The Man Next Door


Salt Lake is all abustle with the Sundance Film Festival this week. One film that caught my eye was "The Man Next Door".
Here's the story line:

Leonardo, a successful industrial designer, lives with his family in an architectural wonder, a midcentury Le Corbusier home. One morning, he wakes to an irksome noise and is appalled to discover that workmen next door are constructing a large window that faces directly into his home. Leonardo protests, using a number of excuses (privacy, building codes, his wife), in an attempt to coerce his neighbor, Victor, into scrapping his plan. But Victor just wants a patch of sun to catch some rays. Thus, one man’s light is another man’s blight.

Enamored of architecture, the film is meticulously designed. Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat give it a carefully crafted weirdness as well as a figurative quality. Its caustic humor comes in contemplating why the window completely undermines Leonardo. Does it reveal his arrogance, affectation, and lack of compassion; or dispel his bourgeois illusion of power? The Man Next Door offers a biting critique of moral shallowness—and what happens when thou dost not love thy neighbor’s window.

There are still 5 more screenings if you have a chance to see it.