'Tom's 2nd Suicide'
A greater script on screen will be difficult to find.
Dear Moviegoers,
I don't have much of a poker face, which is to say that it's easy to see how I'm feeling based solely on my facial expressions. Lifted eyebrows, cheek movements, smiles and frowns, all let people know everything they need to know about me, at any given time. This behavior is not something that I can suppress, so I lean into it as much as possible. Like a clown, or something.
A movie like Tom's 2nd Suicide, filled with clown-like attitudes, presents people who behave opposite of me. They're still in the face, they're slow to bodily respond, and they're dead-serious about everything. Not even Buster Keaton, the great stone-face himself, had a pace so tortoise-like. That man moved and was moving, despite his facade of stoicism, which belied his incredibly athletic and daring slapstick humor and ran rampant over expectations of the silent acting form.
However, while the few of Tom's 2nd Suicide never easily gesture or vocally inflect to one another, there's a clarity to their individual and collective humanity that acts in perfect synchronicity. This is a movie that's edge-of-your-seat tense without being overtly intense and absolutely hilarious without having a funny subject matter. It's a damn near perfect comedy screenplay, and a damn fine film.
A woman wants to take her life today, but is interrupted by her broken car, and a serendipitous bystander who knocks on her window, recognizing her predicament. The two drive around a quiet landscape to find a cliff for her to jump from, and all the while look down and out. Candy bar questions and sarcastically ambiguous but directly free answers make up their time together, as they move from mysterious motives to who-cares friendship.
The two speak with a light-hearted nature that only connected souls can, even when coming from vastly different perspectives and experiences. Writer & director Karni Haneman, who also plays the lead character, has crafted the kind of cinema that's deadpan without arrogance and lively without much activity. It's a simple movie that requires audiences to read between the lines in a world designed to be stuck in stillness. Imagine David Lynch's The Straight Story, but everyone is outwardly depressed and guarded, yet extremely emotive at the same time.
In a way, Tom's 2nd Suicide is as slapstick as it is surreal. No, there aren't multiple thwarted attempts at self-inflicted death like in Harold Lloyd's Never Weaken, but there are gags in conversation and depth in between movements. Without a single pratfall, the film makes laughter from the stern and personality from the odd.
It takes more muscles to frown than to smile, but why bother at doing either? 5/5
Tom's 2nd Suicide will screen and stream (in-person and online) as part of the 2026 SF IndieFest, from 2/5 to 2/15.