father, Ray. The performances are some of the best I've seen in years, and I'm meaning that literally. They all add a memorabilia to the film, and some of these performances may even be Oscar worthy *cough cough, Todd Gigilio, cough cough*
Drawing With Chalk truly is a heart felt piece of cinema. I honestly cannot think of any negative criticism that I have to state about the film, I'll have to see it again soon, but I highly doubt that seeing it again will change my opinion that much.
I think that it easily deserves to be theatrically released in theaters nation-wide, and I even think that it deserves a shot for an Academy Award nomination for best motion picture of the year, and nominations in some other categories as well. I was highly impressed with Drawing With Chalk, and I really think that most people will be as well.